Mapping The Sales Process: 7

Steps For Success

"We are looking at ways to keep our business operating during this difficult time, and
the safety and well-being of our staff and customers is paramount.
On arrival we would like you to remain in your car, we will come out to see you, at a
safe distance we get all the information we need.
Once we are ready to work on your car, we will guild you in to the workshop, if possible
we like you to remain in your car until work has been completed.
Once work has been completed, we will bring the payment card machine to you, and
take payment as if we were doing a phone transaction, and email you a copy of the
receipt.
If we do need to dive your vehicle into the workshop, we will use hand wipes to clean
steering wheel, gear lever and handbrake, and we will be wearing rubber gloves.

Process steps

Take payment

Count cash received

Write receipt (receipt cash received)

Mapping The Sales Process: 7

Steps For Success
March 31, 2020|Xant Team|Best Practices, Sales Process
Doing sales process mapping can be fast and easy with these seven sales
process steps. Keep reading to find out more.
RELATED: 7 Most Common Mistakes In Sales Process Mapping And
How To Avoid Them
In this article:
1. A Business Needs to Have a Sales Process Map
2. What Is a Sales Process?

3. Sales Process vs Sales Methodology

4. Types of Sales Methodology

5. Seven Steps for Sales Process Mapping

 6. Other Tips for Mapping Your Sales Process

Sales Process Mapping | Carve Your Path to Sales

Success with These 7 Steps
A Business Needs to Have a Sales Process Map
I performed sales process mapping for years. In fact, I helped map the sales
process for over 200 clients in my time.
I know you’re going to hate me for this, but there’s one thing I learned
throughout this experience: you can’t escape doing sales mapping. You need
to map your sales process.
In all the consulting I did, I had only three companies show me a detailed
sales process map. Yes, just three out of hundreds.
It’s actually shocking to know most companies don’t have or have yet to
develop sales process steps for mapping and other crucial revenue-
generating activities.
Most sales leaders don’t realize their sales system is actually a collection of
multiple processes. Some may even have just a simplistic view about it.
These executives may think it’s as straightforward as making a
product, marketing it, and then selling it to different market segments.
Sales process mapping is one of the most effective visualization tools sales
executives can use to see both the big picture and the intricacies of each
step. It helps you understand the real flow of their sales process in a
structured manner.
Through this, leaders can then identify gaps and other challenges in their
sales performance. Sales territory mapping can also help organizations
establish their sales methodology and improve sales process steps.
A sales mapping tool can help companies find a solution that drives
improved results.

What Is a Sales Process?

Before we get into mapping the sales process steps, let’s first determine
what it is exactly.
Sales process basically refers to the steps sales professionals follow from
prospecting to closing a deal with a customer. By establishing a structured
sales process to follow, turning a prospect into a closed client becomes
easier to do for salespeople.
Throughout the buying process for a product or service, sales reps make
decisions by following the system established through mapping proper sales
work.
There are five steps in the sales process:
1. Prospecting – Lead generation happens in this step when sales
teams look for possible customers to help work through the sales
process. Sourcing may happen through online searches, attending
events, or networking at conferences.
2. Connecting – Sales reps then go through the prospect list gathered
and makes initial connections to these people. The decision to
continue with the sales process steps for every potential client
happens here.

3. Researching – Once the company’s product or service is

established as relevant to the potential customer’s needs, the sales
rep begins researching to create a more tailored sales experience
for the client.

4. Presenting – Presentations should be given to more serious

prospects, as a result of research done on the customer’s needs.
Sales teams should refrain from presenting to a new customer since
that may end up as a waste of time for both parties.

5. Closing – Any activities contributing to the closing of a deal falls in

this step. This step is concluded with signed contracts or payments
made and is mutually beneficial to both the sales organization and
the customer.

Sales Process vs Sales Methodology

It’s also important to differentiate the sales process and sales methodology
before mapping out your sales system.
While concrete and specific steps geared towards closing a deal make up the
sales process, sales methodology refers to the general framework to be
followed for how the processes should be laid out.
How your team proceeds with their work depend on the sales methodology
your company employs to reach your overall sales goals. It guides the
decision-making process of the sales team from the sales manager down to
the sales reps.

Types of Sales Methodology

Companies employ these sales methodologies to streamline every buyer’s
journey according to the processes established.
1. Challenger Sales Methodology – Sales reps figure out the
challenges a prospective customer faces and offer tools or services
to solve these issues.
2. Consultative Selling – The sales rep builds trust with the client
over time, which may result in possible repeat business with
existing buyers.

3. Sandler Sales Methodology – Both the sales rep and a

prospective customer invest an equal amount of time in the process
so issues are raised and resolved early.

4. Solution Selling – As the name suggests, this methodology

focuses on the solution the product can offer to the client’s problem
or needs, instead of the product itself.

5. Inbound Selling – This method attracts a potential customer by

tailoring marketing materials with relevant content instead of
random creative adverts.

Seven Steps for Sales Process Mapping

Is sales mapping difficult? In reality, it’s not, but often for sales leaders, this
concept proves to be a tough exercise.
When it comes to mapping out your sales process, there are seven basic
steps:

1. Understand the Process Stages That Make Up Your Sales

Organization
 Creating a sales process map to refine the sales process

Sales organizations are becoming a complex system of different functions.

Gone are the days when a single sales rep does all the prospecting, closing,
and managing of accounts.
The new model of selling focuses on specialization. Team members perform
a specific functional role, which they manage individually.
XANT data shows companies that effectively specialize experience a 7%
higher close rate than companies that do not. Specialization is the new
model of sales, and it’s time to embrace it.
Here are a few examples of sales structures with companies we’ve worked
with:
One company has a marketing department that generates leads. It then
sends those leads to a team of lead development reps.
Those lead development reps qualify leads. They send them to either an
inside sales team or an outside sales team this company calls “business
development.”
Now, the business development or sales team does a lot of their own
prospecting by utilizing third-party lists.
There’s another step before closing a deal. It involves several teams,
including the:
 Underwriting team
 Legal team

 Customer Management or Customer Service team

The Five Questions to Ask About the Stages of Your Business

As you begin to understand the stages of your business, make sure you
answer the following five questions:
 Stages — What functional roles does my company have in its sales
structure?
 Goal — What are the primary goals of this role?

 Manager — Who manages or leads this team?

 Location — Where are these functional roles located?

 Reps — What is the total number of reps in each team or function?

Once you understand the different functional areas, you need to determine
how you’re going to create a current state process map.

2. Define a Structure for Sales Mapping

People get lost in what software they should use to create a process map.
Some popular sales mapping tools include:
 Pencil and paper
  Microsoft PowerPoint

 Lucid Charts (free)

 Other free or paid programs

When it comes to the shapes, there is a whole list of choices to use in

process mapping exercises. If you’re a salesperson like the rest of us, you
want to do it quick and simple.
For this reason, I recommend you start with these basic shapes:
 Rectangle: Action
 Diamond: Decision

 Rounded Rectangle: Start/stop

 Arrow: Connection

 Small empty boxes to make notes or highlight a number

associated with a process: Note or number

Of course, you’re free to designate these shapes to other types of processes.

What’s important is they’re easy to understand and follow.
Once you’ve determined the appropriate shapes for your process map, you
need a structure to start inserting your shapes into.
We’ve tested multiple approaches, but the one that stuck breaks down the
sales process into three key areas:
 Lead/List Acquisition — Where you get things
 Contacting Cadence — What you do

 Qualification and Close — How you finish

3. Map the Current State Process

It’s now time to begin mapping the current state process.
In this step, you need to gather the necessary information, which can be
done through a series of questions.
It can be through individual stakeholder interviews. It’s important to target
the key individuals who represent the different functional areas in your
business.
These questions don’t need to be long or complex. It can be as simple as
asking them their daily step-by-step sales process.
Here are a few examples of roles and questions you can ask:
Demand Generation: 
 How many different lead sources do you have, and what are they?
 Are you appending or enriching leads and lists as they come through
your system?

 How do you route or assign leads from different lead sources?

Sales Development:
 How do you structure your sales development team? Do you have a
response team, outbound team, vertical, product, etc.?
 How does a rep prioritize leads?

 What is the contacting strategy for sales development reps?

 Here is our numbers question: how many activities does the

average rep do per person per day?

Sales:
 How does the sales team generate new business?
 Once the sales team owns the prospect, what is their strategy and
process to close the deal?

 What are the opportunity stages sales reps follow to close deals?

 Here is our numbers question: What is the average sales cycle?

Customer Success:
 How does the sales team generate new business?
 Once the sales team owns the prospect, what is their strategy and
process to close the deal?

 What are the opportunity stages sales reps follow to close deals?

 Here is our numbers question: What is the average retention

percentage per rep?

When you ask these questions, you should be able to complete the
necessary information to map out a step-by-step process map.
You may feel these are a lot of questions. Let me give you a visualization
then. Here is an example of a sales process workflow chart from Lucid.
RELATED: 4 Simple Questions That Will Transform Your Sales
Process
4. Review the Current State for Strengths and Opportunities

Reviewing a sales process map for accuracy

Once your process map is complete, you can review it for strengths. You can
also identify areas of opportunity.
From these, you can begin making a plan for a future state.
What are the different sales and opportunities? Here is an example you can
identify in a sales development organization:
 Strengths: use of marketing automation, lead statuses structure in
place, submit opportunity function added to Salesforce
 Opportunities: batch time should be under five minutes or
immediate, auto-routing leads with the CRM, response time needs
to be under one hour

5. Create a Future State Process Map

Remember, earlier, I mentioned it’s essential companies have a sales map?
Let me explain why you need to have this ability.
Once you identify strengths and opportunities in your current process, you
can recreate your process in a future state. You can then identify
opportunities and represent them in an ideal form.
Here is an example future state process map:
 Work to get our batch time down to five minutes.
 Build routing within our CRM.

 Push to get a one-hour response time.

 Structure a follow-up strategy to include three calls, three

voicemails, and three emails.

6. Implement a Governance Structure to Periodically Manage

and Improve Your Sales Process
The first five steps should do more than acquaint you with sales mapping.
They must let you make one now.
The job is not over, though. One important step is periodic management.
Once your sales process map is complete, make a periodic follow-up. This
follow-up should review the process.
It will let you see if some parts of the process already broke down. In other
words, they are no longer working.
With a strong governance structure for a sales acceleration project in place,
this is not difficult. If that does not exist, you’ll need to create some form of
a governance structure.
A steering committee of sales leaders and sales operations personnel should
review the sales process every quarter. They can determine the types of
decay and delays present.
Sales operations should own the sales process. They can function as the
operations committee.
Sales leadership, meanwhile, should guide the strategy on the steering
committee.
Do you want to know the other benefit of sales mapping? This process is
similar to creating a product roadmap.

7. Apply the Improved Sales Process Map

Once you’ve finished all the steps listed above, it’s time to apply the changes
and see how it works for your organization. Since there’s a new set of
metrics in place, the entire sales team needs to be re-trained.
Although you might not end up perfecting your sales process after doing
sales process mapping, it doesn’t mean you should hesitate and not apply
the changes.
If you don’t set this new process in place, then you wouldn’t know which
areas to dial down on and which areas to improve.

Other Tips for Mapping Your Sales Process

1. Use the Customer Journey as Reference

When mapping out the steps during sales mapping, it’s best that you use the
customer journey map as a reference. In that way, your sales team is
aligned with whatever it is that prospects need during the sales cycle.
Each of your prospects might have differing needs for each step of the way
so you should consider that when mapping out your sales process.

2. Include Everyone Involved in the Sales Process

Ask yourself this question: during your entire sales cycle, from sales
prospecting to customer retention efforts, is your sales team the only
department involved within the organisation?
Of course not, right? This is why should include other stakeholders in sales
mapping.
To create a truly accurate sales mapping reference, make sure that you’re in
tune with all of the people you involved in the sales process.

3. Make Sure the Steps Aren’t Too Specific nor Too Vague
When crafting the steps for your sales mapping experience, make sure that
you don’t focus too much on the smallest details of the sales process. To be
able to get good insights from your sales mapping efforts, you should be
able to look at the big picture instead of getting lost in the details.
Also, don’t make the steps too ambiguous either. Otherwise, no one would
be able to understand exactly what to do at a specific step of the map.

4. Map Your Sales Process and Not the Other Way Around
Instead of trying to accommodate your sales process into a specific type of
map, you shouldn’t water down your sales process just because you think
it’s too long or too short. Be accurate in your assessments.
Your sales mapping efforts are so you can see things as objectively as
possible. Tweaking your sales map to fit the process you want won’t really
help.

5. Use a Sales Mapping Tool to Be More Efficient

There are many ways you can be more efficient when mapping out your
sales process. One of them is by incorporating sales mapping software.
With the help of a process mapping tool, you’d be able to see which actions
lead to better sales and which still need improvement.
Aside from that, a process mapping tool can help you keep a better eye on
key metrics so you can get a better insight into your sales process.
It’s possible to create a sales structure for your team fast. I do hope you
take the time to map the sales process. You will not regret it.
Does your company perform sales mapping? Share your sales
process steps in the comments section below.
Up Next: 
 5 SaaS Sales Principles To Boost Performance
 Sales Development Action Plan For 2019

 What Is A Sales Plan? | How To Create Your Own + Sample

Sales Plan Template