Introduction

For many companies, the sales process can seem like a black hole: what actually happens there? What do salespeople spend time on? What do they do for each customer? It's a complex system of steps and tasks, and at worst, each salesperson has their own methodology and steps they follow. This makes it even more difficult to get an overview. 

But why do you even need an overview? Why can't every salesperson do what they want as long as they get things sold? Well, because there is a lot of optimization potential in a sales process that is lost as long as you don't know what is actually going on. 

To take an example, we at FunnelBud decided to really examine our own sales process. Fortunately, we already have a system of steps that we follow for each customer, but just what those steps were, how much time we spend on them, and whether they could be done any other way was less clear.

So we made a list first where we wrote down all the steps and then ranked them from most time-consuming to least.

The steps in FunnelBud's sales process

1. Demos - This is by far the most time consuming for our sales people. It is not only about the meeting itself, but also about the preparation, reading about the customer's needs and adapting our presentation for each customer based on our pre-research and their needs. 

2. Pre-research - When a potential customer contacts us, we always start by doing research to understand who they are, what industry they work in and whether our solution would be a good fit for them. After the demo meeting, this is what takes up most of our salespeople's time.

3. Understanding the customer's needs (e.g. initial conversations before demo) - Once we know who they are based on technical data, we have a conversation to better understand what they want to do and what their needs are. Everything is noted and saved so we can come back to it at a later date if needed.

These conversations are usually fairly short, but it takes time to write it down and in our notes we make a summary based on our pre-research, their needs and our system that we sell. It is after this step that we know if our system would suit them or not.

4. Create quotes and summarize after meetings/demos - After a demo meeting, we send out a summary of what we talked about, the recording and a quote. The vast majority of our quotes are standardized and do not require customization, which saves time.

5. Follow-up - Once the quote is sent, we follow up regularly to see if they have any further questions or concerns. The email is usually a simple one, but it still requires us to read up before sending to make sure we are meeting them where they are based on our last meeting.

6. convince - Sometimes potential customers are more uncertain if FunnelBud is actually the right solution for them. This requires us to really continue to understand their needs so that we can answer their questions and address their concerns (if we already know that our system would not suit them, we have already mentioned it after the first contact).

7. Research on customized solutions - In exceptional cases, prospects ask for special solutions or if X and Y can be done in our system. This requires research and testing to make sure that we can actually offer it. The process is very time-consuming, but it's relatively rare that someone wants a special solution. 

8. Support during the trial period - If the company starts a free trial period, it sometimes happens that they have many questions after testing the system. It's important to be there and maybe do some additional research. We leave this step to the sales team, not support, because most questions are about whether the system would suit them, not technical issues.

9. Answer repetitive questions - These are questions that are obvious to us but not to potential customers. The vast majority of these questions are covered in the demo meeting and initial conversations, but sometimes they continue even after that.

Insights after we listed the steps and what we determined

The biggest surprise after we listed our sales process was how many steps it actually involved for each customer. It is easy to become speed blind when you have been working as a salesperson for a while and you don't actually see how much you do for each new prospect. 

The first thing we did after that realization was to ensure that each step was truly relevant and important to the sales process. We came to the conclusion that they really are because the sales process is about so much more than just selling. Selling a product or service in the B2B world is very much about building relationships, gaining trust and truly understanding the customer's needs. This makes each step an important part of the final sales process.

The next step after that was to see if we could streamline the steps without compromising quality. For example, we don't want to send out pre-written and fully automated follow-up emails because it's important that the customer feels that we are really there and refer to real questions or concerns they had.

However, we realized that the demo meetings, which are the ones that take the most time, could be streamlined. A demo meeting is partly about showing our system and partly about answering their questions. If we can show the system with a pre-recorded demo that they can access directly on the website, it can both save time for our salespeople and shorten the later meeting where we answer questions. 

Conclusion

So we decided to test just that. Our website visitors and potential customers will have access to a pre-recorded demo and if they still have questions after that, they will have the opportunity to book a meeting afterwards.

We hope that this will both improve the experience for our potential customers by giving them access to information directly on the website, and help our sales people save time so they can help more potential customers.