How to map a sales cycle or process

Nearly every sale in any business follows a process or cycle, or one of a very few processes or cycles. It is critical to understand this for forecasting and to tune the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Microsoft Visio (recommneded)
• Any other decision tree tool

1. Any business whether that's selling 747 jets or cars or clothes in a department store follow a process. Mapping that process becomes more important as the complexity and length of the sales cycle increases. Start the process by loading Microsoft's Visio or flowcharting tool. Visio is good because it's fast, changes are easy to make and charts are easily exported to other tools.
2. The next step is to analyze wins and losses of business over as long a period of time as possible. Alternating wins and losses is generally a good idea to avoid tunnel vision and to ensure accuracy on both fronts.
3. Choose 1 person to capture the notes from a white board or to transcribe on the fly. Choose another person to manage capturing the steps into Visio. You need to make sure that they understand how to use it accurately and what the specific shapes mean. It is quite possible that each product or service could have different sales cycles, so map each of them if that is the case. Attention should be given as to how, if at all, they interact to sell more.

Tips & Warnings

• Make sure you analyze wins and losses when mapping the sales process. It's important to know when things fall out of a sales process and it's a waste of time to linger.
• Make sure you consider whether or not each product or service has its own sales process.
• Make sure that anyone supporting the sales process understands how the sales cycles work and their role in that process.
• You need to ensure that your sales forecasting model maps to your sales process for accuracy.
• The sales process map is one of the most critical sales management tools with regard forecasting and optimizing your marketing effort.
• Fail to map the process, and you'll never know where you are and you won't be able to communicate effectively with your sales people.
• It is very hard to mentor and coach sales people on how to push sales forward and to know when to quit if there's no tool to set the standard.