The management of the processes within the context of the Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty model (and its phases and stages) is defined by UPSA as Sales Cycle Management. It is within this system and context that the sales professional operates most visibly.
A set of selling activities not organized into a process is nothing more than a chaotic, random group of events that cannot be properly managed. Without a true system of sound process, based on knowledge, planning, and execution, there is no way to implement fundamental management tools required to thrive in today's economy. If the goal is to continuously drive more and more revenue, a sound system of management must include measurement and management, process improvement, reporting, coordination, and prediction. It is within this complex context that the sales professional of today must adapt and survive. To help with this, UPSA defines the interaction of the entire revenue generation system as Sales Cycle Management.
Sales Cycle Management provides a mechanism to:
The best sales professionals seek out continuous and comprehensive training and education to support their selling process. You should be able to initiate a sales process and build customer satisfaction and loyalty while improving over time. UPSA defines this ability as “Sales Cycle Management (SCM). SCM has four unique stages and a “transaction event” that corresponds to the roles of professional selling discussed earlier. It also occurs within an ethical environment (through your Guardian Role). Remember, the SCM stages map to the entirety of the “transaction experience” that the buyer goes through to buy (which includes longer term “service after the sale”, measurement, etc). This was explained further in Chapter 2 as the United Professional Sales Association's Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Model.
An effective salesperson will manage these stages of the SCM to ensure he/she is communicating the right message to prospects, managing sales tools and programs effectively, generating the “right” sales leads, creating winning proposals, selling solutions at or above target margins, etc.
In an ideal commerce cycle (where buyers and sellers meet and a transaction occurs), the marketing function provides handcrafted messages that clearly define the solution to be sold and that message succinctly resonates with a potential buyer who is then converted into a lead who is handed over to the sales department to “close” the business.
The reality is in “real life” this scenario rarely, if ever, works this way. Great salespeople understand this fact of life and work diligently with Marketing to help them understand the selling process they are using while at the same time providing solid feedback as to exactly what the customer is looking for. To solicit this feedback from buyers, great salespeople use “consultative selling” and ask the potential customer what concerns they have, while listening to their problems and beginning to summarize a solution for them. By effectively managing the SCM stages, a salesperson with refined Sales Cycle Management ability helps the organization become more effective through:
- Reducing customer acquisition costs
- Eliminating wasted Marketing dollars
- Developing messaging that resonate for target audience
- Improving Marketing accountability
- Expanding their qualified pipeline
- And getting desired results
You will want to promote a clear understanding of the expectations you set with the client and ensure that nothing is overlooked. In some organizations, you will be responsible for ensuring smooth, coordinated implementations, which meet targeted, live dates and all contractual and billing obligations. Now that the sale is final, you will want to validate the plan and assumptions made during the sales process. And ensure team members establish a plan to assess internal and third-party resources. Your organization may require a kick-off meeting with the customer to review the project. Or, you may choose to conduct weekly conference calls with clients and the implementation team. In this phase, your company will be incorporate and fulfilling the solution. You should make sure you are staying abreast of what is happening so there are no surprises.
In this phase, you will be working to protect and/or expand your existing relationships. You will also use this phase to measuring the effects of your sales process in terms of closed sales, revenue, and difficulty in closing sales. You will use this knowledge to build customer loyalty and ensure that you repeat best practices and change the processes that do not help with customer satisfaction. Hopefully your clients are happy with their experience to this point and you will be able to get them to write or talk about the experience. Also, customer testimonials often help boost retention rate of existing clients as well as providing new business leads. Develop key measurements that mark the progress of financial estimates that guide your growth.
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Focus Area: Sales Cycle Management