Without a clear sales roadmap, you risk losing your prospects due to skipping vital steps in the sales process. Do you know what actions you or your prospect must take to close a sale? Do you know where your current prospects are along your sales roadmap?
To develop a sales roadmap customized for your business, I recommend looking at your previous 5 closed deals and analyzing what it took to get them.
A sales roadmap typically starts with generating the lead. Once you have someone interested in your product or service, what has to happen next? Do you need to qualify them, or do you need to send them a brochure? How soon after initial contact does this need to happen?
Next, you want to think about what it took to close that sale. Did you deliver a presentation or provide a free trial?
By recognizing what it took to close that sale, you’ll be crystal clear about what to do next to move the sale along. Maybe someone contacted you about your product or service, and you sent them your brochure, but nothing has happened since. Should you now be scheduling a call or inviting them to visit your showroom?
I encourage you to spend the time developing a sales roadmap for your sales processes and putting steps in place to make sure all parts of the roadmap are met as you move the prospect closer to a closed sale.
I recommend using a CRM tool to track these. In my CRM, I have different stages laid out in sequential order that I tick off as I complete them. This way, I can, for example, easily see that I haven’t met with the prospect yet, and I know that a face-to-face meeting can drastically increase my chances of a close.