A successful technology company needs sales to survive.
Without an effective sales process to fill your pipeline and convert prospects to customers, you won't sell enough to survive. You might get lucky for a while, but to grow consistently, you need a defined process to effectively deploy your limited sales and marketing resources.
The reality is that most SMB technology companies don't have a defined process to fill their sales pipeline and close deals. Too often, the focus for early-stage tech companies is on product development and securing investor funding. Sales and marketing is often a secondary consideration.
It doesn't have to be that way! You don't need a complicated sales process - in fact a sales process that is overly complicated is rarely followed by the people entrusted to use it. You need a process that effectively focuses your sales and marketing resources to maximize results.
Like earth, wind, fire and water, a successful technology sales process needs 4 essential elements to survive.
A lack of focus is the most frequent problem I see when talking with technology company executives.
The thinking is that if they focus on the financial sector, they're foregoing opportunities in retail, technology and automotive. The reality is that today's technology buyers are looking for specialists, not generalists. In DemandGen Reports 2017 B2B Buyer Survey Report, 93% of buyers valued vendors that, "demonstrated experience with/knowledge of our industry." They're not looking for jacks-of-all-trades, folks!
So in order to have an effective sales process, you first need to understand where you will focus your product/service and your sales and marketing. It starts with having a clear definition of your ideal customer. You should consider factors like industry, size and other demographic/psychographic factors. Once you've identified your target customer, it becomes easier to solve for them in terms of product development and sales/marketing.
The next part of focus in your sales process is to identify the roles involved in the buying process for your solution. Even though the CTO may have the ultimate responsibility for deciding to buy, there are others involved the buying process. Two quotes from the DemandGen 2017 B2B Survey illustrate this clearly.
So if you concentrate on the CTO and ignore the engineers that will have to make things work, you do so at your own peril. By focusing on your ideal customer, you focus on prospects that are likely to be long-term profitable customers. You also are able to become experts in your niche and focus content and messaging on the people you want to sell to.
Even the largest enterprise technology companies have limited sales and marketing resources. If they don't use those resources effectively, their Cost of Customer Acquisition (CAC) increases, which in turn decreases revenue. For smaller tech companies, you waste resources on low-percentage opportunities that could be used on high-percentage plays.
That's why it's so important to qualify leads. Here are a few things to keep in mind on qualifying leads.
A good qualification process will enhance your ability to successfully sell in your target markets.
This seems a bit redundant, but this is really the heart of your sales process. You need to define a series of actions that your sales team will take with qualified leads, depending on how the lead was generated. For example, you will want to have a different process for a referral lead than for an inbound lead.
Your processes should be designed to help your prospects complete their buying journey while reaching mileposts that you know will increase your chances of closing the deal. A simple sales process might be to qualify leads, get them to participate in a demo, convince the buying team of the ROI and your ability to perform and execute a contract.
By having defined processes for your various marketing channels, you will employ a consistent approach in the marketplace. The sales team will be responsible for executing the process, not figuring out how they should react to every lead that comes in the door. From a management perspective, this focuses sales training and coaching on the execution.
Here's a simplified version of our sales process for inbound leads that goes up to the point of an actual opportunity.
One of the advantages of having a defined sales process is that you can measure activities of both your team and your prospect to facilitate continual improvement. You should set SMART goals for your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and track progress against them.
Here are some things to consider as you measure and improve your sales process.
Remember, what gets measured, get's done.
There are two precursors to your sales process that we didn't touch on in this post. The first is lead generation - if you're not producing leads, there's really no point in having a sales process (or a business.) The second is sales and marketing technology. It's just not possible to execute an effective sales process without it. If youre not using technology in your sales and marketing process, get the free HubSpot Marketing software and the free HubSpot CRM. Without a defined sales process, you're just tapping in the dark.