Unpacking the Sales Process: A Blueprint for Startups - Podcast Recording

Automated Transcript

Alastair Cole 01:58

Hello, good afternoon and welcome to The Sales Scoop. This is a show for startups who want to improve how they sell. My name is Alastair Cole, your host for today's session. I am an ex software engineer and computer scientist with two decades of experience in sales and marketing. And I'm joined today by my co host and co-founder pure.

Kiran Gill 02:24

Good afternoon, Alastair. Hello, my name is Kiran Gill, and I am a business development expert. I'm going to call myself today and also a sales operation leader. And I'm a co-founder of uplift partnership with Alastair.

Alastair Cole 02:40

Thank you, my friend. And together with our CTO, Douglas, we accelerate sales for startups. Today's topic is unpacking the sales process, a blueprint for startups. And we're going to dive straight into the sales process. With a little bit of data and a bit of insight that we've seen over the last few months in our work with startups over 50 of them through our 360 sales diagnostic. 49.6 is the average score for the overall sales process within startups under five is also a smidge under 50%. And you know, that's not really a great score for something that's so important as part of the sales strategy element of being a startup. So a little bit lower than I would expect. Karen, have you got any, any thoughts on some of the areas that you've seen that are holding startups back in that sales process?

Kiran Gill 03:48

I think it's something that I repeated before in our conversations where I've said, sales processes tend to become an ad hoc kind of process where companies will devise a sales process and then nobody actually follows it as time goes on. And it becomes more erratic. People, it's just random, everyone, you know, people who are following it and doing random things. I know as a startup, you know, we were a startup ourselves, Allister. But, you know, hopefully we bring your professionalism to the way we do things. But working with the companies we've worked with and working with the companies beforehand, when it comes down to success, the simple thing is a sales process helps you sell Yeah, and it also helps facilitate the purchase for the buyer. And that's what it's there for. It's not there to do anything else. It's there to help the buyer purchase from you. And it's helping your sellers or yourself, keep on track by following a process that you have devised to help you sell to that particular market or customer base that you've targeted.

Alastair Cole 04:56

Yeah, and that's interesting. You talk about maturity, you know, we gauge For the startups we work with on their maturity across lots of different areas. And the sales process is one of them all the way from ad hoc all the way through to kind of formal structured and then dynamic and agile, where they're actually able to adapt that process depending on the kinds of buyers they're talking to. So maturity is really important. And we're hoping through our work that that score of 49.6 will edge up a smarter, stronger process. So we're going to dive into our eight stage process and share those stages with you. But it's worth just doing a little bit of setup, which is that those eight stages are how we feel that a startup should be handling their leads and their opportunities across the cycle, right across the whole sales cycle. What we're assuming, or we're taking, as done already, are some of the background pieces, the setup pieces, so market research, target customer identification, sales metrics, ideal customer profile definitions, value propositions, and product rep, positioning and messaging. So assume that everything is done and that we've got a list of quality leads that are about to go out and work with on the sales process. So taking that and bearing that in mind, Karen, what would be the first of eight stages that you would recommend for a startup?

Kiran Gill 06:26

Okay, so we've done the foundation work, as you said, we've got a product, we know what it is, we need to first of all, before we even start doing any of the first process parts is thinking about our the person that we're selling to, or the companies that we're selling to, and what potentially will be their buying approach to what we're selling. Because we want to make sure that our sales process is basically mimicking their purchasing process. Because if it doesn't, and there's a misalignment, that's where you might find that you might lose some of your customers within your sales funnel, or your sales circle, or whatever you want to call it. Nowadays, it is called so many different things. And once that's done, once you've got your product, and you know what your product price point is. Now, there are two fundamental things that at the cold stage, we call this cold, this is what we call it an uplift. This is the first stage of your buying process. And in your cold process you are setting yourself up, nobody knows about your product, everybody out there is cold to you. And you are going to warm them up through your sales process to get to a position where you're going to have a meeting. In that cold process. There are two ways to look at this. There is one that is inbound leads, and there is one or inbound process inbound sales process where people are going to come to you. And then there is an outbound process where you are going to approach people or customers out there or potential customers. And that's the first stage now you've if you're doing an outbound side of things, it's going to be that you've got a target list that is identical to your ideal customer profile. So we've known what our ideal customers look like and we know what we want to target. And we have a list of names of people that we are going to actively try to approach to make contact with. If it's inbound. That's more marketing. From my point of view, I'm not a market here, my friend, Alastair here is and what you would be doing there from an inbound point of view, you're creating content, or content marketing, where you're attracting people to come to you to say, Oh, hello, that looks interesting what you're doing, and that's your first phase.

Alastair Cole 08:43

Yeah, yeah. And the bit that jumps out for me in that first stage, which we call cold, is that the prospect matches that ideal customer profile, right, there's no point reaching out or creating content, if it's inbound for somebody who isn't your ICP. I think companies that have a well defined ICP, they tend to do better by 68% or something like that, according to Gartner. So actually writing it down having that ideal, ideal customer profile defined is critical. Great. So thank you. So stage one is cold. What's stage two of eight?

Kiran Gill 09:20

Well, funnily enough, stage two is now warm. So you've gone out and let's, let's keep this conversation going about the two tracks, we've got outbound, and we've got inbound. And the great thing about Inbound leads is that they've basically qualified themselves, and they've approached you for a meeting. So they can go straight from warm, where they've interacted with content. They've gone to your website, and they've said, theoretically, we want to meet with you because whatever you're saying, or however you're marketing your product resonates with us and we have that particular problem and we want to learn more, doesn't mean that they want to purchase it means that they want to learn more So that can go straight, that might even skip a few LP steps for you in the sales process, because they they've turned themselves and they've qualified themselves. From an ad-bound point of view, what you're doing in the warm phase phase two, is that you're, you're trying to have a conversation with the client, you're trying to get to a position where the person wants to actually interact with you. Now, in the buying process, this is the awareness stage. Now, some clients or some prospects are aware of the challenges that they might actually have. So thus, they are trying to solve that challenge. However, sometimes your solution might be something well, it might be, it might be solving a problem or a challenge that that prospect might not even know they have. So you need to then make them aware of this potential, you know, cost saving or potential even up, you know, upselling, that they could suddenly make more money out of this. So in this awareness stage, that warm stage two is all about giving the prospect, the customer, the potential clients, all the information they need to make that informed decision to say, well, actually, what you're doing makes total sense for me.

Alastair Cole 11:14

Okay, and is this fair is this stage to the one stage where that relationship effectively begins?

Kiran Gill 11:24

Yes, this is, this is where you know, where, you know, your, your SDR, your, you know, your sales development representative, or your accounting, or the founder, depending on how big your team is, is trying to basically build relationships and talk to people.

Alastair Cole 11:42

And that makes sense, right? Like that stage two is warm, is the beginning of that nurturing, and was funny, we turn the temperature up from from cold into warm for stage to where what stage three, then,

Kiran Gill 11:56

oh, this is where we're getting really technical. This is hot. So we've gone from cold, warm to hot, and the hot stage, the prospect, let's call them a prospect, can I keep on jumping around repurposes here, but I'm gonna call them a prospect, the prospect is now ready to meet you and have a meeting. Now remember, we're talking about b2b complex selling. Now, at this phase, there will be a meeting, if we're selling something that is complex, where a client and our sales process, the process I'm speaking about this moment in time, is a complex process where you're going to have multiple meetings with somebody to find out whether the solution that you have, or the products that you have actually makes sense to them to purchase because they need to find out more, however, you might be selling something that actually is very easy, but where they might have to trial the product. So it could be a product that you've built, it's a you know, it's a SaaS product, it's easy to purchase, at that point, you might be forced, they might be able to have a trial of the product. So it depends. And this is where we go back to the nuances of sales processes. What are you selling? Who is the buyer, and at that point, you've got to take them on a different journey, depending on what your product is.

Alastair Cole 13:17

And I guess the buying group changes as well, depending on what you're selling, you know, a higher ticket item, the buying group is going to be larger. And would that mean that there would be more meetings I need to have in that hot phase? Not?

Kiran Gill 13:33

Well, the hot phase is you doing the research for the actual meeting itself. So what you're going to do is and you're flipping to the next stage where the actual meeting is taking place. And you've hit the nail on the head there, it depends on what kind of target market you're selling to. So if you're selling into solo entrepreneurs, there's one decision maker that you're speaking to. And it's easy for you to have that meeting if you're selling into enterprise. And I know some of the people who are watching us today and people we speak to to sell to enterprise clients. Potentially, you're talking that that one person you're speaking to is only the tip of the iceberg with the people who are going to be involved in the buying of this session. So you are going to probably have multiple meetings in the next phase, where in the hot phase, if you're selling to a solo entrepreneur, or a smaller company might move very, very quickly. Now this again, you might have the same product, however you need, potentially several different sales processes now changing depending on who you're speaking to. And this is where sales processes get complex. And this is where companies start trying to cut corners. And that's why you shouldn't cut corners because you could potentially miss a li or miss a sale.

Alastair Cole 14:54

Give me an example of a classic corner cutting behaviour that you see

Kiran Gill 14:59

classically, no one follows a process, everyone is nurtured into the same kind of bunch of clients, we don't have enough, also our buying personas, we start talking to the wrong ideal customers, and we start spending our time with the wrong people. And also we don't have an understanding of what the client actually wants. And what we're trying to do is we're trying to force our solution, or our service down the customer's throat without actually understanding what we're doing. Because we don't want to qualify because qualifying is boring. And also the customer doesn't want to answer questions, because we didn't ask any questions. So what happens is we make assumptions, and we cut corners, because we think we speed a process, what happens there is the customer actually doesn't understand what you're selling. And unless they've qualified themselves, the chances are they'll walk away from the sale.

Alastair Cole 15:51

I think the questions are absolutely critical. So many times I found myself working with clients that they just haven't asked enough questions to do that qualification, like saying, so as you they're moving the opportunity along the process, but isn't actually ready to be moved, you know, you're making some assumptions. And then you're, you're hopping from a hot prospect into our fourth stage. So those first three cold, warm and hot prospects are all in our awareness phase of buying. Now we move with the fourth step into the second phase, which is interesting, right, so stage four, you come out of hot prospects, what stage for? Well, this

Kiran Gill 16:33

is your meetings. So this is where opportunity, I call it opportunity. Different people call it different things, people call it discovery or whatever. This is where, for me as a salesperson, this is an opportunity, an opportunity, meaning that there's an opportunity for us to sell our product to this client. Because everything that we've started qualifying the client has a prospect has a need of what our solution could potentially solve. And this might then turn into multiple meetings where we are building our business case, and a business case is always numbers orientated. So you can't cut corners again, and start showing your functions and features of all your products and saying, Oh, look what it does. And it does this lovely thing. No one, don't be scared about speaking numbers, because that's where the rubber hits the road. When you can start talking to the client about numbers, cost savings, whatever it is that your product brings, that's where the client is going to start thinking to themselves. This is interesting now, because you're speaking business language, even if you're selling from the solo entrepreneur point of view, those people want to know what you are doing, will it make me money? Will it save me money? What's it going to do? And if all you're showing is what colour the tab on your, you know, your platform is, and how lovely it is? That you're probably missing a few things. So the opportunity stage is where you know that opportunity. And through that your qualification, that's where your qualification process starts. However, if you're in the world of SAS, and you're selling something that is where it needs to be trialled. That's where you would start your trial phrase, that's five days, that's where you would give them the product and say, Hey, why don't you have it for a month? See how it goes. And they start the trial phase. So they're qualifying themselves to see how the product is. However, if you're selling something complex, and something that's, you know, a little bit more complex to sell, and also put into the company, this is where you start the qualification process.

Alastair Cole 18:39

If we talked about larger buying groups, right, if they're if the if you're aware, sparks are aware that there are multiple people, what should they be thinking about in terms of those individuals, or anything they should be, should be doing?

Kiran Gill 18:53

Yep, well, we're gonna get into this, I think next time in our next webinar, where we're going to talk about enterprise selling, if you are selling into a buying group, and this is enterprise selling, you really need to start and start trying to find out who the buying the decision making group is within that sales process. Because you might be speaking to somebody who might actually just be there researching different products and different services, just to get an understanding of what's out there. And then they're going to make a decision. So you might think that the decision maker, but actually they're not the decision making, they are assisting the decision makers in the background. So from your your processing opportunity where you're qualifying the lead, what you want to do at that point is find out what is this and if you're selling into product, if you're selling into enterprise, there's a buying group behind it, you're selling into a solo entrepreneur or a smaller company, you might actually be speaking to the person who's going to buy it, and then there might not be a long sales cycle here at all.

Alastair Cole 19:55

And irrespective of who you're selling, and so I think your point about data numbers is really valuable. It's why calculators work. It's why evidence works by being able to calculate a potential saving or potential return on investment. So numbers are very powerful. So I think that's good advice across the board. Okay, so that we're halfway through that, that's four phases, right, we've got cold war heart, and then we're into opportunity or meeting as stage four, stage five, then what stage five, what's next? Stage

Kiran Gill 20:28

five, if we're talking complex selling, this is where you're either going to go into your secondary meetings, or you're going to get ready to present your solution to the buying group or the individuals out there. Remember, there might not be a trial here for the product you're selling, or it's something that can't be trialled. So it's something that they have to actually purchase. So you would do a presentation, that presentation is built on the back of your qualification. So all that qualification you've done before, where you found out what the need is, what the value is, who the stakeholders are, classic qualification kind of way of looking at it, once you've got all that information. And let's say you're selling something that is tech, what is technical or technology base, you might even have your pre-sales people involved here, where they're going to do the demo. But remember, they're going to be doing a demo for what the customer actually has the problem for. And potentially, if you are a very sophisticated startup, you might even have value engineers who have created the value case or the business case that goes behind it. However, if you're a startup, the chances are you don't have these. But again, this business case that you develop at this presentation stage is where you're going to wow the customer by showing them everything that you've done beforehand. I've listened to you. What I've got for you now is a tailor made bespoke solution that does everything that you need it to do. Please buy it, Mr. Customer.

Alastair Cole 21:57

Obviously, it's a compelling event, isn't it building up to that presentation to that delivery, whether it's in person or virtually on? Well, and how that's followed up with a written proposition. That's such an important phase. And one of the things that I've learned over the last few years is the ongoing qualification. So even as we're working up to the presentation, getting that information, that qualification has to just keep going. And we've really put it at the heart of how we run our sales function. It wasn't something I knew before I got into the world of sales. So you know, can you talk us through the kind of key areas for you in terms of qualification? Right? What are the things that are absolutely critical that people should be thinking about and scoring their opportunities on how, how best should deals be qualified for by startups?

Kiran Gill 22:50

Yeah, depending on it all goes back to what you're selling, and who you're selling it to. So there isn't one qualification process that works for everybody. Some of them are better fits for certain industries than others. So what I would say to you is that all of them have some value of need. Where you're, you're, you're you're measuring the need, from the customer's point of view, not your need, as a need as a salesperson might need is to sell as much as I can. However, what we're talking about is the needs of the customer. So what's their need? How, how high can you gauge their need? Now remember, if you're selling to multiple people in an organisation, there are different levels of need, depending on the stakeholder you're speaking to, it starts getting quite complicated. Also, then you go look at value, what is the value of your this is where the ROI of your solution comes in. So you need to that's why the numbers are so important, especially if you're selling into enterprise. Well, like I've said before, it doesn't matter where you're selling the numbers. So the thing is, the value really counts. So if you're presenting without understanding the client's need, and without being able to show value, why are you even presenting, you're basically wasting an opportunity, you might as well just throw it in the bin and walk away. And I will. I don't care what anyone says about that thing is annoying, and that is cutting a corner. So qualify correctly, those two things are important is their time, you know, does the person have you know, when it comes to time, when are they going to purchase this thing? How important is urgency for purchase? That's really important. Stakeholders have you got the right people in the room? You know, we, I. It's a nuance on knowing what industry you're selling into, and also the market you're selling into. So yeah, there's loads of different qualification criteria out there. Have a look, you should be using one and if you're not using one talk to us, and I can point you happily in the direction of qualification metrics that you should be using for your industry.

Alastair Cole 24:59

Thank Okay, so that was that stage five, right presenting stage. Let's move on to stage six, what's next after after the presentation,

Kiran Gill 25:11

we call this proposal sent. So we have all these elements, we've been working on these in the sense of, you know, these are verbs, you know, and so this is where you send the actual proposal. So what we want to do now, at this point, some people might call this negotiation, objection handling, depending on how you look at it tell you the truth, the major thing that you're trying to do here is send a proposal. And at that point, you might negotiate, there might be objections from the client. And at this phase, this is where the conversation is getting to the point where there is a deal there, there is an opportunity for the client to do what they want to purchase and for you to actually be able to sell, and you're going through that final, putting the final pieces together. So everybody gets what they want. So that's the proposal sent.

Alastair Cole 26:03

Thank you. So that we've covered the first six phases, right? There's cold, warm heart, then we're into opportunity, meetings, presentation, and then the proposal sense of the last two, the last two stages we're into, which is the third phase of the buying journey, which we call the team to two stages left. What's number seven? What's the most on the stage? Well,

Kiran Gill 26:35

Basically, it's a winter dance, as we would call it in the world of sales. This is where the client says yes. And well, they no longer are prospects already. And I keep on doing that same mistake with a workday, they don't say prospects anymore, they're no longer prospects, they turn into a client, they sign the contract, or whatever they need to do to purchase your product or service, and they become a customer. So that's quite an easy one. However, at that point, you could also lose the prospect. So you know, that split into two that closed spaces either won or lost.

Alastair Cole 27:10

Okay, that makes sense, right? The proposals are gone out, the next bit is effectively closing, closed, one closed last. And obviously some feedback. And I love that we've talked about that, you know, either the money's kind of like it arrived in the bank, or it hasn't, right? So that's kind of where the rubber hits the road. So if that's if that's stage seven, what's what's stage eight, then

Kiran Gill 27:38

In the new world of selling, very few companies now sell a product where you just give somebody the widget, the gadget, whatever it is, give them that thing. And you just say bye, bye, everyone. see you ever again. We're all in this world now, especially in tech, and in the startup economy, where we're trying to retain our customers. And there's probably onboarding of the technology or the solution that we're sending. And there's probably other products we can sell. And so this turns into customer success. And this is such a big thing out there. Now, have you seen how many jobs have now flipped from people being salespeople, now people turning into customer success managers, CSM, there's so many of these jobs out there, it's crazy, because that's where retaining customers is now the big thing. So if you're not, if you haven't got that in your sales process, where you've got customer success as say, a phase eight, and that then brings you back around the hole. That's why I say, no longer do people see it as a sales funnel, you don't go down and just out at the bottom, what you tend to do is you go around, so what you want to do is bring back your customers because in one year's time, or two years time, whatever it is, there's probably a renewal date on your product. And what you want to do is make sure that the client renews. However, also at that time, you might have other products and you might want to sell them. So the customer success phase is very, very important.

Alastair Cole 29:04

Yeah, from my agency days running freshkills services teams, we were talking about keeping the back door closed. You know, it's fine. You want the front door open and you want new clients coming in. But if they're just slipping out the back door not looking after them properly, then all that effort is wasted. That's great. Thank you. So those eight stages, the blueprint for success is cold, warm and hot. Then we're into opportunities, which are meetings. Then the presentation and proposal was sent and the last to closing and then Customer Success keeping that backdoor closed. A real whistle stop tour. Thank you very much. That was really helpful. Great, great. You and I kind of show that the sections and the answer for you are super helpful. They state that I talked to About at the top of the show that 49.6% of startups that beat the average score came through the work we've done with startups over the last 12 months, nearly 50 of them who we've put through our 360 sales diagnostic, which is a 75 minute meeting with us. And then we produce a 25 page personalised report with bespoke recommendations and incremental revenue roadmap. If you're interested in getting that you can head over to our website with Punisher comm forward slash 360. We use a little bit of tech in that too little bit of AI tech in order to capture and crunch some of the information we get from our clients. And actually tech is so important now that we're starting to see a kind of Gulf, right not only are those who are overwhelmed by tech or can't, can't get on with the latest technology tools, their quotas, those salespeople are achieving 43% lower quotas, according to Harvard Business Review. So if you don't get on top of the tech, you're not, you're not closing as much. And at the other end, what's widening the chasm is that those who are harnessing technology properly, harnessing AI well, are generating an extra 27% of bandwidth for themselves, according to Gartner. So there was a growing technology divide of the haves and have nots in the area of sales. And it's one of the reasons that we built our latest product, fresh off the production line, our sales playbook generator, public partnership, comm slash SPG, if you want to check it out, it is a super rapid semi automated process where we create the sales playbook, which is arguably the most important sales asset for a startup, if you're interested in that, take a look at the website or speak to one of us on LinkedIn. And then the last thing says, if you haven't mentioned it already, our next live show in two weeks is going to be setting into enterprise five golden rules for start up on Tuesday, the fifth of March. Hopefully we'll see that. That's it, we're perfectly out of time. Thank you very much for your time, Kevin, that was really helpful like eight sets for everybody to share the recording afterwards. Any any final words, my friend for a startup or co founder or C suite startup person on this call listening to us what would be the one thing that they should probably take away and go and go and do an AMA theatre, have an hour three,

Kiran Gill 32:46

sit, sit down and write your process down and make it as very as detailed as you wanted to, it should be as detailed as you can make it to be do not make it ad hoc. Follow that process. And look at your metrics that you're getting from it. Because what that will show you will show you where your problems are. And if that's the first thing I do when we consult companies at the uplift partnership, I will look at that data. And within that point, I will be able to pinpoint where the problems are on what needs to change. And that's what any startup should be doing for themselves. Even if they aren't working with us. That's the first thing they should do. detail it doesn't be ad hoc. Don't be random in your process. Try to be as structured as possible. And then try to get yourself to be dynamic as time goes on.

Alastair Cole 33:37

Super advice. Thank you very much for your time. We're out now - we're gonna say goodbye. Thanks for watching this thing everybody. Bye for now.

Keywords

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