How Does One Build The Ideal Sales Experience?

First you must understand what makes it ideal.

It’s ideal from the potential customer’s perspective. It’s what moves them through a process they hope for from a company and a sales professional. It is all about them – understanding their current situation and where they would rather be instead. In whatever way you can help facilitate that.

It’s not about what your CRM pipeline stages are set at. It’s not about what you hope potential buyers will do as they move through your process. It’s not about what your salespeople prefer to do as a sales process, and what they think is best.

What To Build

Second – and why are you here – let’s talk about what to build.

Let’s imagine you were going to open a restaurant.

What would be on the menu? What is the culinary experience you want them to have? What food do you want them to be able to try and then to enjoy? What is the taste bud journey you hope to guide them through?

What would the restaurant build out be like? What would the décor, tables, etc. be like? What would your staff be focused on – the type of experience?

As you go through this…you might default to wanting it to be ‘your restaurant’, your way, your vision, your ideals, your journey. But if you step back…who is at the center of that experience? Who do you need to ensure is happy? And not just happy, actually, but so happy with what they ate, how it was presented, and everything that occurred before they even stepped through the door, that they want to share the experience with everyone they know.

Customer Experience First

If you put the customer’s experience first, how you would build out that restaurant? Or your bar? Or your mini golf place? Or your store?

For some reason, when a company decides to go into a sales-driven business, they forget a lot of that focus. They focus on the ‘we are amazing, we started an amazing company, we have an amazing product, our customers will want our amazingness.’ And then build a sales experience centered on ensuring everyone will bask in the glow of their amazingness.

Focus on the Prospect

Instead, your CRM stages should be set to what your prospective customer – Humans – actually do as they move through the buying process.

Your communication channels should put the control in the hands of your prospects – to meet them in whatever way they want to communicate. Don’t make them fill out a form on your site as the only way to get more info. Don’t make them call you as the only way to get their questions answered. They (your prospects) don’t work for you – stop trying to dictate what they can and cannot do as a way to interact with you.

Emails Focused on the Prospect

As I have written recently, your emails should be focused on them and you. And not just to make them the hero of the story, but to help meet them in their ideal sales experience. Not for you to make demands (“Use my link to set up a time to meet”).

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes – what would you want from your company, if you were them? What would that journey look like?

Important note: I am not advocating just making it all about them, and ending up with processes, systems, and teams that have become focused on being Order Takers, leading your company to fail because no one (and no process) is actually moving prospects to becoming customers.

Conclusion

Remember – the ideal sales experience – is just that – a sales experience. Which means a sale is the goal. A new customer that is excited about what they purchased (with low levels of buyer’s remorse). This isn’t about the ideal “customer experience” – which is about keeping a current customer happy. This is about getting a scared, confused human (your prospects) to understand their goals and where your company’s offering(s) are at the intersection of what they want and need.

The ideal sales experience moves people forward and is the only way your sales operation will succeed.