Lean & Agile Sales Process: a Non-Linear Approach

Why did we create the Essential Sales Process (ESP)? Well the answer is that myself, and the other co-creators of ESP, have worked in solution selling for most of our careers, and we felt that most of the available solution selling processes on offer didn’t work very well. They tend to be very linear, and assume a “happy day” scenario where everything goes according to plan, and we always have control over what the customer does, and what the competition does. Continue reading “Lean & Agile Sales Process: a Non-Linear Approach”

Improve sales governance with a well-defined opportunity lifecycle

A good sales process not only helps the sales team with opportunity qualification, assessment and planning, but also supports good governance. A key aspect of sales governance in most organisations is the opportunity lifecycle, usually defined by a linear progression of stages, e.g. Suspect, Prospect, Qualified, Business Win, and Closed Won. If your organisation uses a CRM system (who doesn’t these days?), then these stages will be hard-wired into that system, and will be key indicators feeding up into management reports and dashboards upon which forecasts and critical business decisions will be made. Continue reading “Improve sales governance with a well-defined opportunity lifecycle”

Performing opportunity reviews and planning next steps with the essential sales process

Improving win rate and accelerating deals requires that we have an accurate understanding of where we are with any given opportunity, so we can effectively plan next steps to advance the deal towards closure. Think of this as your “Sat Nav” for sales opportunities. Continue reading “Performing opportunity reviews and planning next steps with the essential sales process”

Introducing the Essential Sales Process

Having a good sales process helps the sales team qualify, plan and track their opportunities, supports accurate and consistent forecasting, and ultimately helps drive up win rates and revenues. However, many traditional sales processes remain unpopular with sales people as they are seen as too heavyweight, don’t match the way that teams actually sell, and lack the inherent agility to truly support them in their endeavours. Continue reading “Introducing the Essential Sales Process”

Three ideas for improving your solution sales process

Most people in sales would agree that having a process is a good thing. A good process provides guidance for sellers and enables some governance around the sales effort: knowing where we are, where we are headed, and what we should be doing next. Ultimately this helps the sales team be more effective, win more deals, drive up revenue etc. However, traditional sales processes in use in many, if not most, organisations today fall far short of this. In this post I will introduce three ideas which can help and offer ways to improve: Continue reading “Three ideas for improving your solution sales process”