Greg Bennett's Rambling Thought on Successful Selling #57: Put Steps Into Stages
Hopefully by now you've implemented my concept of "Mini-Steps" in the selling process (if not I mention it extensively in my book and in lots of materials here on the blog).
Mini-Steps are basically a path to closure (meaning towards a YES or a NO), and they help everyone involved get clarity on where an opportunity truly may be in the sales pipeline (the client...the salesperson...the sales manager...top management...ownership). Some people have 5 steps in their process, others have 10 or 15, and a few have 20 or more -- it doesn't really matter how many, as long as you have them laid out and everyone on the staff is using them consistently.
One of the challenges in using mini-steps (and there are only a few compared to the multitude of positives) is the amount of time it takes to communicate between seller and manager where every opportunity in the pipeline is on a regular basis.
I mean if the seller has to list the steps taken on everything in the pipeline each week, it could take a while. Plus managers then have to track that progress from several salespeople and come up with an accurate assessment of where each sales person is, as well as the whole team.
So I've come up with a more effective method of doing this, and it's called "Stages"...Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3 (again the number of stages really don't matter). And each Stage contains a number of Mini-Steps. So Stage 1 could be 5 of the early steps in the process (i.e. Set initial appointment, do Needs Analysis, etc.)...Stage 2 could include 5 more steps in the mid-range of the process (i.e. create proposal, get credit application, etc.)...Stage 3 could include 5 more steps in the late stages (i.e. select final product mix, schedule meeting with training team, etc.)
Steps make it faster and easier to communicate where opportunities may be. So instead of the seller needing to list every step they've taken, they can just say "ACME is in Stage 2" and everyone knows what that means.
The key is to be clear on which steps go in which stage.
GB
(Just one of Greg Bennett's "99 Rambling Thoughts on Successful Selling")
