Creating a Sales Process Flowchart for Your Startup

Your startup requires a structured sales process to provide your sales team with a consistent, scalable, and repeatable method for selling and improving sales performance. Everyone within your organization is responsible for selling and should understand your organization’s sales process. One way to help your employees visualize the sales process is to create a sales process flowchart. 

The sales process flowchart outlines best practices for the next steps to take in making a sale. It helps sales teams to determine the right actions to take when a prospect makes an objection or accepts an offer. In essence, it is a decision tree that helps you to manage your sales leads at each phase of the buyer’s journey.

Let’s dive into the process of creating a sales process flowchart for your startup.

Quick takeaways: 

• The sales process leads prospects through the buyer’s journey
• The sales process flowchart illustrates the approach to moving leads through the sales funnel 
• Follow some basic strategies for designing your first sales process flowchart

Understanding the Sales Process

A well-structured sales process moves prospects through the buyer’s journey. This process ensures that prospects follow a systematic and scalable path along the buyer’s journey so that they develop trust, confidence, and commitment at each stage. Every business has its own sales process but they all follow a similar path:

• Research the prospect by gathering information about the industry, the market, the company, and the individual 
• Introduce yourself and your business with authenticity and transparency 
• Qualify your contact based on what you’ve heard in the conversation
• Learn about your contact, their organization, and their operations
• Present your value proposition to decision-makers and key stakeholders, showcasing your solution and how it solves their business issues
• Propose an offer that addresses the prospect’s needs, motivations, and challenges
• Resolve issues or objections with honesty, authenticity, and transparency
• Agree to next steps before finishing the conversation

Importance of Creating a Sales Process Flowchart

Tracking and analyzing your sales process can help you identify which actions create more revenue and which actions lose leads. A sales process flowchart helps to clearly outline the protocols that sales reps should follow to improve the odds of securing new customers and improving sales figures. According to Harvard Business Review, companies with a formal sales process increased their revenue by 28% compared to companies without a formal sales process.

A sales process flowchart illustrates the approach to moving leads through the sales funnel. It helps to ensure that sales reps provide leads with a high-quality experience. It also makes it easier to create long-term sales strategies and enforces company branding. You can use the sales process flowchart to: 

• Uncover insights in your sales process
• Identify strategies for scaling your B2B sales
• Make your sales pipeline and sales cycle more predictable

Designing Your Sales Process Flowchart

Start small when designing your sales process flowchart. Your sales process will evolve as your company grows, and so will the flowchart. Follow these steps to design your first sales process flowchart:

• Write out the most important steps in your sales process and post-sales support
• Keep the flowchart simple and digestible by limiting it to 10 to 15 steps 
• Assign resources and roles to support each step in the flowchart
• Ensure your sales team and related departments buy into the sales process
• Measure your sales team’s success at each step of the flowchart
• Use the data to improve the management of your sales pipeline to increase the amount and speed of revenue growth
• Add more detail to the sales process flowchart over time to maintain its quality and consistency

Create a Sales Process Flowchart for Your Startup

Every business needs a documented and structured sales process to ensure that sales teams follow a consistent, scalable, and repeatable method of selling. The sales process flowchart will help your team visualize your organization’s sales process to create a better selling experience.

If you need help creating a sales process flowchart and growing sales, let’s talk!