#017: How to Map Out And Define The Different Stages of Your Sales Process

Read time - 4 min

Today I’m going to discuss how you want to think about building your sales process, and the exit criteria needed for the prospect to move through each different stage.

If you want to understand why prospects choose to buy from you and why opportunities are lost, it is absolutely essential that you flesh out a clearly defined sales process. It will provide you with valuable insights into your ICP’s behavior, their preferences, and buying motivation. 

The problem I see frequently is many founder led sales teams are winging it. They have no sales process, so naturally they have no idea why they are losing deals. Everything is rooted in speculation.

If you are not measuring each step of the process I can almost guarantee you your CAC and burn rate will be super high. 

What gets measured gets managed.

For simplicity purposes I’m going to use traditional SaaS sales stages that can be optimized to reflect your sales process if this isn’t 100% applicable. What I cover will be relevant for 85% of startups.

There are 6 steps to a sales process, and exit criteria that must be met in order for them to progress in the stages.

1. Discovery

2. Demo

3. Scoping

4. POC

5. Negotiation

6. Close

Let's take a look at the criteria that needs to be met in order to move them forward in the sales process. 

Discovery

• The Buyer Status is: Are they interested in finding a solution to whatever it is you solve for?
  

• The Exit Criteria For You is to identify BANT, and agree there is alignment and an initial fit.
  

• The Exit Criteria For The Buyer: They have identified a problem we can solve and they have expressed a willingness to take action. A champion who can drive the deal forward by engaging other stakeholders.
  

• If this information has not been identified they are not a qualified opportunity at revenue.

Demo

• The Buyer Status is: How can your product solve their specific use cases / needs?
  
  

• The Exit Criteria For You: Clearly have demonstrated how your product can solve the use cases conveyed on the discovery in a quick, efficient and economic way.
  

• The Exit Criteria For The Buyer: They’ve agreed your product can deliver and are willing to move to the next stage which is the scoping call.

Scoping

• The Buyer Status is: Can your product deliver on expectation?
  
  

• The Exit Criteria For You: Understand the success criteria they’re looking to validate on the POC, and feel 97% confident that you can deliver.
  

• The Exit Criteria For The Buyer: They are prepared to move forward on the POC.

POC

• The Buyer Status is: Was the tech validated during the POC?
  
  

• The Exit Criteria For You: POC recap call was held to identify any issues that came up during the pilot.
  

• The Exit Criteria For The Buyer: They have expressed or the questions and concerns and are prepared to move forward with negotiations to close.

Negotiation

• The Buyer Status is: Are they prepared to buy?
  
  

• The Exit Criteria For You: Conveying final pricing and negotiation. Negotiations, if they occur will happen in 2 areas: Pricing and length of agreement.
  

• The Exit Criteria For The Buyer: They gave you the verbal green light and contracts are sent.

Close

• The Buyer Status is: The contract has been received.
  

• The Exit Criteria For You: Addressing any contract concerns and receiving the signed agreement back. Scheduling the go live date.
  

• The Exit Criteria For The Buyer: They are a new customer. Closed won!

Please understand there is a lot of variables here and much nuance, but high level this is how you want to think about defining sales stages with founder led sales.

Big Announcement: We are opening up our next founder led sales accelerator that begins on 9/6. This is a 90 day program, that dives super deep into building out consistent lead gen and fleshing out a fully functional and repeatable sales process. There are limited spots available. We keep these accelerators very intimate. We cannot hold any spots. It’s first come, first serve. To learn more about what the expected results will be at the conclusion of the accelerator check out this page. 

(If the link doesn't work for you copy and paste rampd.co/accelerator into your browser)

That’s it for today folks.

See you all next week!

Darren

P.S. If you’re ready to level up you can book a call with me here.