Sales Workflow: 4 Tips for Creating an Effective Sales Process

Do your sales representatives struggle to turn prospects into customers for your business? If so, you may need to rework your sales workflow to help your sales reps earn more sales for your company. On this page, we’ll discuss the definition of a sales workflow, the necessary steps in your sales process, and four tips for creating a successful sales workflow for your team.

If you want to learn more about how you can better manage your sales workflow, contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist.

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What is the sales workflow?

Sales workflow is the set of steps your sales team takes to turn prospects into customers. These repeatable steps, also known as the sales process or sales funnel, help your sales team boost conversions and close more deals.

An efficient sales process works to inform, interest, and sell your products and services to your target audience. Your sales workflow paves the way for your sales reps to obtain prospects, nurture them, and turn them into customers.

This process makes your team more efficient and effective at driving conversions. A good sales workflow will compliment all aspects of your company, including your:

• Business
• Sales team
• Prospects/Customers
• Products/Services

Mainly, this process should work for both your business and your customers. It should make it easy for sales reps to sell and prospects to buy.

Elements of a good sales workflow

A successful workflow contains five core elements that help companies succeed:

• Customer-focused: If you want to experience success with your sales process, you must focus on your customers. Since your customers keep your business running, you should create a strategy that focuses on them and how your product/service works for them.
• Defined: A good sales workflow has a defined outline of steps. Your sales reps should look at this process each time and know what to do when a prospect is on the line.
• Replicable: Your sales team handles multiple prospects at a time. The sales workflow should be easily repeatable for each candidate. Your sales process shouldn’t only apply to one type of prospect or a specific customer.
• Adaptable: A proficient sales process can easily change. With an efficient sales process, your company quickly adapt your strategy as your business or prospects change. If you have a workable sales process, you can easily improve your plan to drive better results.
• Measurable: You’ll only know the success of your campaign if you can measure the results. A good sales workflow has measurable metrics that you can use to determine your strategy’s success.

If you want to have a successful sales strategy, you must include these five core elements. These elements ensure that you’re building a successful sales workflow for your sales team.

5 crucial steps for a successful sales workflow

Each company will have its own sales workflow that works best for their sales team and customers. When you’re creating the sales workflow that works best for your company, include these five crucial steps in your workflow.

These five steps help you build a strategy for success. Let’s look at these five steps:

1. Researching

Before you start finding credible leads for your business, do your research first. You must understand your competitors and your market before you go out and tackle new leads. You must know who’s competing for your prospects’ attention.

Look at companies that offer similar products or services like yours an determine what they offer that entices prospects to want their products. When you know what your competition offers, you can create a strategy that highlights how you stand out from your competitors. By including research on your market and competition, you’ll develop a more effective sales workflow for your sales team.

2. Prospecting

Prospecting is another crucial component of a successful sales process. When you prospect, you look for new leads that may be interested in your products or services. It involves researching different leads online to see if they would be potential customers.

If you want to have a successful sales workflow, you must integrate B2C or B2B prospecting as one of the steps. You want your sales team to spend time weeding out bad candidates and focusing on prospects most likely to convert. By integrating prospecting into your workflow, you’ll help your sales team focus on the most valuable leads for your company.

They’ll know what to look for in prospects and be able to find candidates more efficiently in the future.

3. Connecting

A big part of making sales is connecting with your audience. Prospects don’t want to feel like just another sale to your business — they want to feel valued and heard. When you make time to connect in your sales flow, you take the time to get to know your prospects and understand them.

Connecting comes in the early stages of the sales process. Your sales reps gather more information about your prospects to determine if your products or services fit the prospect’s needs. It’s an opportunity for your team to determine if a lead is likely to move forward.

In learning about a prospect, your sales rep may find that a lead is unlikely to convert, even though he/she looked viable on paper. The connection stage is crucial to the sales and marketing process. It’s your business’s opportunity to get to know your prospects and understand how you can market better to them.

Your sales team will provide a more tailored and personal experience for these leads to turn them into conversions.

4. Pitching

Pitching comes later in the sales workflow. When your sales team has more information about prospects, they can start to market the right products or services to them. As prospects become more interested in these products or services, you’ll move to the pitching stage.

The pitching stage involves giving a formal presentation, demonstration, or detailed account of your product or service. This stage focuses on giving serious prospects the nudge towards becoming customers. This stage is crucial to the sales workflow because it helps you nudge prospects towards converting.

It’s a prime opportunity for you to show what your company can do for your prospects and how it will benefit them.

5. Closing

Closing is the last crucial part of a successful sales and marketing process. It’s the last step before leads convert. At the closing process, you make your final offer on what your company can do for the client.

At this point, many companies will offer:

• Quotes or Estimates
• Proposals
• Special offers

It’s your company’s last effort to get leads to pull the trigger and convert. It’s crucial to the sales workflow because it helps you earn conversions. Your closing process will help you turn leads into customers for your company.

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4 tips for creating a sales workflow that works

If you want to create the most effective sales workflow for your team, check out these four tips to help you drive better results.

1. Analyze your current sales process

Before you start implementing changes to create a better sales process, analyze your ongoing sales process. Talk to your sales reps and ask them what works and what doesn’t. Your sales team knows your customers best, and they’ll be able to provide you with insight into what encourages them to convert.

By analyzing your current strategy, you’ll know what works and doesn’t work for your audience. It allows you to properly revamp your strategy by keeping tactics that work and reworking ones that don’t.

2. Research your target audience

Your prospects lie at the core of your sales workflow. You must make them an integral part of your process if you want to create a strategy that works for your audience. By researching your target audience, you’ll create a more effective strategy.

When you research your audience, understand their pain points and motivations. You want to understand the problems they have and what drives them to convert. These two aspects help you develop a strategy that focuses on solving your prospects’ issues while motivating them to choose your company.

It’s also crucial that you understand how your audience moves through the sales funnel. What gets them to move to the next step? Whether it’s ebooks or free trials, you’ll want to understand what gets your audience to engage and stay interested in your business.

When you understand your buyers better, you create a better sales workflow for your team. They’ll understand how to cater to your audience and deliver the right information at the right time.

3. Determine the value of your product or service

Your products or services have value. If you want to convince leads to buy them, you must establish how these products or services help the client. Don’t focus on why you have the best product or offer the best services.

Your audience wants to know how you will help them. How does buying this product or using this service improve their lives or solve a problem? Your focus is on your prospects.

Focus on what they get out of it and what it does for them. You can throw in some tidbits about your company, but overall, the focus is on your audience. For example, let’s say you’re selling a vacuum.

Many companies would try to sell the product by saying:

“We have the best vacuum. Our customers love our vacuums and talk about how great they work. We’ve been in business for 40 years, so you can trust that we put out great products…”

This type of selling doesn’t focus on the customer.

It’s focused on the business and how great the company operates. Instead, it would be better to sell the product by saying:

“Our latest vacuum model is cordless, which makes it easy for you to vacuum your home wherever you need to go. It’s lightweight, so you can easily carry it upstairs.

Our brush technology easily picks up pet hair, so it works great in homes with pets…”

In this type of selling, the seller hits multiple essential points for the customer: It’s cordless, lightweight, and picks up pet hair easily. These features highlight the value of the product for the consumer. For someone tired of corded vacuums, this selling point tells them that they offer a cordless vacuum that’s easy to use.

If someone wants a lighter vacuum, the seller emphasizes how it’s easy to carry upstairs and into different rooms. For pet lovers, they see a vacuum that solves the issue of cleaning up pet hair. When you know the value of your product, you can highlight that value to your consumers.

It’s an integral part of the sales workflow for keeping leads interested in your business.

4. Provide the right tools and resources for your team

Your sales team works hard to turn prospects into customers. There’s a lot involved in the sales process, so it’s easy for your team to get bogged down with small tasks. By providing your team with the right tools and resources, you’ll help them focus more on building relationships with customers.

You can use sales workflow management software to help make the selling process easier for your team. Tools like MarketingCloudFX help your sales team manage day-to-day tasks so they can spend more time with your clients. MarketingCloudFX helps your sales team manage your leads, deliver content at the right time, and track phone calls as they come into your business.

It makes time-consuming tasks more manageable for your team to manage. Sales flow automation tools will help your sales team work more efficiently. When you provide your sales team with the right tools, they spend more time getting prospects to turn into customers for your business.

Start creating a better sales workflow for your team today

Your sales workflow determines your business’s success.

If you have an effective sales process in place, you’ll guide prospects towards conversion. At WebFX, we have over a decade of experience helping companies improve their workflow. With a team of over 500 experts, you can count on us to help you create a more effective sales workflow.

Our tools, like MarketingCloudFX, boost your sales team’s performance and spend more time engaging with clients. If you want to learn more about how MarketingCloudFX will improve your sales workflow, contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a skilled strategist about our software.