How Do You Map A Sales Process?

Mapping a sales process (or designing it) is pretty simple, at least at first. The difference with a sales process is that it must benefit both you and your customer simultaneously. The key is to keep your customer in mind at all times.

1. Prepare to map the process.

Despite the stories about salespeople out on the road independently, sales is actually a team sport. Salespeople try to get customers on their team, for example. And they require support from marketing or servicing departments, to give the customer what they want.


If you want the performance of this team to improve you have to get them all on the same page. Heck, many of salespeople’s most crucial problems occur because they are not on the same page with the customer, the support departments, or with each other. So, this could be a challenge. 

Of course, this might be difficult you adhere to old-fashioned management notions that pit salespeople against each other. However, if you have gotten beyond that issue, you can start getting your team to think about what their biggest challenges are, and the reasons for those challenges. There will be lots of opinions and this is one of the main reasons to “map” the process. Your team needs to understand what they will get out of this. What is going to be different afterwards? What does it involve?

The answers to these questions are always unique to your particular situation, but they involve things like:

  • Figuring out what causes variations in salespeople’s performance, and enabling salespeople to learn from each other
  • Getting a handle on which deals are most likely to close and which ones aren’t, so salespeople can forecast more accurately
  • Standardizing language in order to understand (with data rather than opinions) what factors cause the most challenges for salespeople, so you can try to improve the situation

You should tell them that one of the goals is to achieve “respectful agreement” around the best way to accomplish their objectives, so that as a team they can learn from their experiences, and share important data about how we actually do the work with management, so they can start helping each other improve.

Another goal is to ensure that your team is executing the work in the most professional and expeditious manner possible. There are always things to improve on, and a process is all about making improvements.

2. Identify the customer’s journey.

You or your salespeople may know this already and that’s fine. If they don’t know, or if there are disagreements, these have to be sorted out first. Sometimes prospects buy differently if they are in different market segments (e.g., big companies instead of small companies), or if they are buying different kinds of products and services (replacement of supplies instead of deciding to change their internal systems). Also, it pays to actually ask some of your prospects about this. It can be quite an interesting conversation.

Whatever the case, you need to isolate one primary market segment that buys a similar thing in a similar fashion. Draw the stages your prospects go through in sequence on a whiteboard. Here are two examples of customer journeys from different kinds of industries:

Sample_Customer_Journeys

A key thing is to make sure your team is clear on the operational definition of each stage. In other words, what observable customer activity or action tells you they are in one stage or another? This is key, because for a process map to work, salespeople must be able to rely on these observations.

For example, people often point out that customers can go backward in this progression.  A National Account can go from “Gain Technical and Business Approval” (step four) to “Accept the Need for Water Improvement” (step one). A Small End User can go from “Research Solutions” back to “Identify Cause of Water Problem.” However, what this really means is only some individuals within the customer were at those stages and they failed to get their organization to follow. The real question is what can you observe that demonstrates the entire organization (i.e., the decision maker) is at one stage or another. This is where the real sales strategy comes in.

3. Identify The Work That Aligns With The Customer Journey.

Now we are getting somewhere. This is the part of process mapping that often generates the most learning and discussion. What, exactly, does your company do to identify where prospects really are in their journey, and then get them to the next step? It is likely that your team has never thought of their sales process systematically before, so you can expect some struggles as people realize how differently they approach these various stages. There will be gaps and inconsistencies. The thing is, since everyone does so many things differently, just achieving a common language and common ground on how to think about the process usually produces major improvements.

Of course, each company’s particular process will be vastly different. However, sometimes it helps to examine a model of how it should look.  Below is a model of what you are shooting for. It includes the Customer journey, a name for each of the work steps aligned with the Customer Journey stages, and indicates the thresholds where the flow of sales opportunities can be measured.
pic2

4. Manage the Process Using the Process Map.

Bear in mind that the diagram above is ideal because it frames the realities the sales organization has to cope with. Ignore the customer journey by pushing demos or samples on companies who have not agreed they need your product? Good luck with that. Salespeople having difficulty finding enough qualified opportunities?  No amount of discounts or special promotions will solve such problems. This is not process for process sake. Far from it. The value of this map is to help everyone see where the problems are, so they can apply the right kind of work to solve it. And, solve it in a measurable way, I might add.

When you begin to take this approach, there will be some breakthroughs where things turn out easier than you expect. For example, I worked with a sales organization of about 36 people, where to everyone’s surprise several of the old salts hugely supported the newly designed approach. However, you will also find some things to be harder than you expect. In that same organization, many of the salespeople came from clinical rather than professional selling backgrounds. It took time for some of them to get used to some terms for buying roles like coaches and gatekeepers, or end users and decision makers.

For this reason, it can take a while before your sales process resembles the ideal shown in the diagram. That is fine because the purpose of a process map – indeed the entire process approach to business – is to increase your team’s knowledge of the best ways to do the work. We all think we understand more than we actually do.

A process approach forces us to be humble and to write down our beliefs about how the work should be done and what the outcomes will be. Then, buy actually doing it you learn how things really work, which usually isn’t according to plan. In fact, the ability to learn, and most importantly to change based on what they have learned is what separates great companies from merely good ones.

Conclusion

It is quite a major accomplishment to go from the usual helter-skelter of selling to having respectful agreement in a professionally mapped B2B sales process. Just as all maps must orient to some kind of “North Star,” your organization’s process map helps everyone on your team to orient toward your customer.

Along the way, you’ll elevate the professionalism and effectiveness of your sales team. That’s because you will learn a consistent way to identify and prioritize the right accounts. The team stops wasting effort on demonstrations and proposals to customers who aren’t ready or won’t ever buy. Data from their activities effectively reveals bottlenecks in the flow of business, informing managers where they might need to focus. Some company leaders learn they can’t make their sales numbers without improving how they handle customer service. Others realize the sales department needs help finding enough qualified sales opportunities. Still others realize revenue gains immediately, as blockages are removed from deal flow.

A process enables leaders and managers to help their people develop a common language around the realities they face, and establish goals that align with customer needs. When this happens, close ratios improve. Cycle times shorten. Productivity often increases by 50% or more. And that is the point of creating a process map. It enables everyone to discover the evidence and data required to find the breakthroughs everyone is hoping for.

Good luck with your sales process mapping efforts.

And, good selling!

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Visit the Get Started section of this website to see how sales process excellence might benefit your organization.

Michael Webb

Michael Webb founded Sales Performance Consultants to create a data-driven alternative to the slogans and shallow impact offered by typical sales training, sales consulting, and CRM companies. Michael helped organize and delivered the keynote speeches for the first conferences ever held on applying Six Sigma to marketing and sales. Connect with me on LinkedIn.

Click Here to Leave a Comment Below
Rob Kealey - November 6, 2013 Reply

5 stars

    Michael Webb - November 6, 2013 Reply

    Rob,

    Thanks. Much appreciated.

    Michael

Russell Weiss - November 6, 2013 Reply

rating: 2

    Michael Webb - November 6, 2013 Reply

    Russel,

    OK, so it wasn’t even worth a comment by way of explanation for such a low rating?

    Michael

Jack Malcolm - November 6, 2013 Reply

Michael,

I think you’ve done your readers a service by clearly and completely laying out the steps to map a sales process. Most companies would benefit from thinking about their sales processes so systematically.

My only concern is that the seller’s daily work should be more skewed to the left side of the buyer’s process. If they’re not actively involved in shaping how the problem is perceived by the customer, they’re in for a feature-benefit bakeoff in the third step–a bakeoff that they may lose to a competitor who has been more actively involved before they have.

    Michael Webb - November 6, 2013 Reply

    Jack,

    You are absolutely right. Its a serious topic, because sometimes it takes more than just the sales department to solve this problem. For example, sales generally can’t control the website, or the company’s market positioning, and these things can have an affect the sales department.

    You need to gather the data, diagnose causes, and test countermeasures. If you want to get a measurable result, you need to take a process approach.

    Michael

Bill - November 6, 2013 Reply

I like it, have seen it before šŸ™‚ Not a five because too much text so a bit hard to read. Doesn’t reach out and grab you. You have to really want to read the article to get it all.

    Michael Webb - November 6, 2013 Reply

    Bill,

    Thanks for your comments – I’ll try to improve on making sales topics more interesting, especially for analytic engineering types like you! (Hee hee!)

    Still, writing is critical, so feedback is needed and welcome.

    Michael

Tejinder Paul Marwah - November 7, 2013 Reply

A lovely article and well put, immediately generates a thinking process for all in the sales team. Perfectly put that being on the same page will have its advantageous.

Five Stars surely

Tejinder Paul Marwah - November 7, 2013 Reply

Though not in the B2B sales we are already following many of the processes listed and it is appreciated that we could step up our efforts in terms of getting the customer on the same page

Tim Reynolds - November 7, 2013 Reply

Having just last week started to map our Sales process, this has been a useful reminder as to what’s important and why we’re doing what we’re doing. Over time evolution of the business has created different Sales processes for different offerings. Bringing these all back to a ‘standard’ creates value in itself, even before we start looking at actual improvements. Metrics are the crucial glue that binds it all together and describes performance to those outside the loop. Thanks!

    Michael Webb - November 7, 2013 Reply

    Tim,

    If “the business has created different sales processes for different offerings,” then you had salespeople who were striving to do what customers needed. Obviously, this is a great thing. Process thinking should enable you to ask them the questions that helps them deepen their learning and skills (so it becomes *their process*, and encourages them to identify how to become even better.

    Here is something to keep in mind, by the way: When using the process to manage, you get feedback on what went well, and what your team is struggling with. Some of these are things only salespeople can improve, but there are generally also things only the *company itself* can improve. For example changes in policies, budgets, software systems, and the like. You should listen to this feedback. Pick the right company improvement, a systemic one that improves performance of the whole system, and implement it. The experience will be quite powerful for your salespeople and for your management team.

    They will realize the whole point of a process approach. The data and evidence it produces is the means of aligning the resources of the entire company to do the right thing: to give customers more of what they want at a higher profit.

    Michael

Joseph - November 7, 2013 Reply

5 stars. I like it and it is usefull

    Michael Webb - November 7, 2013 Reply

    Thanks Joseph. What questions or challenges are you working on that make it useful?

    Michael

Uday Desai - November 9, 2013 Reply

Five stars!

Michael,I mapped the process a few months back for a client and followed the same steps. But this article gave me insights about how to manage and measure process using the sales process map.

Thank you very much for all the brilliant work through your book and your online resources.
Uday

    Michael Webb - November 9, 2013 Reply

    Thanks Uday. Glad it helps.

    Michael

Mike Kunkle - May 12, 2014 Reply

Nicely done, Michael.

I completely disagree with the TLDR feedback. I’m a fan of the quote that is often attributed to Einstein… “Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

Sales leaders and Sales Ops leaders are busy and distracted, but by and large, they are bright people and we can’t reduce everything of real value to 3 bullet points and a 25-word summary. You either want to dig into the the details that will make a performance difference, or you don’t. Kudos for laying it out there.

I do agree with Jack’s comment. I’d encourage us to be thinking about what happens before the “Recognize the Problem” stage, for both buyers and sellers.

With buyers doing more and more research on their own and engaging reps later in their buying process, sales pros need to find ways to identify prospective clients who have (or may have) problems they can solve, sometimes before the buyers realize they have an issue worth resolving.

Typically, organizations are doing some sort of planning, hopefully both strategic and tactical, first. Then, in the execution of those plans, they encounter issues and barriers that they decide are worth addressing, to increase their chance of success (or, generally, just to make more money, save more money, or better manage risk). When reps can enter that cycle early, and create value, they kick-start their own buying/selling process opportunity, and avoid that bake-off that Jack references.

Food for thought… I don’t see many trying to map this early-stage process on both sides (Richardson’s Buying Cycle is one I’m aware of), and I think it’s really worth the effort.

Stay the course, and again, well done.

Mike

Daniel Metivier Metivier - February 18, 2015 Reply

Got to the point Michael,

This is a good summary of what was presented and discussed during our workshop on Lean Sales process Improvement. it really opened up my mind to sales analysis and process re-engineering.
We should remember that this can’t be a one shot solution. So keep in mind the PCDA in order to keep improving from early stage process maturity.

I was just wondering if you had data about clusterization of Organisation Maturity Model. From my prospective doesn’t seems that level 1 can go below 80%.

    Michael Webb - February 18, 2015 Reply

    Daniel,

    Good to hear from you and thanks for your comment. If I understand your question on the organizational maturity model, you might be saying that 80% of companies are at level 1. Do I have that right?

    If that is what you are asking, I would agree. I do not have enough data to prove it with statistics, but every client I have worked with is somewhere in level 1 for most of their organization, with a few people moving toward level 2. The end result of most of our initial consulting work is helping groups get solidly into level 2, sometimes partly into level 3. Obviously, the more clients we work with and the longer we work with them, the closer they get to the higher levels. It just isn’t very common yet.

    I might point out that to get to these higher levels requires that management wants to adopt the lean philosophy across the enterprise. Not many companies are there yet, but some really are.

    Does that answer your question?

    Michael

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ron spinabella - July 23, 2017 Reply

Great post, my name is ron spinabella and i run a great blog and twitter account. I’m going to repost it for my followers.

    Michael Webb - July 27, 2017 Reply

    Thanks, Ron.
    Michael

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Patryk Miszczak - January 19, 2021 Reply

A very helpful step-by-step guide. Worth of sharing.

Thanks!

    Michael Webb - February 17, 2021 Reply

    Thanks, Patryk. More to come.
    Michael

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