Sales management is the process of planning, recruiting, training, organizing, supervising, and coordinating an organization's sales force. Whether you are selling a service or a product, sales managers are responsible for managing the sales force, setting the objectives for the team, planning and controlling the entire sales process, and ultimately ensuring the execution of the team vision. More than any other group in an organization, the role of a sales team is probably the most crucial one, since it has a direct impact on an organization's revenue.
One of the most important functions that you have as a sales manager is to set up and implement a sales process for your business. Let's take a deeper look at crafting the perfect sales process for your business.
A solid definition of a sales process would be: A planned series of activities at every stage of your sales pipeline used as a roadmap for moving the sale forward. The sales process begins with the contacting of a lead and ends with the closing of a deal.
No two businesses are the same, and the same logic applies to building a sales process. Ideally, your sales process should replicate the buyer's journey and it should be clear and self-explanatory, even for a newly recruited sales rep to understand. As a sales manager, you should define a sales process that ensures you meet your specific set of goals at every stage, and that leads flow through the system without any hindrance.
To understand where the sales process fits within an organization, it's important to understand the marketing and sales funnel and how a lead flows across the funnel.