How to Increase Sales by Improving your Sales Process
With Mark Burton-Brown, Managing Director at Engagement Partners
Show Notes
Mark Burton-Brown is the Managing Director of Engagement Partners, and helps business leaders to achieve their sales growth objectives much faster than they were previously able to.
He has more than 20 years’ experience in sales management. In recent times, he’s been working closely with inside sales teams to lift performance and employee engagement.
He shares the importance of having a formal sales process in place, and how you can go about developing one.
Mark’s Top Tips:
Create your sales process based on a best-practice and proven template. Mark has one he’s happy to share, and talk you through - get in touch with him on LinkedIn (14:27).
Get buy-in from your team by getting them involved. Identify up to 8 people in the business who are already following a sales process. Run a workshop with them, and refine the sales process they follow into a one-pager (04:31).
Start to implement the process. It's not going to be perfect, but it's going to be better than what you used to do. By continuing to iterate the process, within a year you’ll probably be surprised how far you’ve come (09:37).
You'll Learn:
The 3 common challenges inside sales teams struggle with (02:25).
How a formal sales process can lead to 28% faster revenue growth (03:37).
The 4 key things to include on your one-pager, so your people are clear on how to succeed (05:27).
The most important phase of the sales process, which most salespeople do poorly - and what to do about it. The secret ratio Mark shares helps position your people as trusted advisors - rather than product pushers (07:12).
The 2 changes in perspective you can make, which will help your people succeed (09:37).
The best-practice approach Mark recommends for keeping your sales process up-to-date (10:49).
The 8 positive outcomes which result from having a formal sales process in place. You’ll never guess the third one (11:11).
The common concern salespeople have about following a sales process, and the answer (15:32).
Connect with Mark here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markbb/
If you’d like a copy of his sales process template, get in touch with him on LinkedIn. He’s happy to share it with you, and talk you through it.
If your priorities include strengthening employee engagement, lifting customer experience, or increasing your focus on coaching and development, I can help you out with a few ideas that you can steal. Send me an email (at blairs@bravatrak.com) and we can organize a 15-minute call over Zoom or Teams.
Transcript
Blair Stevenson (00:00)
Welcome to the Secrets to Contact Center Success podcast, connecting you with the latest and greatest tips from the best and the brightest minds in the industry.
I am Blair Stevenson, founder of BravaTrak, the Coaching System for Contact Centres. It helps you to boost engagement and drive results by measuring and improving your Team Leaders' coaching effectiveness.
I'm joined today by Mark Burton-Brown, who's a sales growth expert and the Managing Director of Melbourne-based Engagement Partners.
In recent times, Mark has been working closely with inside sales teams. And if you're unfamiliar with the term, that might be because inside sales teams tend to be business-to-business, while many outbound contact centre teams tend to be business-to-consumer. They do similar work, but their sales process is different.
Today, Mark is here to talk about the importance of having a formal sales process in place, and how you can go about developing one.
So, Mark, welcome on.
Mark Burton-Brown (01:00)
Thanks for having me, Blair. It's good to be here.
Blair Stevenson (01:02)
Yeah, likewise, it's great to have you. So let's start out by, if you could tell the listeners a bit about who you are, what your experience and expertise is.
Mark Burton-Brown (01:12)
Sure. I am based in Melbourne. I'm actually a Kiwi, so I travel regularly to Australia and New Zealand. I say I've got the best of both worlds.
My sales background has been across many different industries and countries. I've been lucky enough to work in New Zealand, Australia, France, and Hong Kong. So it's been a really interesting career. And about five and a half years ago, I started Engagement Partners.
And what we do is we help CEOs and business leaders who are growth minded. They usually are already doing really well, but they become somewhat frustrated because they know they should be growing faster than they are. And that's usually when they look to us for help.
We work across many, many different industries helping a number of different companies.
A testament to our success today is that 62% of the companies that we've ever worked with are still with us today. So we're still helping them after five and a half years.
Blair Stevenson (02:05)
That's an impressive track record. You mentioned you've been working with a number of companies, and I know that you've started to work with a number of inside sales teams. That's probably growing partly because of COVID.
What are the challenges they typically face when you start working with them?
Mark Burton-Brown (02:25)
Good question. And it's definitely changed since COVID, right? Because salespeople typically will go out and be in front of the customer and that's all changed. Particularly in Melbourne, where most of last year we were in lockdown.
Whether it's face-to-face or in call centers, there's similar challenges I find. The first one is - and it's probably the hardest thing to do - is recruit good salespeople. Because typically, they'll do their best sales job at the job interview and it's really hard to validate it. So that's the first challenge.
The second thing is having a really good customer centric sales process, that's best practice that everyone's following. Typically, what I see is everyone's doing something different. They're all trying their best, trying to use what works.
And the third thing is good coaching, and particularly coaching around the sales process.
They would be the three biggest challenges that I’ve come across, pretty much everywhere.
Blair Stevenson (03:18)
You and I have talked a lot about the importance of coaching and what has to happen there, but today I want to dig into the sales process.
In your opinion, why is it important to have a formal sales process in place?
Mark Burton-Brown (03:37)
I define it as being a 'system for success', right? Taking out, removing all the guesswork and all the theory about what you do, and actually develop a system for success.
Harvard Business Review wrote an article, which I think was really good. And they said, if you have in place a good sales process, pipeline management and coaching, the difference between companies that have that and companies that don't, the companies with were growing 28% faster than those without (see the article here: https://hbr.org/2015/01/companies-with-a-formal-sales-process-generate-more-revenue).
So I think that speaks volumes, doesn't it, in terms of what it can do.
Blair Stevenson (04:07)
It does. It just calls to the fact that when you start to document it, you start to work on what is best-practice. Rather than, as you say, have a whole bunch of people who are trying to do their best, but actually they're all doing different things.
So just talk us through the approach you use to develop and implement a sales process for business-to-business inside sales teams.
Mark Burton-Brown (04:31)
The main thing is to get as many people involved and get as much buy-in as possible, right?
And the way to do that, that I recommend, is first of all, find a group of about up to eight people in the business that are already following a sales process. It's more than likely their own one. It's more than likely they've been in the business or the industry for some time. And they typically know what they're doing. They're great people to get in that initial workshop.
When you workshop with them, make sure whatever you produce is really simple and easy to follow. So it's not complicated and it's on one page. And that can be quite hard to do, but I think putting it on one page is a good way of really making you challenge what you're writing down.
I've seen books of 20 pages, and Blair, is any sales person going to be flipping through a book of 20 pages, while they're trying to talk to a customer?
Blair Stevenson (05:21)
Not going to happen. So what's on that one page, what are the key things?
Mark Burton-Brown (05:27)
We have on there what I call 'phases'. So it's like a staging gate process. You need to figure out what are the typical phases that you want to follow, that fit with your customer's buying process.
And then within that, you have objectives, steps, and then measurable outcomes. So how do you know you've actually achieved it before you move on to the next stage or the next phase?
And that's really important, because a lot of salespeople, I've found, will go through the whole process from beginning to end, and get to the end and go, "I shouldn't have been here. I didn't deserve the right to be here. I've wasted a lot of time".
And then on top of that, some other key things to add, which can make a big difference, are things like:
How much time should we spend in each phase?
What sort of percentage weighting would we give to that phase? So we can start to use it for forecasting.
If I go through each phase, and do it well, how likely am I to actually win that customer?
And finally, being able to link activities to each phase. Because if you're following a good sales process with phases, you can work back. You can reverse engineer what your target is, back to what activities you need to do. To not only achieve your target, but to exceed it.
And salespeople love that because now they've got clarity around what they need to do every day to be successful, rather than just turning up and hoping for the best.
Blair Stevenson (06:53)
That makes perfect sense. For our listeners, just to create a little more clarity, talk us through one of the typical phases. What might be a typical objective, what might be some typical steps in there, and a typical timeframe?
Mark Burton-Brown (07:12)
Probably the most important phase is that consultative meeting with the client. So you might have rung them to make an appointment, to call them back, to do that consultative meeting.
It's really important because most salespeople do what we call 'showing up and throwing up'. They don't ask enough questions. They don't ask great questions and they don't really understand what the customer's situation is, or challenges are, or concerns. And they just start to push whatever they're selling on them. That phase is so important.
Things in there we look for are, you're trying to build rapport, you're trying to position yourself as a trusted advisor by asking different questions, asking them what their concerns are, asking them where they're at.
And typically, you should be doing about 20 to 30% of the talking, maximum. You really want the customer to open up.
(07:58)
And this is where you uncover challenges or problems that they have, that you can hopefully help them with. And that's when you'd go to the stage of saying, "Hey, I can understand these are quite significant problems. I understand the impact they're potentially going to have. I know I can help you with this. Would you be willing to work with me to do that?"
That's the key, because otherwise, if you turn up to the next phase, which is usually a presentation and you haven't done that, people just feel like they're being sold to.
And, Blair, how often does that happen when we're out in the marketplace, people are selling to us and without even understanding what we want to do?
Blair Stevenson (08:33)
All the time, people just pushing their product. So this talks to how important documenting all those phases is.
Mark Burton-Brown (08:42)
Absolutely. And just a couple other things to add to that process is getting the buy-in from everyone. I mentioned earlier that's really important.
But also what's quite important is that it needs to come off a bit of paper and it needs to be embedded in your CRM, as what we call a 'sales enablement tool'. Rather than a 'sales inspection tool' and measuring people. You can put it in there and you can build some coaching around it. It really does help salespeople to be successful.
Particularly new people, because you know what it's like. You've seen it. New people come in and they're given their desk and a two week induction, and "Off you go". It's sink or swim.
Blair Stevenson (09:19)
And this does talk to a really important point that if you've got that sales process in place, then new people go, "Well, this is why we do business here". And they just pick it up and run with it.
What have you learned from taking this approach with inside sales teams?
Mark Burton-Brown (09:37)
I've learnt a lot, and obviously we learn more from our mistakes than what we do right. This is one thing I say to all sales teams. "Hey, if you're making mistakes, it means you're trying things”.
And another thing, Blair, I like to say is "It's okay if you make the same mistake twice". Because we need to create a safe learning environment for people, don't we? And that whole, "You can make a mistake once, but not twice", that's not safe. That doesn't make anyone feel safe.
So usually they don't, but I just recommend any Sales Manager watching this, change your messaging on that. It's really important. Make people feel safe.
But what I've learned is that it's a journey. It takes time. Give yourself and give your team time. Just start doing it. Start doing it, and learn and improve, learn and improve. And within a year, you'll probably look back and go, "Wow, look where we've come". So don't put too much pressure on yourself from the beginning, just remember it's a journey.
Blair Stevenson (10:32)
So it's an iterative process. It sounds like what you're suggesting is, at certain points along that journey - particularly in the first year - is reviewing:
What have we learnt?
What could we improve?
What could we sharpen up here?
Mark Burton-Brown (10:49)
Usually we say every three months. But also, if you see something that jumps out, "Hey, we could tweak this or tweak that", just do it in real time. And that's the great thing about the CRM. You can just plug it in and it updates it for everyone.
Blair Stevenson (11:03)
So what are the sorts of outcomes that typically result from having a formal sales process in place?
Mark Burton-Brown (11:11)
I had to make a few notes here, Blair, to prepare for that question because there's so many good ones:
I think first of all, it's the number one tool you can coach on. Because if you coach around the sales process, you can really coach and support your salespeople to be successful.
I mentioned earlier about that phase of that consultative meeting is so important. If you get that right, you can really position yourself as a trusted advisor. And that makes a massive difference in terms of relationships with clients, and the revenue that you generate now and in the future.
Another really important thing is it helps us to qualify, but more importantly - disqualify - customers. And what I've found is that when you really understand where your sweet spot is, where you can really, really help someone, versus you can't, you start focusing there, sales teams I've worked with have saved anything from 10 to 50% of their time.
Blair Stevenson (12:06)
So they've stopped chasing the wrong deals.Mark Burton-Brown (12:11)
And the key there is us as Sales Leaders have to give our sales people permission to stop. That's a big thing. And that makes a massive difference. Sales ratios improve from lead to close. You just see the numbers go up. And that's partly to do with you're not wasting your time talking to people who are not going to buy off you.Sales cycles are shorter. Remember how I mentioned the velocity you put on each phase? We start to hold ourselves accountable to follow a speed that our customers want us to follow. So we see our sales cycles get shorter.
One of the major issues I hear CEOs and business leaders tell me is the unreliable forecasting. If you put a probability weighting on it that's accurate, it actually allows you to put in place a really robust forecasting system that doesn't rely on the sales person going "Well, I think I'm going to get that". So that's another advantage.
It helps you to change your CRM. Most companies have them. But I'd say from what I've seen, 5 to 10% use it well. And the definition of that for me would be 'every salesperson is living in the CRM'. It doesn't happen very often, because they don't really see it as a tool to help them.
Blair Stevenson (13:29)
But if your sales process is embedded in there, they're going to follow up, they're going to use it.Mark Burton-Brown (13:35)
And we have things like coaching videos at each point, as well. And notes, "Ask this question and ask that". So it's really seen as a tool rather than a stick.And the other thing is good salespeople love a sales process. They love it. They live and breathe it. And they know that if they follow it, it helps their success. So they thrive.
So they're for me, the top eight things I could think of.
Blair Stevenson (14:00)
It's pretty compelling.
Mark Burton-Brown (14:07)
If you just do this, it can help your business grow massively.
Blair Stevenson (14:09)
Fantastic. Perhaps as a summary, what would be your top three tips for Contact Centre Leaders and Inside Sales Leaders who realise that they actually don't have a formal sales process in place, and who want to develop one?
Mark Burton-Brown (14:27)
The first thing is to create your own. I've got a template I can give anyone who wants it. Start.
The second thing is get the buy-in from the team. Everyone needs to feel like they've had some ownership.
And the third thing is just start to implement it. It's not going to be perfect, but it's going to be better than what you used to do.
Blair Stevenson (14:46)
And you're going to learn as you implement.
Mark Burton-Brown (14:48)
Exactly. And then our role as Sales Managers and leaders is to coach and support the team. And I think what often we see is that we have to learn new ways of coaching and supporting. Because we've never coached on some of these steps before. And that quite often is highlighted.
Blair Stevenson (15:04)
The way I think about it is, what you're really putting in place is a behavioural framework for salespeople to follow. And, of course, they're all going to apply their own personality. But you've got a successful behavioural framework for them to follow, which means as you enhance that, you're going to create more and more success.
Mark Burton-Brown (15:32)
Absolutely. It's that 'system for success'. And, Blair, you made a good point about everyone having their own personality. Quite often people say to me, "Oh, I don't want to be a robot". It's not about that. It's still having your own identity and personality applied to a formula that works. Be yourself. It doesn't mean you have to be a robot.
Blair Stevenson (15:53)
Very cool. Thanks for the tips, Mark. Really appreciate it.
For listeners, you'll find the link to the show notes in the episode description below.
And if you'd like to connect with Mark on LinkedIn, you'll also find the link to his LinkedIn profile in that description too (https://www.linkedin.com/in/markbb/).
Now, Mark mentioned earlier, if you'd like the sales process template that he uses, to create your own, Mark's happy to share that with you, and to talk you through it. So if you're interested in that, just hit him up on LinkedIn.
Now, if your priorities for this year include boosting employee engagement, lifting customer experience, or increasing your focus on coaching and development, I can help you out with a few ideas that you can steal.
Just send me an email (at blairs@bravatrak.com) and we can organize a 15-minute call over Zoom or Teams. My contact details details are also in the episode description below.
Well, it's up from us today. Have a productive week.