7 Fatal Errors Local Businesses Make – Part 5 – Lack of a Sales Process
All the lead generation tactics in the world will not do any good unless you have a clear sales process in place. A sales process is the first part of your customer’s journey and indoctrination into your business – so you MUST make it count. 
It all starts with how inbound leads are handled. You would be amazed at the number of businesses we work with that do not have a clear inbound lead process in place. They randomly answer the phone when it rings (or in some cases, they let it go to voicemail) with no clear method to convert inbound calls into a sales process.
A clearly defined sales process should:
- Clearly identify qualified prospects
- Define needs of prospects
- Find solution to needs
- Propose solution to prospect
- Close prospect or put into long-term nurturing campaign.
Obviously, there are more elaborate sales processes – the point is – at least have a process!
Your business should have some type of a CRM that has your sales process clearly defined (i.e. sales pipeline). You should be able to easily look at how many people are in (and what stage) they are in the sales process.
Having a sales process in place brings clarity to your business- which brings clarity to the consumer and makes your business much more attractive to your best prospects.
. I have an intense passion for helping businesses improve how they market, sell and fulfill their products and services. My goal with every business I work with is to build predictable revenue each month so that they can focus on what they do best = serve their customers!