Steve is frustrated that his salespeople are having difficulty understanding how to sell his products and/or services. Steve owns a relatively new company and hired 4 salespeople. He provided them with a week of “sales training” which consisted of mostly detailed information relating to their product and service. Four weeks later, all 4 salespeople had either quit or were let go. The cost of this turnover was estimated at approximately $115K per salesperson. That is almost a half a million dollars of lost opportunity and direct cost to his business.
What went wrong? Recruiting? Maybe. Steve hired experienced sales people that had a winning track record. Leadership? Probably. Most problems in sales are due to a lack of good solid sales management. Lack of a defined sales process? Definitely. Steve provided great product knowledge training and he felt since he hired seasoned salespeople, that his success was assured. What happened was his sales people had so much product knowledge that they were confused on how to actually sell his product. They focused way too much on the product than on the sales process that helped their prospects come to either a “yes” or a “no”. We call this process a “Sales Template”. A Sales Template is a guide to the selling process that has proven to work in your business. It is a series of sequential meetings and interactions that lead to a sale, and if you want to get really sophisticated with your sales template, you will include additional interactions and meetings during service and customer fulfillment. The template consists of a set of steps that constitute a successful beginning, a set of steps that typically occur in successful middles, and a third set of steps that successfully end the selling process. Components to include in each step of your sales template are: location of meeting, how long the meeting typically lasts, who should be included, and what decisions and commitments need to be made.
It is critical for the salesperson if they are going to do a sales call properly, that they have conviction about what steps are required in the sales process. With this conviction, they won’t wimp on getting next steps. Lastly, your Sales Template will help you on-board your new salespeople on best practices so they can sell more, much faster. So what are you waiting for?
Still have questions about the Sales Template, refer to our article on Redefining Your Sales With a Sales Template.
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