In the early stages of a business, you often have two simultaneous problems that affect the efficiency of your sales process. First, it is often the founder or management team that are the only ones that understand the nuances of your market. Second, because you are arguably providing a unique product or service, your target market or the use of your product or service may be undefined. As a result of these two factors, you must create a set of standard sales materials that embodies the founder’s knowledge and defines the market.

“Creating an efficient sales process that all your resources can use will take some time, but can be very fruitful once it is completed.” 

Creating an efficient sales process that all your resources can use takes some time, but can be very fruitful once it is completed. The goal is to create a standard set of materials and a standard process that everyone in the selling process uses. The following is an overview of that process.

Sales Materials

Your standard sales materials should consist of the following:

• Introductory E-Mail. Craft an e-mail that all salespeople use as part of the selling process.
• PowerPoint Presentation. This 10-15 slide PowerPoint presentation is the core selling tool you use. It should include each of the following:
  • Problem You Solve
  • Company Successes
  • Unique Value Proposition
  • Your Unique Approach
  • Features and Functionalities of Your Product//Service
  • Results That You Have Delivered for Customers
  • Other Customers/References
• Standard Proposal and Pricing Sheet. Develop a standard proposal and pricing sheet that can be used for every sales opportunity.
• Supporting Presentations. In the same manner you create supporting Sell Sheets, you may need to develop additional supporting presentations on areas that customers expect additional depth. For example, if you are a technology company, you may be asked about privacy and security enough that it may be worthwhile to create a standard presentation.
• FAQs. Develop the responses to a set of frequently asked questions. This can help you have a standard way to overcome objections by having the organization’s best thought embodied in FAQs.

The goal of these standard materials is to cover 90 percent of the process so you don’t feel like you are reinventing the wheel each time. If you find something that keeps coming up that is not included in your materials, take the time to add it to your standard sales materials.

Training

With standard tools and a standard process in place, you can train all existing personnel (and new personnel) around these items. This creates a level of consistency and efficiency in bringing people up to speed on how the organization thinks it should be communicating to customers.