I personally found this post to be of tremendous value to me. Such a simple distinction, yet so powerful.

What I’m taking away from it is the difference between a coherently-defined, necessary workflow, and a customized, task-based, approach to getting there. There may be better terms than that, but that’s meaningful enough to me to help a lot.

In particular, that helps me clear up a lot of unnecessary arguments in my head (was there ever a necessary argument in my head?) about the relative value of different approaches–one of which now turns out to be a process, and one a methodology. Wow, you just quieted a lot of noise for me.

Many thanks, to you and to Michael Webb in his original note (and comment which continued the thought). You do great work, Dave.

I believe a sales process should be a sales “cycle” rather than a ladder or stairs like series of steps. If you complete the steps in the ladder, and arrive at the top where you make a USP and close, then what do you do? But if you use a cycle, when you arrive at the end of the cycle, you simply recycle with another product or service using the brand equity you earned during the first cycle.

I agree 100% that a sales cycle is a “road map”, not a blue print. It is also a tremendous organizing tool for the sales person, sales management and the entire sales organization. With a well designed sales cycle, no one should ever wonder what to do next, sales management will always know where a sales person is with a prospect and marketing and other support groups can use it as a framework so that what they do is relevant to what the sales team needs.

Many years ago, a new V.P. of Sales at the company where I was a new sales person, said “The first thing we need to do is learn to speak the same language”. A good sales process does that and puts everyone on the same page.

When I read your title, I wondered if different people have different tastes, because I knew straight away that all I cared about was a clear and simple process. After reading your article I tend to agree with you.

And I now realize why I’m only interested in the process. In international sales you run into a wide variety of methodologies. Different cultures do things differently… different methodologies make up a large portion of these differences.

The international sales person has to have a good grasp of the sales process, otherwise he will not be able to reconcile the different methodologies and move ahead. And I’d even go so far as to say that the simpler your sales process and the stronger your grasp of what this sales process is, the easier your task will be in getting that international sale.

If your sales methodologies are too sophisticated you run the risk of them not being easy to translate across cultures.

It’s also interesting to work with cultures where there is a high level of sophistication either in their processes or their methodologies. This is where it’s critical for you to have a clear and simple process.

Thanks for taking the time to comment. Regards, Dave

Do you ever find that sales people often create most of the objections themselves. That is that customers ask questions that sales people stir up from nervous energy. I’ve found many sales people create confusion in the mind of the buyer and create questions that often lead to either no sale or a much more difficult closing process.

Thanks,

Dave
http://www.amrmedia.com

Thanks for your comments and encouragement.