Sharon: Hello, everyone, this is Sharon, and I’m here today with Steven Kohnke from Denver Business Coach. Hello, Steven.
Steven: Hi Sharon, how are you doing?
Sharon: I’m good. I’m eager to learn some information from you, as I always do when we talk. What is our business topic of today?
Steven: Yeah. So as a business owner, it’s sometimes helpful to to really think your business not just as something that happens. It’s really several different components that need to be paid attention to and really focused on and maintained regularly. What we’ve done here in this series is broken it down into seven different components being foundations, leadership, sales, marketing, operations, financials and H.R. We put together these series of tips and insights that business owners can actually take away and apply to their businesses to grow these areas of their business right away. So what we’re really focusing in on today is the sales pillar and more specifically, the actual sales process that happens.
Sharon: I know this is probably a huge conversation and we’re just going to do a little snapshot of it today. But let’s start with the basics. So what is the sales process?
Steven: What is a sales process? So, you know, practically speaking, your sales process is it’s a step by step guide to understand how you’re moving a potential customer from interest to purchase. So really, it’s supposed to be something that anyone can follow and being able to systematically move people along, move customers along to a purchase.
Sharon: That was a good, succinct answer. So tell me this, why is it so important for business owners to really develop a clearer sales process? I mean, they know they’re selling. But why is the process part so important?
Steven: Yeah, that’s a great point to to really call out. There is, you know, a lot of business owners, they’re natural born salespeople and they have to do sales. They have to get people to buy. So when we ask the question, what’s your sales process? It’s I sell.
Sharon: I sell.
Steven: Right. I just do it, which is great for a one man shop. But, you know, if you’re really looking to grow that business, something to be able to teach, something that you can guide, something that you can reference, you know, if you have really long sales cycles, you might only get a chance to have that first step of the conversation once every month or so. So sometimes you can forget what you’re doing. And as you’re going through that process, writing down the language really that that works at each stage, that actually moves again, going back to the what it was, where the goal is to move people along that that line, that pipeline. So and you’re going to find ways that work better than others. And that’s important to write those down. You’re going to find questions that are commonly asked at each stage. And the the the objective is to overcome those objections, to get people to to move further along. Outside of that, it’s good to understand where conversion rates are along that process, because then you can really zero in on understanding what stage might people be falling off and then zero in on that rather than just saying let’s what part of the process isn’t working and why are conversions low at each stage? You can zero in on that and fine tune those pieces to increase that conversion rate.
Sharon: All right. So let’s jump to the how. And again, I know you can probably talk about this for a week, but maybe just a few aspects of the how can a business owner get started in developing their assets and improving it as well?
Steven: Yeah. So to develop your sales process, you know, I think it’s as simple as just writing down what is step one, what is step two, to what is step three. A common way to look at that is when a lead comes in, when someone calls you, that is the beginning of the inbound sales process. So you say, OK, we’re going to have a discovery call, for instance. That’s step one. Where are the questions? I need to understand in the discovery call, what’s the call to action to get them to move to that next stage, whatever that stage is? Is it an estimate or is it a consultation? Is it a proposal? Is it what is that next stage? There needs to be an ask at the end of that. So those are probably the big components of each stage. And you want to understand what each one of those is under each one of those steps, if that makes sense. So really dial in and that was the call to action would have big questions to overcome and how to move them from step one, step two, step three to a purchase. So once you write those down, you can really start using it, maybe creating a couple of scripts, creating answers too frequently asked questions. You know, these are all areas where you can actually improve each step of the process to again, you know, the goal is to get them to a purchase. And if everyone stops at that first conversation, you’re not doing something right in that first conversation. So it’s good to zero in there and seeing what you can do to to move them along. So there’s a bunch of different ways, don’t bunch of different strategies to be looking at in order to increase the conversion rate. But really to get started is to zero in on what are those stages? Where are the questions at each stage? What do you need to know at each stage and how what’s how are you going to get them to move to the next stage?
Sharon: Yeah, yeah, and I imagine folks who watch this video may be feeling a little daunted by the task because you explained it very simply. But but I know there’s more to it than that as well. How could somebody get some support or have a conversation if they want to explore further?
Steven: Yeah, well, the easiest way to get a hold of us is denverbusinesscoach.com reach out to us. And there’s a couple of different ways to do so. And yes, sales processes, they’re very, very important. And they’re the driver of the business, the lifeblood of the business. And we’re all very well versed in how to improve those and create those to be something that you can train on and and increase your conversion rate. So, yeah, reach out to us through the website and we’d be happy to have that conversation.
Sharon: Great, thank you, Steven. Good talking to you today.
Steven: Thanks, Sharon. Talk to you next time.
Sharon: Bye bye.