- January 6, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
As we do each season, my family attended the Boston Pops Holiday Concert at Symphony Hall in Boston. Although we’ve attended for close to 23 years, this year I noticed something different and that experience will help you better understand the important role that sales process plays in the context of a modern sales methodology.
As I wrote in this article, Sales Process is a framework for consistent, predictable, repeatable results and the framework is best deployed as a staged, milestone-centric, buyer-focused sequence of events. Listen to this five-second clip from a very popular holiday song.
You just listened to the bass violins and cellos isolated from the rest of the song. Did it sound familiar? Can you name the song? Listen to the complete song where you will hear the bass and cello joining in at around the 12-second mark.
Putting this together, the role of the basses and cellos in Sleigh Ride is the foundation of the song or, for our purposes, the equivalent to the sales process.
Sales methodology is the conversation required to move from milestone to milestone and stage to stage in the sales process. The recording of the entire orchestra is the equivalent of a great conversation. The isolated Bass/cello part is largely invisible to the audience but it’s foundational to the song, just as sales process, while foundational to the conversation, should be largely invisible to a prospect.
A well designed sales process has so many benefits. Here are five:
- Unity: everyone speaks the same language
- Measurable: ability to accurately identify where opportunity is in the sales cycle
- Control: salespeople know where they are and what they must do in each sales cycle
- Efficiency: eliminates unnecessary quotes and proposals
- Consistency: a well designed sales process leads to consistent results
Baseline Selling is best described as conversational sales process and methodology. I’ve shared this video before, and if you haven’t seen it, take ten minutes to understand how the Baseline Selling sales process works!