Time To Revisit Our Sales Process?

We all know that the dynamics of change in the market is prominent. The way a sales person engages a customers, from hard selling, to product features and functions, to pain points, to industry and value driven etc... Is the same as how the prospects and customers gather information from dependence on sales to dependence on internet.

While it seems the true denominator of these examples, the sales cycle, remains hardly different, is it about time we relook at this long standing process in such times of change?

And we know that the sales cycle is closely tied to sales pipelines and sales forecasts. The ability to minimize errors is solely based on the sales person's ability to gauge where he stands in the buyer's buying journey.

To make matters worse, a typical sales meeting would establish discussions around this very same sales cycle.

So perhaps, the idea of having the sales cycle align with the buyer's buying journey would be an interesting marriage?

Consider the below processes :

When a sales person considers an opportunity to be under discover phase, how would you be certain that it is the same discovery with the prospect? What you are discovering here are the current pains of the prospect. But the prospect's discovery would be a step ahead of the game, where they are discovering options and solutions to their problems.

Take another example - when we qualify a prospects, using the various qualifying methods like BANT, MEDDIC etc...we are uncovering timelines, budgets, pains etc... - how do you know if there are in which stage of the buyers' journey?

Looking from the flip side of the coin, if we were to align our sales cycle according to the buyer's journey, would that improve the sales forecast, make pipelines more qualitative and evolve our sales meeting discussions more closer to the customer's heart?

This is an interesting concept that not many has tried. But for certain, Cherrypick is doing this and so far, it seems very true and affirming.

What do you think? Do share your point of view.

#Consideration