Align Your Team With The Sales Process Designer

Sales processes get messy when different people start doing different things from deal to deal. 

This can happen to sales teams with the best of intentions, and it often comes up because of a lack of clarity about what actually needs to happen at every stage of the sales process. 

This information usually exists across a bunch of different docs, buried in a sales playbook, or - even worse - in someone's head. 

We created the Sales Process Designer to give sales teams a single, simple source of truth to refer to. It's an easy way to visualize your deal stages, the meetings that have to happen at each stage, and the exit criteria to move deals from stage to stage.

Here's what it looks like:

You can grab the Sales Process Designer template here.

Read on to learn how to set it up the right way for you and your team!

Define Your Deal Stages 

Getting clarity around your sales process starts with clearly defining your deal stages. The Sales Process Designer is an easy way to get your stages in one neat, focused visual - just outline what stages you use to sell. 

Some companies have simple sales motions and only need one or two deal stages. Others have much more complex processes that require many stages and many actions. Wherever you fall in the spectrum, the basic structure of the Sales Process designer stays the same - you just need to clearly define how many stages you have and what they are.

Mapping out your sales process like this is important because it'll help everyone on your team understand the journey your potential customers follow along the way to buying from you. 

Define What Goes Into Each Deal Stage

Once you've defined what your stages are, it's time to outline the specific meetings that have to happen in each stage and who's involved in each. 

Identifying what goes into each deal stage is essential for streamlining your sales process and ensuring that all team members are aligned on what's supposed to happen at every stage of the sale. 

Different companies may have a similar number of deal stages but very different types and numbers of meetings along the way. Your version of the Sales Process Designer will be unique to your company. Just make sure that you're noting every meeting that has to happen at each stage. If you find that extra meetings are needed, or that meetings are being skipped - fix that!

You need to set clear expectations and goals for your team members. Everyone needs to work towards the same objectives and follow a standardized sales process. 

Define your deal stage exit criteria

Now that you've outlined your deal stages and the meetings that go into each stage, it's time to clearly define the specific exit criteria that you need to move a deal from one stage to the next. 

This is an easy area for teams to slip up. If you don't have specific, objective rules for your exit criteria - and if you're not disciplined - your reps might be managing your deals very differently. This can be hugely problematic when you're trying to keep things organized and transparent. 

The good news is that it's a pretty simple fix. All you need to do is list the criteria you need to move a deal along to the next stage. With the Sales Process Designer, we include exit criteria so that anyone looking at the visual can see exactly what needs to happen before the deal can move on. 

This needs to be black and white. There's no grey area here - your exit criteria need to be simple, straightforward, and objective. No room for anything in between!

Sales Process Optimization

When it comes to optimizing your sales process, we have other tools that are more directly data-oriented, like the Sales Metrics Analyzer. 

The Sales Process Designer is still a great tool to use to get a sense of where your deals might be stalling (or where they flow easily). 

Also, this might be a good chance to "optimize" the clarity of your process. Once you have your version of the Sales Process Designer done, where will you keep the one page visual? How and when will you show it to your team? 

Sales Process Examples

As mentioned, different sales processes will yield different Sales Process Designers. SMB, Mid Market, and Enterprise sales will all look different with the Sales Process Designer - here are a few examples:

SMB Sales Process Designers will usually be relatively simple. 

Mid Market Sales Process Designers are a little more complex as sales cycles lengthen and more conversations are needed. 

Enterprise Sales Process Designers are another step up beyond that. If you're selling to committees of decision makers, multiple stakeholders, and other added complexities, you're probably doing quite a bit. But, the same structure will help you keep things neat and organized, in order to keep your team aligned. 

Build Your Sales Process Designer

Ready to get started? Grab the Sales Process Designer template here and get started with your Sales Process Designer right now!

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