Over the past few months I've been very focused on building sales processes. When it comes creating sales in a business through the sales process and understanding marketing's role in small business development it's important to utilize four distinct small business development steps.
Step 1: Attraction: Marketing's job is to attract people to your offer. Your marketing plan should include a sales "soft-step", which allows interested people to take a small step toward you without risk.
Step 2: The System of Selling: This is where the majority of sales training begins and ends. Your sales system (or sales presentation method) should allow you to convert attraction gained in marketing into revenue 1-in-3 to 1-in-5 times. That means, for every 3 to 5 sales presentations you give, you should create 1 sale.
Step 3: CRM: Client relationship management (CRM) are the processes (plural) you use to continue working with and assisting your existing clients. Most businesses miss this step completely and also miss opportunities for additional sales from existing clients. Remember, it costs far less to continue selling to existing clients than it does to attract new clients.
Step 4: Online and Social Media marketing (attraction online): The majority of businesses never track their online and social media results. Without this information, countless hours are wasted on activities that do not accomplish the purpose of marketing, which is to attract sales opportunities.
Lack of a well developed 4-step sales process strategy can cost businesses between 10% to 40% of revenues.
That means that for every $100,000 in revenue earned, a small business can lose between $10,000 to $40,000 in revenues they would otherwise gain if they had a sales process plan in place.
