Creating the Foundation and Framework of a Great Sales System - Sales Series Part II

By Action Coach Dave Beam

This is Part 2 on my series on sales, and this week I am going to show you how to start building a great sales system that works!

You need to start by creating a great foundation and framework.  The foundation for a great sales system is a definition for sales. First, what it is NOT.  Sales is not just taking an order, nor pushing a product or service on people.  Professional sales is certainly not just throwing out a pitch and trying to persuade people to do something that they are reluctant to do.  In my opinion, these beliefs about sales are deficient and make a poor foundation for building an effective system.

I define sales as professionally helping someone buy what they want.  A professional salesperson has the skills and the system to lead a customer to a great win:win buying decision.  It is a transfer of confidence from the salesperson to the customer.  People really want to buy good products and services, they just don’t want to be manipulated and sold.  Over the next several weeks, I am going to show you how to make sales a delightful experience for you and your buyers.  So with that definition of sales as a foundation, let’s build the framework.

Since professional sales is leading the customer to a great buying decision, the framework for your system is defining the steps that a customer takes to arrive at that final decision.  These steps are a logical series of commitments that your customer makes that lead to the final commitment to buy.  As a professional, you must define the steps that your customer makes before that final commitment of handing you a purchase order or a check.

Once a prospect has been effectively “marketed”, they will in some way express an interest in potentially doing business with you.  They may call you on the phone, walk in your store, or send you an e-mail asking for more information.  They may have been referred to you.  Your job as a professional is to lead this person from initial interest through a series of increasing commitments to a final commitment to buy.  For example, here is one of our frameworks:  STEP 1 -  We call and invite a prospect to a free event – the prospect says “yes” and commits to coming.  STEP 2 – The prospect comes to the free event, and commits to meeting with a coach for a needs assessment.  STEP 3 – We call the prospect to set the appointment and they commit to a specific time and place to meet.  STEP 4 – We meet with the prospect, come to a mutual understanding of their needs, and they commit to an initial starter program.

The key to creating an effective framework is to identify the commitments and specific actions that the prospect makes before making the final commitment to buy.  Some other examples of commitment steps are as follows: agreeing to meet with you for a presentation of your products and service; agreeing to meet with you for a needs assessment; agreeing to attend an upcoming event; agreeing to a telephone conference call; agreeing to arrange a meeting with other decision makers; agreeing to a trial period.  It is important that every step in your framework is a specific action that the prospect agrees to take by a defined time and deadline.