How to Establish a Repeatable Sales Process

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Your new startup has a killer product, which deserves a best-in-class sales process, so you hire someone with a track record of success at your favorite company — the one you most want to emulate. You’re as confident as they are when they join the team. Then it all goes wrong. Why is it so hard to build a repeatable sales process?

If you listen to our latest guest, Dan Morris, Managing Partner of Mindracer Consulting (a modern VP of Sales & CRO as a Service firm), you’ll quickly learn it doesn’t have to be. You’re just approaching it wrong.

The sales process

Why it matters

The goal of building a repeatable sales process — especially in a startup — is to make sure that, as you grow, your company can effectively onboard salespeople and give them a fighting chance to succeed in their jobs in time to provide a return on your investment.

Bottom line: You need to make sure your salespeople can succeed, but without a repeatable process in place, it’s the wild west out there.

The ideal customer

One of the biggest mistakes early-stage businesses make is not properly identifying their ideal customers and basing the sales process around them. Often, the people you built the product for aren’t the ones it is best suited for — which can frequently be a difficult shift to make when leadership has been laser-focused on a non-ideal buyer since the inception of the company.

Why you’re struggling to make it repeatable

Even when you are targeting the right buyer, the sales process often runs into other roadblocks.

Take the case we mentioned earlier: The VP of Sales Superstar you poached from the company you take inspiration from may do well with a huge organization’s resources behind them, but in the wild-west startup world, you need a gunslinger, not a suit-wearing city-slicker.

“People don’t recognize how much they rely on the resources around them in large organizations until they’ve left.”

Dan Morris, Managing Partner of Mindracer Consulting

Another issue companies often face is changing the sales process or targeting new buyers too often, which never allows your sales team to find its footing and makes it hard for them — and you — to find success.

The repeatable sales process

Identifying the right buyer

The first thing you need to do in any facet of a business is to make sure you are targeting the right buyer. You need to know their problems, how you best solve them, and why they should pick you over your competitors. Then you need to make sure you know how to sell to them.

“The hard work in the early stage of a business is working out who the sales process is for. Often, the ideal person for a product or service isn’t who you initially built it for.”

Dan Morris, Managing Partner of Mindracer Consulting

Get a new perspective

Sometimes, leadership can become set in its ways and be reluctant to make the changes needed to keep growing the business. When you identify that this is happening in your organization, it means you need an impartial perspective.

CRO-as-a-Service companies, like Mindracer Consulting, can be an effective way to get a neutral take on how to best shape your sales process.

Revisit the process

Once you have perfected selling to your ideal customer and can capture the total market, it makes sense to expand to new segments, add new features, or go after larger accounts. Just remember, when you do, you need to make sure your sales methods are still effective.

Revisit your process every six months and make sure it is still working for your company’s needs.

Finally, always check to make sure your sales team has the tools they need and know how to use them.

Processing the sales process

Repeatability is what lifts a startup to the next level of its life cycle. It’s what tames the wild west and grows your business. With a little foresight, you can take the guesswork out and start building your repeatable sales process today.

Now you know how to establish a repeatable sales process, are you ready to learn how to build the right sales team or master acquisitions as a growth strategy? Check out the full list of episodes: The B2B Revenue Executive Experience.

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