If every person on your team had a different approach to selling your company’s products and services, replicating success and scaling your company will be difficult.   It would also be difficult for you to identify the “repeatable sales process” you utilize when you successfully close business.

All members of your sales and recruiting team should follow a proven, predictable sales process with allowances for individual personalities and selling styles.  This will make it is easier to close more business and consistently attain higher levels of production and success.  Should contact leads six to ten times in the first nine weeks to establish name recognition.

The reasons franchises are successful is that they have a repeatable process and system for every function.  If someone is not at work, anyone on the team should be able to sit down and without much effort – work their desk.  To accomplish this, information must be entered in to your system vs. being maintained in your head and you must all follow the exact same process.

Before you can establish a repeatable sales process complete these four fundamentals:

FUNDAMENTAL #1 – Identify your best business

Review your most profitable clients over the past two years to identify your best business by determining the following: 

• Size of the company/entity

• Geographic location

• Industry

• Buyer demographics: title, age, gender, educational level

• Products and services purchased

• Common denominators

• Price and profits

• Accounts receivable aging

This business represents the business that is filled, it is what you do, it does not represent purple squirrels or mission impossible.  Once you identify your best business you want 85% of your marketing efforts to target that exact business.  This enables your recruiting team to focus 85% of their recruiting efforts at that best business which allows them to pipeline talent in advance of needs.

This type of focus will enable you to fill a much higher percentage of business that is written and provide your clients with improved results, which will generate more business and leads.

FUNDAMENTAL #2 – Identify additional ideal clients

Once you have identified your ideal clients, you must consistently identify more client leads with a similar profile.  Your next great client should mirror your current great clients.  This can be achieved by the following:

• Develop a client referral program for existing clients, goal 50%

• Define sources for gathering leads needed each month to exceed sales goals

Leads generated through marketing efforts

Networking - personal and professional

Leads provided by your recruiting team

Leads and inside information provided by candidates interviewed

Hot companies – identified by interviewed candidates

Social media

Websites

Trade shows

FUNDAMENTAL #3 – Identify provable benefits

Ideal clients must be shown provable benefits and results provided to past and current clients.

• Obtain and share testimonials

o Website

o Under email signature line

o Marketing materials

• Recommendations on your LinkedIn profile

• Document client results

• Compile case studies to prove benefits delivered

FUNDAMENTAL #4 – Know your stats and individual ratios

Sales is a numbers profession and numbers take the emotion out of developing an effective repeatable sales process.   Document the sales process you have in place today and track results-oriented activity.

• How many contacts result in a verbal presentation?

• How many contacts result in a meeting?

• How many presentations or meetings result in an order, contract or assignment?

• What is your closing ratio?

What you don’t measure; doesn’t count.   To consistently improve your performance, document everything as you:

• Test one strategy against another 

• Test the results of one script against another  

• Test one approach against another

• Test the use of one provable benefit you mentioned on our call versus another

• Identify triggers that result in sales

With these fundamentals and test results in hand, you can now create your sales playbook, a proven step-by-step process you can implement to most efficiently locate, qualify and ultimately sell the value of what you provide in a systematic way with a predictable outcome.

Seven tips to break out of the pack:

Send written expectations to prospects and clients

• What you can expect from me

• What I need from you to attract the talent you will hire and retain

Start out the conversation with “Has anything changed since the last time we talked?”

Ask for a specific target date to fill the position

Share testimonials

Learn to effectively overcome all objections

Advance your relationship from vendor, trusted advisor, consultant and friend

Don’t only talk to your clients when you are making money from them

Implement these fundamentals and tips and you will develop a repeatable process that lands the clients that will help you achieve your sales and profit goals.