What is the sales process, what is its importance in commercial activities and why is it important?
Let's try to analyze the issue in the context of B2B sales .
We can define the sales process as a series of consecutive, precisely defined activities that result in the effective establishment of a B2B business contact and then in carrying out a transaction that results in the sale of our products or services to the buyer.
Like any process, the sales process also consists of proper, successive stages . These are the next steps that we must take in our sales activities to be effective.
In order to properly structure the B2B sales process kenya phone number data or optimize an existing business process, it is necessary to verify and plan each stage.
What will you learn from this article?
B2B Sales Process – Stages
Pre-sales stages
Defining the buyer persona – B2B buyer persona
Prospecting
Creation of a dedicated database of B2B contacts
B2B Lead Generation
Sales Stages – Finalizing the Transaction (Actual Sales Process)
Needs analysis
Preparing a value proposition and offer
Offer presentation
Negotiations
Finalization of the transaction
Summary
B2B Sales Process – Stages
The next stages of sales in our process refer not only to conducting the sales transaction itself, but also require planning of prior activities aimed at establishing business contact and building B2B relationships.
The B2B sales process can therefore be divided into subsequent, sequential sales stages.
B2B Sales Process - Sales Stages
Pre-sales stages
Defining the buyer persona – B2B buyer persona
At this stage of the sales process, we first need to precisely define the profile of our buying persona – in the case of B2B sales, it will be a specific person working in a given company, in a specific position, responsible for purchasing decisions in the product segment that we want to offer.
On this basis, we define the profile of a potential B2B trading partner to whom we plan to direct our offer and at the same time the profile of the person responsible for purchasing decisions in this organization . We can use many different selection criteria here, thanks to which we can narrow down the circle of potential recipients to whom we direct our offer as much as possible. We can take into account selection criteria such as: industry and type of business, customer segment reached with the offer, size of the company; whether its organizational structure is centralized or dispersed; our preferred location, expected position of decision-makers in the subject matter of interest to us, etc.
On this basis, we defined the profile of our purchasing persona – the B2B buyer persona , which may be, for example:
Production Director or other person responsible for the optimization and control of production processes, including the purchase of machinery and equipment, working in a furniture manufacturing company, a medium-sized enterprise (employing 50-250 people), located in the Małopolska Province.