How To Map A Sales Process

Start Improving Your Sales Process NOW!

(old version of this book)

How to Map a Sales Process Your Customers and Salespeople Will Follow Three-ring binder 88 content-filled pages 20+ examples of customer value maps from six different industries Actual workshop presentation slides Consulting implementation guidelines and templates This guide is part of the Sales Process Improvement Series. This volume is a prerequisite for designing effective marketing and selling processes. It shows you step by step how to map what your customer values, and how to develop questions and value propositions that you can incorporate in sales training, proposal writing, and presentations.

This book is being rewritten. The updated version will be released in early 2009. Owners of this product will automatically receive a pdf of the new book.

The new book will be titled: How to Map Customer Value So Customers Will Buy Now and Pay More

“Not making the sales numbers? … There must be a problem in the sales department!”

How often have you heard a statement like this, and had a nagging feeling that there might be some problems outside the sales department that need fixing?

These days, most people agree that processes are a good idea, in principle. Unfortunately, there are lots of problems when you try to implement them:

• People lose interest because the process map gets way too complicated.
• A creative salesperson lands a deal without following the process. People say, “So what? We should care about results, not process for process sake.”
• Everybody agrees to a new process map, and then it’s business as usual and nothing changes.
• With every sales training or CRM initiative, things become more confused or diluted.

Over the years, sales processes have been credited with some excellent results. If nothing else, they help convey the expected behaviors of salespeople and sequences of tactics learned in sales training.

Still, nagging problems remain:

• How do you know if your process is the best one?
• Why don’t the process measurements seem to be very useful?
• How can you identify where our bottlenecks are, and what needs to be improved?
• How can you get people to move to ever higher levels of performance?
• How can you tell whether people’s skill performance is holding things back, or something else?

What’s Wrong Here?

I’ve been working on this problem for almost 30 years as a salesperson, sales and marketing manager, sales trainer, and now as a consultant. During the late 80s and 90s, I was introduced to the quality movement in manufacturing. I sensed the potential for improving results in business-to-business selling environments. In time, I had the opportunity to be at the forefront of efforts to improve the sales performance of well over one hundred different companies. I have seen organizations valiantly apply various approaches in all kinds of market conditions. Some succeeded. Many didn’t.

The results of these intense experiences were powerful, and they pointed to a better way of working with the sales process.

One of the key problems I observed was process mapping techniques focused on the analytical questions, not motivational ones. Mapping a sales process is not like mapping an administrative or a technical procedure. When human beings are involved, you have to zero in on why they do what they do. Over the years, an approach emerged that put human goals first, with the customer’s goal being most important.

When my article, “How to Avoid the Four Most Common Mistakes of Sales Process Mapping,” was published in 2003 (you’ll find it in the Articles section of this website), I began receiving emails from people all over the world saying how much it helped them.

Now, I have developed a complete guidebook for the approach that was only hinted at in that article. It presents the sequence and the technique for helping people to agree on the fundamental goals of their marketing and selling activities. It has helped literally dozens of companies to look at the work of their own organizations very differently, and create sustainable improvement as a result. Here are just a few:

• 3M
• Marriott
• Sauer-DanFoss
• Boise Paper Products
• MailWell
• Carlson Wagonlit
• Merillat
• Target Corporation
• Federal Executive Institute
• Personnel Decisions, Inc.
• WFI Industries
• Dupont Surfaces

This guidebook is now available for a fraction of the fees these companies gladly paid for this information.

Given confidentiality requirements, I can’t share specific details about these company’s projects. However, here are a few general examples:

• A manufacturer of industrial products had been frustrated trying to map their sales process. Every attempt had resulted in complex diagrams and no clear direction. Once their team worked through the right approach, they immediately saw a breakthrough. They were able to agree on the one place where their process needed improvement first. A year later, two projects focused on that area had been completed, the close ratio improved by 25%, and they were moving on to even more sophisticated process ideas.
• The field salespeople of a large manufacturer understood only point solutions and had no concept of what could be accomplished at the corporate level. As a result, the company’s national account program was struggling. Once the team was able to map the distinction between field and corporate opportunities, they were able to begin asking the right questions and establishing a common language around customer problems. Within three months, they had generated enough new business to turn the skeptics into believers.
• A building materials firm knew a CRM system could help their sales team be more effective with customers, but they lacked the vision for how to articulate what they wanted. By implementing a process map that focused on delivering what was really important to their customers, they were able to institutionalize much stronger sales tactics, and establish business requirements that made the CRM installation go smoothly and generate a quick payback. Further, they now had much greater visibility into the sales pipeline, and salespeople were able to handle more accounts without putting in more hours.

You will see what’s behind these and other successes in this guide:

Sales Process Mapping Guidebook

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If you are a sales manager, marketing manager, or process improvement manager, this guidebook enables you to learn how to lead your team through the complex world of mapping your organization’s sales process. This enables your team to answer important business questions such as:

• How to leverage the huge leadership potential of a process approach
• How to galvanize the team around goals they can all agree on
• How to make process definitions simpler and more powerful
• How to devise a blueprint for getting departments to work together instead of against each other
• Ways to integrate the new process into your organization so results happen quickly

You’ll also learn a scheme for sales production metrics that keeps the CEO out of your office!

You heard that right.

Most people have a fair idea of how production is measured in manufacturing, and even in service organizations. But how can sales and marketing be measured objectively? Where do you start? There are so many possible measurements, most sales organizations gave it up long ago! The sales process mapping guidebook will show you an approach for prioritizing measurements of production that is simple and elegant, and totally focused on the customer. It is an approach that helps to reveal where the bottleneck is, which helps encourage senior executives to focus their energies where it counts.

This guidebook also shows you how to burn through the resistance to change inherent in marketing and sales organizations. You will receive:

• Guidelines for starting a process mapping effort
• Ways to avoid the fundamental mistakes that kill most process mapping efforts before they get started
• Examples of real business results you can and should expect from your process mapping effort
• A project plan for making your process mapping effort a success
• A scripted presentation for making your process mapping effort a success
• Illustrations of what can go wrong and what to do about it during your process mapping session
• Guidelines for coaching your team in developing a strong sales process
• Example process maps from five different industries with descriptions and war stories

The result of these sessions is powerful: participants build a consensus on what is important, and how to accomplish it in their environment. These essentials become the top-level business requirements for your systems and your training. Several of my clients, armed with the maps I helped them create, went on have their CRM suppliers tell them theirs was the most successful software installation their CRM company ever had.

Here’s what people have said (most want to remain confidential, for obvious reasons):

• “Your idea about the sales process creating value for the customer is one of the most valuable things I have encountered. Our people think about selling in an entirely different way now.” Managing Partner, CRM Systems Integrator
• “Now that we see how the consumer and the dealer sales processes work together, it is a lot easier for our people to understand what needs to be done.” CEO, Small Manufacturing Company
• “The process map we developed helped us communicate more effectively with the product marketing divisions. Now, everyone knows whose job it is to make sales easier.”
  V.P. Sales, Fortune 1000 Company

The guidebook contains more than 90 pages of tactical how-to instructions and examples for applying these powerful principles in your environment. It also contains free access to MS Word and PowerPoint template files to get you started fast!

Easy-to-use templates help you put what you know into a useful format. They also reveal gaps so you can zero in on the information you need to fill out the picture. In every case, the structure, templates, and examples give you what you need to develop grabber headlines for advertisements, sales training that sticks, and tools salespeople will actually use.

Here’s What You Get

The “Sales Process Mapping” Guidebook provides everything you need to conduct process mapping sessions with your staff, colleagues, or clients. This manual provides:

• Background on process mapping
• Practical sales and marketing applications of process mapping
• Ways to prepare your organization for a process mapping initiative
• Process mapping templates and presentation script
• Common mistakes in process mapping sessions, and how to avoid them
• Examples of sales process maps and how to develop them
• Reference library of sample process maps

To see the quality of the materials for yourself, follow this link to the table of contents and the introduction from the book.

With the sales process mapping guidebook, you’ll have a procedure to follow for almost any situation. You’ll learn the key questions to get them thinking in the right direction. You’ll learn how to capture your people’s best intentions, and get everyone pulling in the right direction. You’ll have salespeople (and customers) thanking you for helping them so effectively.

You’ll also receive free access to MS Word and PowerPoint template files to get you started fast! Then, depending on the options you choose, within a week you can receive that same material in hard copy, packaged in a three-ring binder. You’ll have over 90 pages of tactical how-to instructions and examples for applying process mapping in your sales environment.

Added Bonus!

You’ll be subscribed to SPIF! - the only free newsletter devoted to improving forecast accuracy and helping salespeople be more effective. In addition, you’ll receive the eight-page white paper: “Bring Process Discipline to Your Sales Organization Without Driving Away Your Salespeople or Your Customers!” (with my newsletter subscription). NO RISK Thanks to This Guarantee Every guidebook comes with a full 100% money-back guarantee for 90 days. If you are not completely satisfied for any reason–or no reason at all–simply return the book and you will promptly receive a full refund. No hassles, no hard feelings. Something you might like to know: It is common for people selling information products to have a 10% return rate for their products. In fact, some marketers believe that if your return rate isn’t close to that, you aren’t selling hard enough.

Well, you might like to know that in the five years since these guidebooks have been on the market, hundreds have been purchased, yet I have processed only one refund.

I know what I’m talking about, and these guidebooks contain valuable information that will help your organization. (The coming new editions will be even better!)

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Every guidebook comes with a full 100% money-back guarantee for 90 days. If you are not completely satisfied for any reason–or no reason at all–simply return the book and you will promptly receive a full refund. No hassles, no hard feelings.

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