Did you know that by performing one simple exercise, you can surge your sales number dramatically within one month? Having an overview and solid understanding of your business’s sales process can have an influential impact on your short-term financial goals.

1.Importance of knowing your sales process.

If you fully understand your sales process, you are able to pinpoint the weaknesses, strengths and occurring bottlenecks enabling you to streamline procedures effectively. When you have this knowledge and in depth insight into your business, you can utilize it to your advantage and improve upon it.

2.What’s the plan from there?

Take a piece of paper, on the left-hand side write down where your leads come from? Leads are your traffic; where did they originate? Where do you advertise; Facebook link, Instagram, magazines, newspapers, billboards, radio or possibly word-of-mouth? Referring to word-of-mouth, investigate and write down how customers came to know your business. Formulate a list on the far left hand side of your page.

Divide the rest of the page by drawing a line down the center. On the right hand side, scribe your plan that will act upon this information. It’s time to think about what is the next step the customer will take if they are interested in what you do? This is simple, they will call you!

In an online scenario, your advert sends customers to your website. It’s important that they are directed to a landing page and not your website’s homepage. Your landing page is used to introduce newbies to your business and to be straight forward about what you offer and how you can help them solve their problem. Now you’re waiting for customers to call you. Do exactly that, wait until they do call. 

When they make contact with you, follow the next step and that is to converse with them. Think about what that conversation will be about, who’s answering and what kind of information is being given? Make sure you have charted this before hand.

What is next once you’ve had that conversation? Is that information captured, where does it go, does it go into a CRM, does it go into someone's email, or is it written on paper and passed on to someone else?  Do you have a salesperson you can send this information to? How does it get to them? If it goes to them, what do they do with the information? 

Document every step until you get a ‘yes or no’ answer on your sale. Record this information onto this page you’re using. Work from the left hand side to the right hand side of the page. The right hand side of the page concludes with a yes or a no answer from the customer. If it’s a yes, there’s a funnel that runs off to encourage them to buy more. The same applies when the answer is ‘no.’ Motivate these people in becoming possible customers in the near future.

Remember to never skip a step, follow through with your plan!

3.What happens afterwards?

Having documented your sale process in meticulous detail, it makes it easier to notice mistakes and gaps in the structure.This makes it possible for you to render these points, immediately having a positive impact on your sales growth. Once that's done, start optimizing, make your sales cycle efficient, effective and possibly look at automating more jobs enabling you to work on your business.