16个基本问题，要求自己提高销售流程效率

If you read past this article’s headline, you are probably eager to increase your sales efficiency by improving your sales process. That's a good attitude to have. Even after hundreds of millions of dollars in sales, HubSpot’s sales teams are continuously striving to gain efficiency through sales process improvement and new technology adoption.

As Mark Roberge reveals in his book销售加速公式, the efficiency gains our process, technology and data enabled has been a major key to the success we’ve achieved so far.

Don’t think fine-tuning yoursales processor adopting new sales technology is critical for your business?

In my experience working with hundreds of small businesses, chances are you'll stay small if you don't take the same approach as HubSpot. Even if you don't want to grow fast or big, I've seen many small business fail because they failed to maximize efficiency and effectiveness by documenting and improving their sales processes over time.

Use the checklist of questions below to evaluate yoursales process efficiencyagainst the best practices we've tested and proven out in our business over the years.

16个问题,会让你的销售过程Efficient

1) Have you defined your ideal buyer profile?

The biggest killer of small business sales efficiency is the all-too-common habit of trying to be all things to all people. When every prospect is drastically different, every sales approach will end up being different. It doesn't hurt to have multiple types of buyers, but it's very difficult to build a sales process and marketing machine that serves drastically different buyers. So always focus your proactive marketing and selling efforts on one at a time.

在定义角色时考虑这些问题：

• Do you have a document that describes your ideal buyer?
• Do you define characteristics of your ideal buyer like company size and industry?
• Does it include other firmographic information that might be unique to your typical buyer?
• If you sell larger deals to B2B companies and have multiple contacts you approach when selling your service, what are their typical titles and departments?
• What else is unique about them? Are they usually male or female, junior or senior, managers or individual contributors?

2）您有销售流程吗？

The second most common mistake I've seen is not having asales process. Every sales pursuit ends up being a bit different. But similar things have to happen in most of them. Figure out what those similar steps are and建立一个过程.

Here are some questions to consider when you are building your process:

• Have you defined the different types of sales calls you normally have at different stages of a prospect’s buying process?
• Do you have a prospecting process for getting prospects on the phone that involves researching them using email, voicemail, and social?
• Do you have a process for identifying their goals and priorities?
• Do you have a process for ensuring you can help them and get their buy-in to do so?
• Do you have a standard method (such as a presentation, demonstration, or contract) that lays out a typical agreement?
• Do you have a process for getting buy-in on contract details?
• 您是否有帮助您的新客户或客户利用您的服务的过程？
• 您是否有管理现有帐户的过程？
• The above steps are table stakes for most companies. But they might not be enough for your business. If you're in a services business, you might need a step-by-step process for delivering your services, reporting and reviewing results with clients, as well as renewing and upselling clients. If you sell a physical product, you'll need a process for delivery and installation.

Having trouble getting started? Customize the process provided inHubSpot's free sales training video courseto start building yours today.

3) Is your sales process documented?

A process isn't a process unless it's documented. To scale your process, you need to create actual documents that describe how to run each call in your sales process, as well as what happens before and afterwards. When selling new accounts, have you defined the questions you usually ask, when to tell what stories, and the criteria that must be met to move a deal from one stage to the next?

使用内部Wiki或Google文档来管理此过程。Google文档特别有用，因为其他人可以登录，发表评论，建议编辑并提出问题。这使您可以随着时间的推移更改销售流程。

你为什么要这样做？您的团队将发现更好的接近和获取客户的方法，您的流程应改变以反映这些改进。此外，您的营销活动，产品和服务能力以及竞争格局也很可能也会改变。因此，使用协作文档继续实时改善您的销售流程，而不会出现分享和失去最新修订的麻烦。

The best processes are a result of collaboration between front line reps, managers, and a sales consultant who has experience implementing a strong sales methodology in multiple scenarios. Leverage sales consultants because they’ll bring experience from other companies as well as widely applicable, off-the-shelf sales methodologies and frameworks. Involve front line sales reps so they can test processes and provide feedback as you tweak them. This also ensures their buy-in -- frontline reps are much more likely to follow a process if they have a hand in building it. Finally, make sure sales managers are involved to ensure effective execution of the process.

4) Do you have an efficient way for identifying best-fit leads?

So you've defined your ideal buyer profile. Next, identify companies that match it and find contacts within those companies that match your buyer persona. Ideally, you are attracting the right contacts to you via inbound marketing. Prioritize those leads as long as they fit your ideal buyer profile.

After inbound marketing, small businesses report networking, referrals, and word-of-mouth as their best sources of qualified leads. Lastly, use data sources to find companies that match your profile.

Whatever you do, make sure you have views for your hottest and best leads built right into your CRM, so you don't have to go hunting for leads every time you are prospecting. (You can easily createcustom views in HubSpot CRM.)

5) Do you have an efficient system for researching your leads before you reach out?

Once you've identified leads, start learning about the companies and contacts you plan to approach.

如果它们是入站线索，请查看将它们带到您的网站以及阅读的内容。该内容表明了他们的兴趣，因此这是您第一次宣传的自然起点。如果他们不是温暖的潜在客户，请制定销售研究仪式。查看他们的网站和社交媒体个人资料，以找到对话开始者。将这些对话启动器纳入您的电子邮件，语音邮件，当然还有您的对话。

6) Do you make up your voicemail script as you leave it?

当您通过电话与潜在客户联系并获取语音邮件时，您是否有一个脚本来留下针对公司类型和您的联系方式量身定制的语音邮件？bob全站app它合并了您的研究吗？你避免谈论自己吗？您是否练习它，记录下来并与他人进行了审查？

7) Do you write emails from scratch every time you pursue a new prospect?

Since you're unlikely to connect with prospects on the phone, you should have a handful of email templates created that you can quickly customize and send. Make sure you personalize your email templates based on the research you've gathered.

Here are five more questions to ask when creating email templates:

• Are you using standardized templates that are easily customized?
• Does your template management system automatically populate your messages with CRM data so you don't have to type your prospect's name and company name over and over again?
• 您的模板是如此专注于自己（而不是您的潜在客户），以至于您将其发送给的大多数人都会忽略 - 或者他们参考您对您的潜在客户的发现，因此他们更有可能得出结论您有兴趣认识他们吗？
• 您是否根据收集的研究来个性化电子邮件模板？
• Do your templates include standard places to input your research?

Make sure your template system tracks which emails have the highest open and click rate. Track which emails help you connect and which don’t so you can use the ones that do and create more like those.

8) Do you have a system that reminds you when to follow up with a prospect who hasn't returned your email or voicemail?

你有一个简单的方法来创建一个任务一次吗reach out for the first time? Since most prospects won't return the first few emails or voicemails, make sure you create a task to follow up. Here’s what creating a task looks like in HubSpot CRM.

当您需要进行积极的机会以及推荐伙伴和现有客户时，请确保自己创建任务。bob综合博彩下载

9) Have you created at least five email templates and voicemail scripts that you can use in a sequence?

Do you have multiple templates with varied messages that you can send to an individual prospect? Prospects are busy and the first message might not resonate. Make it easy for yourself by crafting a few messages at once and scheduling them to send on future days.

Warning: Make sure your system doesn't send subsequent messages after the prospect responds.

Don't just use sequences for prospects. Customers also might not respond immediately to your requests. Use email sequences for getting back in touch with them too. Whether you have a request for your customer or you want to make sure the implementation process is going smoothly, set up an email sequence to lighten your workload.

Want to stay in touch with referral partners so that they know you’re available to help too? Don’t hesitate to automate some of that outreach so that you’re sending them an email on a monthly basis.

10）您是否有多套用于目标帐户的电子邮件和语音邮件序列？

如果您认为自己真的可以帮助一家公司，请在尝试几次尝试后放弃。bob全站app在追求那些完美的帐户（可以使您的一年的帐户）时，请确保您要加入额外的研究时间并真正改变您的连接方法。

对于这些机会，由于它们可能与更大的公司达成更大的交易，因此请确保您拥有针对不同角色的消息传递。如果您尝试达到多个联系人的尝试失败，请设计另一套测序电子邮件，这些电子邮件被定制为最有可能引起注意力的“钩子”。如果您的第一个连接序列不起作用，请重试！

11) Do you have a plan for who you’re going to call each day or are you calling random contacts at random times?

Call technology has advanced rapidly over the last few years, but many sales organizations haven’t kept pace. When you're phone prospecting, do you queue up who you want to call and work down the list? Or do you take time between each call figuring out who to call next and dialing them manually?

The most efficient salespeople block off time to make calls. They create a list of prospects to call so that they can maximize phone time when they start dialing. When you're watching the episode of the Bachelor or House of Cards at night or sorting through your emails at the end of the day, add prospects to a queue for the next day's calling.

12) Does it take several back-and-forth emails to schedule a call with a prospect?

There's nothing worse than going back and forth with prospects over email when trying to schedule a phone call, especially when there's multiple people involved. Looking at your calendar and finding times, sending over a list and waiting for them to check those times in their calendar, then providing alternate times -- is a slow and painful process. Before you know it, you've booked a meeting a month out because neither of you had visibility into the other's calendar and your prospect just said, “Screw this” and sent you dates way in the future because it was easier. All of this is precious time wasted -- not to mention a massive delay and a bad buyer experience.

而是使用允许您与潜在客户共享免费插槽的系统。让他们确切查看您何时自由，并选择最适合他们的时间。一些销售代表甚至在其勘探电子邮件或电子邮件签名中将这些链接正确。“嘘k time if this is a priority for you”当然跳动，“When do you have 10 minutes to talk?”

13) Do you have to spend time searching through your inbox and calendar to figure out when you last communicated with a prospect and what the correspondence was?

如果你需要做任何挖掘回忆起旧箴spect correspondence, you're just wasting time. Instead, automatically log your emails, recorded phone calls, and scheduled meetings right to your prospect’s record in your CRM. This helps you easily see all the communication anyone on your team has had with a prospect in just one click. Stop the searching and sorting time-suck. Use that saved time to sell, instead.

14) Are you manually taking notes during phone calls?

Some salespeople still use a paper and pen while they're on a phone call. Of course, that’s the right way to do it when you're selling face-to-face. But on the phone I find that it's only good for capturing a few highlights, as it takes too much time and focus to handwrite notes -- not to mention that it’s slower. (My mother failed to teach me short hand, but luckily she forced me to type my own papers -- after 6th grade at least.) Today, I find that Evernote (or the note-taking app of your choice) is a much more efficient way to take notes on calls over the phone. Of course, some saynot to take notes at all.

Whether you love Evernote like me or have stuck with the old-school pen and pad, you risk missing something important. After all, if you don’t hear something, you can’t write it down or type it. A smart salesperson plays back their calls to uncover important details they might have misheard or completely missed. The best sales managers listen to their rep's recorded calls to help them determine and prep for the next step in the sales process. Not only is this impossible if you don't record the calls, but it's a pain to pass files around. Instead, automatically capture call recordings and attach them to contact records in your CRM. Sales reps and managers alike can then access recordings of active deals.

更复杂的组织使用呼叫审查和注释软件bob电竞官方下载execvision.ioorRefract.TVto review calls and coach asynchronously.

15）您是否有可以在多个销售过程中使用的规范文档？

Towards the end of your sales process, when you’re demonstrating your capabilities, finalizing scope or handling last minute concerns, documents come in handy. Later stages of your sales process when prospects ask for static information like product pricing or case studies, content is very reusable.

You can organize your content for your whole team to access it, then track when prospects read it or share it using Documents in HubSpot Sales.

If you regularly send contracts or quotes that require a lot of customization, consider using document automation software and electronic signature software likehellosignorPandaDoc使它变得容易。如果您的销售人员必须使用独特的产品或服务配置每个报价，则document automationwill make that process simpler and quicker. Just make sure your contract tool integrates with your CRM to instantly customize the contract with prospect contact data. (Disclaimer: I’m an advisor to PandaDoc, and both HelloSign and Pandadoc are HubSpot Connect partners.)

16) Do you have a simple way of tracking which deals are in which stage of your sales process?

Now that you’re identifying, connecting and advising prospects through their buying process (AKA your sales process), it’s critical to keep track of which deals are at what stage. Close dates and close likelihood should be estimated. Many reps still do this in a notebook or whiteboard because changing it in a CRM is time consuming. (I know I did.)

But with modern CRMs, changing deal stages is often just a drag and drop exercise. You can see what changing deal stage looks like in HubSpot CRM below.

不仅，改变CRM中的交易阶段不仅有助于更好地预测销售经理的预测，还可以帮助营销知道哪些营销活动正在努力推动以高速公路和短销售周期近距离接近的热门潜在客户。向营销提供此信息有助于他们提高可以交付给销售团队的潜在客户的质量。

Continuous Sales Process Improvement Crushes Competition

Virtually all businesses rely on a steady flow of new accounts for their survival. Companies that master customer acquisition don’t get there by accident -- they’ve built a process very purposefully, constantly benchmarking themselves against peers and the competition. Their dedication to continuous improvement helps them efficiently acquire more clients and crush their competition.

While technology does not make a sales process, it certainly enables reps to follow one efficiently. As you build out your process, focus on the customer, but also consider the steps every rep must take to get their job done. When reps are more efficient, they can help more prospects. Win for the rep. Win for the company. Win for the customer.

Which of these 16 tips are you already using? Share your success stories in the comments. What other ways have you improved processes and efficiency for your sales team?