I’ve been doing some work with a brilliant CRO. We’ve been reworking and implementing a revised selling/buying process. Their previous process was poorly defined, outdated, and people weren’t using it. As we are rolling this out, she is encountering resistance from her team: “My situations are all different! This is too rigid! This is too complicated and structured for me, just let me do my own thing! I don’t need no stinkin’ process, f**k off…..” (OK, I made the last one up, but I have encountered a lot of sellers thinking this.)
I see the same excuses from too many sellers and leaders. Too often, people out selling/buying processes in place–just because that’s what we’re supposed to do. But then they ignore it, pushing people, “Just do more, build pipeline, close more deals!” Or they accept the default process embedded in CRM systems or from their training methodology. “Of course my selling process in selling complex enterprise software is the same as those selling toilet paper, soap, and sanitary supplies to Home Depot!”
Or they implement a process that’s exceedingly rigid. “Follow this process step by step (all 257 steps), do not deviate at all from this process!” And these managers are anxiously looking forward to the AI Agents that will follow the rules, not talking back under this direction.
Or, as is too often the case, people simply don’t understand the process, it’s importance, or how to use it impactfully in each opportunity. And, I suspect too many managers don’t really understand why we have selling/buying processes and their importance.
Let me dive into it, perhaps making a provocative statement: “Selling processes are the most powerful when they enable contextual flexibility and autonomy!”
Every deal, every customer situation is different. Sellers have to adapt their approach to respond to and manage these differences. But how do they do this most effectively, efficiently, impactfully?
Hopefully, we know that a random walk through the process is a losing strategy. Hopefully, we know reacting/responding to a customer that doesn’t know how to navigate the process is a losing strategy. Hopefully we know that rigidity in executing the process is a losing strategy.
Our selling/buying process is based on deep understanding of how customers buy and how we most impactfully support that process. It is built on continual analysis of the 100’s/1000’s of deals we work on. It assesses what we do to win, why/how we lost. It is based on our best experiences of successfully engaging customers.
In this process, we define critical stages for the process. Within the stages, we define critical activities we and the customer undertakes in the process. We define common agreements/exit criteria to move from stage to stage. It tells us that the more of these things we and the customer do, the more likely we will succeed together. And it tells us that when we don’t do these things, we are highly likely to fail.
All of this is based on our best experience.
But each deal is different! We have to figure out how to manage each deal and each customer. We have to figure out how we adapt and keep moving forward as effectively as possible,
This is why our selling/buying processes are so important. They enable us to get to develop the best strategies, with the lowest risk possible. Imagine not having the process, at each step we have to do wild ass guessing. Or if we have some experience we look at what we have done before (our refined collection of wild ass guessing.) But we miss the collective experience of the organization on What Works Best!
The selling process has never been intended to be a rigid set of steps we go through to close deals. It’s a framework and provides guidelines. It is oriented to help us identify the critical activities and commitments that enable us to achieve our goals! In applying it effectively, we have to be smart enough (and engaged enough) to adapt it to the specific context, deal customer. And if we don’t have that ability, then we won’t achieve what we could and should.
Our selling/buying processes are critical to success! But only when our people have the contextual flexibility and autonomy to adapt to the unique customer buying process.
Afterword: I hesitated posting this AI discussion of this post. This is the third attempt to train the tool to give a more accurate answer. But you can see how it invents and attributes statements to me, which are not in the post. It has wild hallucinations. This tells you how far we have to go in the development of these tools.
Why publish, first as an illustration of these challenges. But interspersed in the lies an hallucinations, are a few gems. If you listen, listen at 1.5X. Share your comments with me.
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