From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A sales process is a systematic approach for performing product or service sales. The reasons for having a sales process include seller and buyer risk management, achieving standardized customer interaction in sales and scalable revenue generation.

Specific steps, or stages, in sales processes vary from company to company but generally include the following steps:

1. Sales lead
2. Qualified prospect
3. Need identification
4. Proposal
5. Closing
6. Deal Transaction

From a seller's point of view, a sales process mediates risk by stage-gating deals based on collection of information or execution of procedures that gate movement to the next step. This controls seller resource expenditure on non-performing deals. Ideally this also prevents buyers from purchasing products they don't need though such a benefit requires ethical intentions by the seller. Because of the uncertainty of this assurance, buyers often have a buying or purchasing process.

Sales processes are generally more common for companies that either have large revenue risks that require systematic assurance of revenue generation and/or those that choose to use a more consultative sales approach (e.g. Saturn, IBM, Hewlett-Packard).

Strictly speaking, even an effective ad hoc or retail sales process can be described by steps of an ideal sales process though some of the steps may be executed quickly. Often a bad sales experience can be analyzed and shown to have skipped key steps. This is where a good sales processes mediate risk for both buyer and seller. A solid sales process also has dramatic impact of forecasting accuracy and predictability in revenue results.

Many companies develop their own sales process; however, off the shelf versions are available from companies such as the Improved Performance Group, Huthwaite International and Miller Heiman. These provide a customisable process and a set of electronic tools that can be freestanding or can be integrated if required with the company's CRM or opportunity management system.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A sales lead is the identity of a person or entity potentially interested in purchasing a product of service, and represents the first stage of a sales process. The lead may have a corporation or business associated with the person(s). Sales leads come from either marketing lead generation processes such as trade shows, direct marketing, advertising, Internet marketing or from sales person prospecting activities such as cold calling. For a sales lead to qualify as a sales prospect (or equivalently to move a lead from the process step sales lead to the process sales prospect) qualification must be performed and evaluated. Typically this involves identifying by direct interrogation the lead's product applicability, availability of funding, time frame for purchase. This is also the entry point of a sales tunnel or funnel.

Once a qualified lead exists, additional operations may be performed such as background research on the lead's employer, the generally market of the lead, contact information beyond that provided initially or other information useful for contacting and evaluating a lead for elevation to prospect, the next sales step.

If a sales lead eventually makes a purchase, this is called conversion. The ratio of sales leads that convert is often referred to as the conversion rate, a way to measure the effectiveness of a sales process, sales team, or sales person.

Some companies specialize in providing sales leads to different types of businesses. One of the most reputable is Agathon Solutions. They changed the way leads were generated in late 2004 when they launched their Helios^TM system, an automated online application that connects targeted advertisements to clients at any pace they like. Found here: http://agathonsolutions.com/helios

Cinematic reference: the boiler-room salesmen in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross refer to wanting to get "the good leads" which will close more easily (result in closed sales, i.e. a financial transaction).

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the art of selling, Need identification is one stage in a seven stage personal selling process.

Description

In this stage the salesperson takes a qualified prospect through a series of question and answer sessions in order to identify the requirements of the prospect. During this step, the salesperson will attempt to help the buyer identify and quantify a business need or a "gap" between where the client is today and where they would like to be in the future. Based on that gap, needs can be clarified to determine if the solution will fill all, or part of the overall gap.

From this procedure the saleperson is able to come up with a proposal suggesting various products/services that will suffice the need as presented by the prospect.

Seven Stages

The full Selling Process consists of:

• 1- preapproach
• 2 -approach
• 3 -need identification
• 4 -presentation
• 5 -handling objections
• 6 -closing the sale
• 7 -post-sale follow-up.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about business proposals. For marriage proposals, see betrothal.

• Complex sales
• Request for Proposal
• Invitation for Bids

A business proposal is an offering from a seller to a prospective buyer. Proposals can range in size from a one page letter, or price list, to several hundred pages of detailed specifications. In the business sales process, the written proposal is the vehicle that carries the terms of an agreement between buyer and seller and forms the basis for a subsequent business contract. When a proposed offer is accepted by the buyer, it creates a legally binding document for both parties, buyer and seller.

In complex sales situations, the process of selling can take several weeks, or even months, to complete, with offer and counter offer going back and forth. The proposal provides a formal way for both sides to communicate in writing during these negotiations. Prospective buyers sometimes issue a Request for Proposals (RFP), or an Invitation for Bids (IFB), to guide the sellers and provide specific information about what products or services they want. These specifications become the customer's requirements, and meeting requirements is a major objective in writing a successful proposal.

A properly accomplished proposal will put the buyer's requirements into a context that favors the sellers products and services, educating the prospective client about the full nature of his or her needs and the capabilities of the seller in satisfying those needs. Often, a prospective client may be aware of only a portion of their needs, or they may be unaware of what the market has to offer to meet their needs. A successful proposal is one that results in a sale, where both parties get what they want. This is called a win-win situation.

The basic components of the business proposal are: 1) an orientation to the sellers capabilities or products, 2)a discussion of key issues, 3) a description of the sellers offering and related benefits, 4) the cost of the offering, and 5) a schedule for delivery of the products or services. Of course when responding to an RFP or IFB, the format of the proposal is determined mainly by the buyer, and the seller must respond in kind. Because the proposal becomes part of a contract between the buyer and seller, it must be also considered a legal document and may contain elements of their legal agreement, such as penalties for non-delivery or tardiness.

References

• Association of Proposal Management Professionals
• Baugh, L. Sue; Hamper, Robert J.; (1995). Handbook For Writing Proposals. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-8442-3274-2. 
• Holtz, Herman; (1998). Proven Proposal Strategies To Win More Business. Dearborn Trade, a Kaplan Professional Company. ISBN 1-57410-088-2. 
• Reeds, Kitta; (2002). The Zen of Proposal Writing : An Expert's Stress-Free Path to Winning Proposals. Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0-609-80649-1. 
• Ricci, Laura; (1996). The Magic of Winning Proposals. R³. ISBN 0-9657399-1-0. 
• Riley, Patrick G.; (2002), The One Page Proposal: How to Get Your Business Pitch onto One Persuasive Page (New York: HarperCollins) ISBN 978-0060988609.
• Capture. Deliver. Excel. - Applying the Principles of Business Writing. Ilja van Roon. Retrieved on May 7, 2006.
• The Magic of Winning Proposals. 1Ricci LLC. Retrieved on November 19, 2006.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Closing is a sales term which refers to the process of making a sale. The sales sense springs from real estate, where closing is the final step of a transaction. In sales, it is used more generally to the achieving the desired outcome, which may be an exchange of money or acquiring a signature. Salespeople are often taught to think of targets not as strangers, but rather as prospective customers who already want or need what is being sold. Such prospects need only be "closed."

"Closing" is distinguished from ordinary practices such as explaining a product's benefits or justifying an expense. It is reserved for more artful means of persuasion, which some compare with confidence tricks. For example, a salesman might mention that his product is popular with a person's neighbors, knowing that people tend to follow perceived trends.

The term "closing" was popularized by the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, wherein Alec Baldwin's character preaches the rule of ABC: "Always Be Closing."

In automobile dealerships, a "closer" is often a senior salesman experienced in closing difficult deals.

References

The Free Compendium of Professional Selling. United Professional Sales Association. Retrieved on Jan, 2005.

"Do You Have To Be Aggressive To Be In Sales?"

Closing The Sale

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sales force management systems are information systems used in marketing and management that automate some sales and sales force management functions. They are frequently combined with a marketing information system, in which case they are often called customer relationship management systems.

Sales Force Automation Systems (SFA), typically a part of a company’s customer relationship management system, is a system that automatically records all the stages in a sales process. SFA includes a contact management system which tracks all contact that has been made with a given customer, the purpose of the contact, and any follow up that might be required. This ensures that sales efforts won’t be duplicated eliminating the risk of irritating customers. SFA also includes a sales lead tracking system, which lists potential customers through paid phone lists, or customers of related products. Other elements of a SFA system can include, sales forecasting, order management and product knowledge. More developed SFA systems have features where customers can actually model the product to meet their required needs through online product building systems. This is becoming more and more popular in the automobile industry, where patrons can customize various features such as color and interior features such as leather vs. upholstered seats.

An integral part of any SFA system is company wide integration among different departments. If SFA systems aren’t adopted and properly integrated to all departments, there might be a lack of communication which could result in different departments contacting the same customer for the same purpose. In order to mitigate this risk, SFA must be fully integrated in all departments that deal with customer service management.

Advantages to sales people

Proponents claim that sales force automation systems can improve the productivity of sales personnel. Here are some examples:

• Rather than write-out sales orders, reports, activity reports, and/or call sheets, sales people can fill-in prepared e-forms. This saves time.
• Rather than printing out reports and taking them to the sales manager, sales people can use the company intranet to transmit the information. This saves time.
• Rather than waiting for paper based product inventory data, sales prospect lists, and sales support information, they will have access to the information when they need it. This could be useful in the field when answering prospects’ questions and objections.
• The additional tools could help improve sales staff morale if they reduce the amount of record keeping and/or increase the rate of closing. This could contribute to a virtuous spiral of beneficial and cumulative effects.
• These sales force systems can be used as an effective and efficient training device. They provide sales staff with product information and sales technique training without them having to waste time at seminars.
• Better communication and co-operation between sales personnel facilitates successful team selling.
• More and better qualified sales leads could be automatically generated by the software.
• This technology increases the sales person’s ratio of selling time to non-selling time. Non-selling time includes activities like report writing, travel time, internal meetings, training, and seminars.

Advantages to the sales manager

Sales force automation systems can also affect sales management. Here are some examples:

• The sales manager, rather than gathering all the call sheets from various sales people and tabulating the results, will have the results automatically presented in easy to understand tables, charts, or graphs. This saves time for the manager.
• Activity reports, information requests, orders booked, and other sales information will be sent to the sales manager more frequently, allowing him/her to respond more directly with advice, product in-stock verifications, and price discount authorizations. This gives management more hands-on control of the sales process if they wish to use it.
• The sales manager can configure the system so as to automatically analyze the information using sophisticated statistical techniques, and present the results in a user-friendly way. This gives the sales manager information that is more useful in :
  • Providing current and useful sales support materials to their sales staff
  • Providing marketing research data : demographic, psychographic, behavioural, product acceptance, product problems, detecting trends
  • Providing market research data : industry dynamics, new competitors, new products from competitors, new promotional campaigns from competitors, macro-environmental scanning, detecting trends
  • Co-ordinate with other parts of the firm, particularly marketing, production, and finance
  • Identifying your most profitable customers, and your problem customers
  • Tracking the productivity of their sales force by combining a number of performance measures such as : revenue per sales person, revenue per territory, margin by product category, margin by customer segment, margin by customer, number of calls per day, time spent per contact, revenue per call, cost per call, entertainment cost per call, ratio of orders to calls, revenue as a percentage of sales quota, number of new customers per period, number of lost customers per period, cost of customer acquisition as a percentage of expected lifetime value of customer, percentage of goods returned, number of customer complaints, and number of overdue accounts. More complex models like the PAIRS model (by Parasuraman and Day) and the Call Plan model (by Lodish) can also be used.

Advantages to the marketing manager

It is also claimed to be useful for the marketing manager. It gives the marketing manager information that is useful in :

• Understanding the economic structure of your industry
• Identifying segments within your market
• Identifying your target market
• Identifying your best customers
• Doing marketing research to develop profiles (demographic, psychographic, and behavioral) of your core customers
• Understanding your competitors and their products
• Developing new products
• Establishing environmental scanning mechanisms to detect opportunities and threats
• Understanding your company's strengths and weaknesses
• Auditing your customers' experience of your brand in full
• Developing marketing strategies for each of your products using the marketing mix variables of price, product, distribution, and promotion
• Coordinating the sales function with other parts of the promotional mix (such as advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and publicity)
• Creating a sustainable competitive advantage
• Understanding where you want your brands to be in the future, and providing an empirical basis for writing marketing plans on a regular basis to help you get there
• Providing input into feedback systems to help you monitor and adjust the process

Strategic advantages

Sales force automation systems can also create competitive advantage. Here are some examples:

• As mentioned above, productivity will increase. Sales staff will use their time more efficiently and more effectively. The sales manager will also become more efficient and more effective.(see above) This increased productivity can create a competitive advantage in three ways: it can reduce costs, it can increase sales revenue, and it can increase market share.
• Field sales staff will send their information more frequently. Typically information will be sent to management after every sales call (rather than once a week). This provides management with current information, information that they will be able to use while it is still valuable. Management response time will be greatly reduced. The company will become more alert and more agile.
• These systems could increase customer satisfaction if they are used with wisdom. If the information obtained and analyzed with the system is used to create a product that matches or exceeds customer expectations, and the sales staff use the system to service customers more expertly and diligently, then customers should be satisfied with the company. This will provide a competitive advantage because customer satisfaction leads to increased customer loyalty, reduced customer acquisition costs, reduced price elasticity of demand, and increased profit margins.

Disadvantages

Detractors claim that sales force management systems are:

• difficult to work with
• require additional work inputting data
• dehumanize a process that should be personal
• require continuous maintenance, information updating, and system upgrading
• costly
• difficult to integrate with other management information systems

Encouraging use

For all the reasons stated above many organisations have found it difficult to persuade sales people to enter data into the system. For this reason many have questioned the value of the investment. Recent developments have embedded sales process systems that give something back to the seller within the CRM screens. Because these systems help the sales person plan and structure their selling in the most effective way they give a reason to use the CRM.

See also

• Category:CRM software
• marketing
• management
• sales force management
• information technology management
• customer relationship management [1]
• Predictive analytics

References

• Haag, Stephen; Cummings, Maeve; McCubbrey, Donald J.; Pinsonneault, Alain; Donovan, Richard. (2006). Management Information Systems for the Information Age. Pp50 & 176-177.(Third Canadian Edition). Canada: McGraw-Hill Ryerson. ISBN 0-07-095569-7

Links

• Target SFA
• CRM Vendor Comparison Website
• Demo applet of a software library for automated mobile sales force route planning (VRPTW)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contact managers are programs that enable people to keep track of their associates and tasks. Contact managers are used by salespeople, customer service representatives, and managers.

Contact managers are related to calendars, but integrate email and personal file information (phone numbers and addresses), with task lists and histories of interactions.

There are two types of contact managers: Software that you install on your personal computer or intranet and hosted applications (ASP).

Contact management software

Examples include TeleMagic (Windows), ACT! (Windows), Maximizer (Windows), GoldMine (Windows), Cortege (Windows), Entourage (Mac OS X) Contactizer (Mac OS X) and Contact Manager WebEdition (Evoscape). The market for contact management software has weakened since the late 1990s, when Microsoft integrated basic contact management features into its Outlook email and PIM program. For enterprise users, Microsoft also offers Business Contact Manager for Outlook. Even on the Macintosh platform, Apple began including PIM, calendar, and to-do applications with its operating system in 2002. Many developers of contact managers have consequently gone out of business or been taken over by other companies.

In order to differentiate themselves from Outlook, more fully featured contact managers have moved into the realm of customer relationship management (CRM) software.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lead Management is a term used to describe the methodologies and systems to manage customer prospects and inquiries, generally generated by a variety of marketing techniques. Lead management can be considered the connectivity between advertising and customer relationship management. This critical connectivity facilitates the acquisition of customers, and has also been referred to accurately as customer acquisition management.

Lead management creates an orderly architecture for managing large volumes of customer inquiries, or leads. The architecture must be able to organize numerous leads, at various stages of a sales process, across a distributed sales force. In order to understand this process it is helpful to examine a simplified linear lead flow process, such as the following:

1. Advertising
2. Customer inquiry or response
3. Inquiry captured
4. Inquiry filtered
5. Lead graded and prioritized
6. Lead distribution
7. Sales contact
8. Lead nurturing or retention
9. Sales result

The lead flow process can become enormously complex as customers and sales professionals begin to interact. These various interactions and subsequent actions can create a variety of scenarios, both productive and counter-productive. This exponential number of scenarios can provide for numerous opportunities to mishandle leads in such a way as to reduce their value. Managing these scenarios is the function of lead management.

Lead Generation

Generating a lead, or lead generation can relate to a myriad of marketing technologies and methodologies. However, from an architectural perspective it is simply the ability to attract the interest of a consumer and capture sufficient data to understand the consumer's inquiry and contact that consumer regarding the inquiry.

Here are a couple of simple examples:

1. Mortgage Lead Generation

LendingTree runs TV advertising that touts that "when banks compete, you win" and directs you to visit lendingtree.com. Having watched this advertisement and depressed that you rent an apartment that has your living room, dining room, kitchen, and bedroom all in the same room you flip on your computer and go to their website.

Upon reaching the website, you surf around a bit and read some information about buying a house and going through the mortgage process with LendingTree. This convinces you to give it a shot. You click on the submit an inquiry form and proceed to fill out a web form that includes information about you, such as: name, address, telephone number, and the amount of the home you dream of buying. Having completed the web form--presto, you are a lead.

2. White Paper Lead Generation

You are surfing the Internet and you decide there has to be a good way to make a lot of money on the Internet. So, you go to Google and search for "make money on the Internet." This search reveals an interesting link that says, "10 steps to becoming a millionaire using the Web." Sounds good to you, so you click the link and arrive at a page with a brief sales pitch for making money on the Web and a brief web form asking for you name and email in order to download the sacred PDF white paper with the 10 steps. Once you have filled out the form, submitted, and received your PDF--again, presto, you are a lead.

Lead Acquisition and Distribution

This is arguably one of the most critical functions in the lead management architecture. Its importance is linked to the relevance and responsiveness of the customer experience. A consumer generally uses the Internet and makes Internet inquiries for products and services out of a desire for convenience and efficiency of their time. Consequently, they expect a response and timeliness of the response. If the acquisition and distribution is not effective the consumer will experience neither.

The lead acquisition architecture generally consist of a web form to collect consumer data, a database to either temporarily or persistently storage that collected information for subsequent distribution.

The distribution architecture can vary in complex depending upon the objective of the lead generation. Generation for the purpose of selling the inquiry would typically include a methodology for selecting one or more buyers and then transmitting the lead via a variety of potential means, like: XML, named-value pairs, fax, email, telephone. In the case of leads generated for an organization's own use it may simply consist of a web page to render the contents of the leads database or a simple email action from the Web form itself.

Marketing & Sales Operations

Ultimately the customer of any lead management system or methodology is the marketing and sales operations. It is the connectivity and accountability between those two operational units. It is also the connectivity that enhances the effectiveness of both operations.

The architectural relationship is much akin to the order carousel in a short order diner. This carousel is the communication and accountability between the waiter and the cook. Without this simple coordination orders would be lost, prepared incorrectly, or prepared in random order missing the expectations of the customer.

This analogy is very relevant to the architectural foundation creating efficiency and accountability between marketing and sales activities. If implemented correctly, the lead management system will complete a loop from lead generation, to prioritization, to distribution, to final disposition, and back to re-calibrate lead generation.

For marketing, this portion of the architecture primarily manages the analytics of the lead generation, distribution, and disposition. For sales, the architecture provides the means to receive leads and account for the actions taken on them throughout the sales process.

Communications

Communications is the center piece of the lead management architecture. The communications functions should include the intelligent sourcing of call information for sales professionals to make telephone contact. This is obviously fundamental; however, more subtle, but equally important is the ability to maintain ongoing nurturing communications that cultivate a lead into a future sales. This cultivating architecture typically comes in the form of some type of email campaign architecture.

Analytics

The analytics architecture is probably the most critical piece of an effective lead management system. This portion of the architecture allows for the dynamic review and analysis of lead actions, marketing channels, and sales performance. Information that can assist in the business decisions that improve production and ROI.

Lead Acquisition

The lead acquisition functionality should allow for the simple and efficient acquisition of lead data into the lead management system. The acquisition functions must be able to support a variety of marketing channels and methods of capturing data. Some examples include:

• Electronic Data Transfer

This acquisition function may include the transfer of discrete lead data via technologies like name-value pairs, XML, RSS. These technologies can be used in conjunction with an organization's own website or third party lead provider.

• Batch Imports

This acquisition function may include imports of multiple leads' data via technologies like Microsoft Excel, CSV, or other formatted batch data values. These technologies can be used to acquire leads that have been stored in other systems, assembled from lists, or other volume sources.

• Quick Apply Web Forms

This acquisition function may include Web landing pages or sales interfaces. This technology can be used to acquire discrete lead data via manual input into an application-type form.

Lead Filtering and Assessment

Most lead management systems will have some intelligent methodology for filtering and assessing lead data into useful categorizations. There are a myriad of ways to accomplish this process and some of them may be specific to industries. The following is a suggested list of possible functions:

• Data verification (i.e., telephone numbers, zip codes, address scrubbing)
• Fraud screening
• Data appending (e.g., appending third-party data such as credit, preferences, purchase history)
• Grading
• Prioritization

References

• Lead Generation for the Complex Sale (ISBN 0-07-145897-2)

External links

• icoSales Lead Management
• Leads360 LeadManager
• AdTrack's Customer Acquisition Management
• B2B Lead Generation Blog
• Lead Management Newsline
• VinSolutions Automotive Dealership Internet Lead Management
• LeadsOnRails Lead Management System