The theme this week is about complete ownership of the sales process by your team. To get them to not give up easily when faced with anything that gets in the way of the sale happening. For them to just hope for and bank on the easy deals – the ones that anyone could have closed. The ones where the prospects wanted it and needed an Order Taker to just get it done.

Your Role as a Sales Operations Leader

Your mission, as a Sales Operations Leader, is to help put the processes in place that will allow your team to do what you need them to do – build relationships with another human and help find ways to leave them in a better place (ideally with your product/service).

If your goal is to improve the ownership level that your team takes with their prospects and the sales pipeline of leads, then the following three areas could help the most.

1. Develop a CRM Aligned with the Buyer’s Journey

First, ensure that you have a fully developed CRM and sales process flow within the CRM.

Don’t just use what the CRM will give you out of the box. Don’t think that it will be ideal for your process. Make sure that you program it with stages that actually match what happens in the real world – with real prospects, going through the BUYER’s journey (not sales journey). How do your ideal clients buy? What are their stages?

The reason this is important for ownership is that you must have a solid way to hold your team accountable to the stages of the sales process, so they can learn to own them fully.

2. Provide a Customer-Centric Sales Process

Second, provide a sales process that provides your prospective customers with the sales experience that they are looking for. One where the salesperson is a Guide, providing Wisdom, and not just monologuing and demoing (hoping that if they say the right things and show the right features/benefits, the prospects will want to buy). Based on over two decades of sales and leadership experience, in multiple industries, with countless salespeople, with the teams I work with I utilize the Authentic Persuasion Pathway – which is designed to overcome each prospect’s biggest fear while putting the salesperson in a position of leadership over the prospect and process.

[If you want to learn about the Authentic Persuasion Pathway, and find out how to implement it with your team – contact me at jason@cutterconsultinggroup.com.]

3. Hire Team Members Who Take Ownership

The third way to help your team own the sales process is through hiring the right people. Yes, you can train some of your team some of the time, but you can’t change people completely from their nature. As they say, it’s hard to change a tiger’s stripes. Your team will generally be who they are, by default. Which means if you have members of your team that aren’t willing or able to own the relationship with your prospects, then you should look at hiring new people who are more inline with what you know works for your team.

I recently wrote a five-part series on hiring for the Sales Success Traits – I recommend checking those out. The strategies I outlined will help you hire people who will have a great blend of openness, curiosity, creativity and persistence.

There is a point with Sales Ops where it is easier and better to hire the people that you need on the team than try to fully change the ones you currently have. If your team isn’t utilizing the CRM, your sales process, your training, coaching, and leadership on successful sales professional mindset – then it could be time to change some of the team.

The Key to Sales Team Success

Remember – your team and company will never succeed on just closing the easy deals. It takes true sales professionals to help enough prospects become customers. 

And your job is to help build the process and systems to support them in that goal.