Science of mapping sales

The end of financial year is also the time to assess how far and how effectively different targets have been achieved. This stock taking is the basis to differentiate effective leaders from the ones who performed poorly. And God forbid if you are the leader of a sales team then achieving  sales target is the key factor in making or breaking your career. However, one rarely comes across companies that have mapped their sales process the right way. They do have some bits of flowcharts which make no worldly sense but are done and printed on glossy paper. They look visually appealing but functionally they fail to cut the ice. By reviewing the sales process, you would be able to see how your sales process moves between various stages and how many people are servicing it. Thereby identifying pockets of waste and over staffing. 

There is a big gap in this area so here we share the science of mapping the sales process, a key tool for a sales team leader:

Getting started

Sales happen through the front-end people but it is delivered by other stakeholders, who are not customer facing.  By getting everyone in the room at the same time, you will be able to align the thinking process. The best case is to get no less than 12 people for this exercise. In addition to this, please arrange for flipcharts and markers.

Flowchart the process

As a first step ask the team to identify four to five major steps of the sales process. If there are fewer than six people involved in the activity, have the whole group work on this step. If there are more than eight people, divide them into or more groups with four members in each. Have the small groups report on their version of the sales process, then have everyone discuss the different versions until you come up with one version that is best suited to your company.

Assign owners to steps

From the groups, ask one or more people to represent each major step and sub-step you have identified. Either you can assign people to the steps or let the participants select a step. In both the cases, the participants cannot pick or be allocated to steps they work on every day. This is important, as you want to see the process from unpolished eyes.

Assemble the step owners in a sequence

Request the people or groups to arrange themselves in a way that represents the general sequence of steps in the actual process. That is, the people representing the first step will be at one end of the room; the people representing the second step will be next to them and so on. Each small group further divides the sub-steps among its members with each individual possibly representing a sub-step. 

Let the fun begin

As the leader of the session, create a lively interchange of ideas between the participants by working through the process in no particular order. Randomly select a step or a sub-step and ask the person or the group representing it one or two of the following questions.

• What contribution do you make to this overall process?
• Who is your internal customer? What do you believe they expect from you and how do you know it?
• How do you keep informed so to what the external customer wants?

The entire group should discuss the answer this person or group gives. After some discussion, shift the focus to another step or sub-step, asking its representatives the same kinds of questions. Whenever you see the discussion slowing down, ask the same set of questions to a different group. Keep shifting your focus in a random manner to keep the engagement levels high.

Wrap up the discussion

After a couple of hours, both you and the participants would have worked through most of the steps and its sub-steps; have the entire group debate on these questions:

• What did we as a group learns from this activity? What did the individuals learn about how they go about doing their jobs and is there a way to do it differently?
• What inadequacies in the real process came out in the open?

Lastly, go back and make changes if need be to the sales process that you had plotted at the start of the exercise. By mapping, discussing and aligning the sales process among all the stakeholders you will make the process smooth and effective.