Every organization is unique. Every organization’s sales process has unique aspe
Every organization is unique. Every organization’s sales process has unique aspects. Despite that, however, the overall sales process structure across different companies and industries is quite similar. The YPS Methodical Sales Process (MSP) was designed to exploit this overall similarity and to provide a well-organized, intuitive, logical framework. Because of this, it can serve as not only as a “stake-in-the-ground-starting-point” for a Sales Process Engineering (SPE) effort; it can also provide a basis for sales process quality benchmarking.
The MSP architecture includes fourteen sales sub-processes that are grouped into three main categories… Sales Operations, the starting point and “guts” of the whole selling process; Customer Satisfaction, concerned with maintaining/enhancing the satisfaction of the current customer base and building credibility with prospects; and Sales Support, the activities performed by field reps, staff and management to make the sales operation as productive as possible.
Each of the fourteen sub-processes is further broken down into four parts; Completion Criteria, Metrics, Best Practices and Tools. Completion Criteria unambiguously define conditions that exist when a sub-process has been completed. For example, you might define completion of the “Identity Opportunities” sub-process as having the decision maker’s name and contact information.
Metrics provide a means to keep score. They are the quantitative, non-debatable aspect of how well a sub-process is being executed. For example, you may decide that for your business, each sales rep must have a minimum of 50 opportunities that meet the completion criteria for the “Identify Opportunities” sub-process.
Sales Best Practices are the most effective activities and tasks that must be executed to complete a sub-process. Note that “best” is a relative term. It may be helpful to think in terms of practices, good practices, better practices and ultimately best practices. Start by documenting what you and your team actually do. Over time, you can eliminate the time spent executing “good” practices and focus on only the “best” ones. As you would expect, the list of practices for any sub-process continuously changes as your customers, competitors and market conditions change.
Tools are exactly what they sound like, prospect lists, sample value propositions, product samples, brochures, pricing tools, proposal boilerplate, references… All those things that can be used to help advance a sale.
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What follows is a brief description of each of the fourteen sub-processes in the YPS MSP. Sample completion criteria, metrics and practices are provided. Note that while the sub-processes are applicable to companies in virtually all industries, the completion criteria, metrics and best practices may vary by industry.
Sales Operations
Identify Opportunities
- Completion Criteria
- Opportunity information entered into the C