How to Create an Efficient Sales Process

Did you know that a car buyer spends about 59% of the time allocated for purchase doing online research? This tells you that the buyer is quite informed. It takes a clever dealer to convert a prospect into a customer.

It takes a well thought out sales process to get customers and close deals.

A well-implemented business process can help you improve your sales and makes your employees more efficient, consistent and accurate.

Developing a conversion plan helps you move customers through the sales funnel. Your entire business benefits when you have a plan that meets the needs of the buyer.

This process will improve conversations between customers and your employees. It also makes sure that your customers have positive and consistent experiences when interacting with your business.

Sales processes are particularly useful in car sales. If you are a car dealer, you must have a clear strategy that involves getting prospects to close a deal with you.

Here are a few tips on how to convert potential customers into satisfied buyers.

Take Stock of Your Existing Process

In the car business, many sales representatives use tactics that worked a few years ago but aren’t applicable now. If you have been in the business for a while, you have a way you go about your car sales, but is it the right way?

Take time to review your entire process. Start from when a prospective client approaches. Look into the activities of your sales reps.

Look for patterns. Are there any that your dealership needs to change? There are particular things you should look for.

How long does the conversion (from prospect to customer) take? What tools do you use? Are you making more phone calls or emails?

Are there any marketing tools available? What are the obstacles at each stage? These questions should help you point out problems in your existing sales process.

This review should point out the major wins and losses for the entire process. Identify the best performing sales tools, sales reps, and touch points-these are instrumental in your sales process.

While you’re at it, make sure to look at isolated cases. Investigate bulk orders and custom requests.

After such a probe you could come up with possible areas you need to change. This becomes your starting point in creating a sales process.

Compare Your Process to the General Framework

Remember that your objective is to create a sales process that suits your business. Each dealership has to have a unique sales process that meets the needs of their market.

Consider all the steps in your sales process and classify them within the general framework. For example, reps’ activities lie within the prospect’s stage. Any contact with a customer is within the contact stage.

Now create a parent-child hierarchy for the classified activity. How does this work, you may wonder? Each task falls somewhere.

All related subtasks should fall under one major task, such as follow-up. If this is the main task, the sequence of subtasks should entail sending a follow-up email, calling up the customer, and reviewing their objections.

The arrangement will help you see how your sales reps move from step to step. You can then decide where they should spend most of their time and effort.

There’s no need to focus too much on a customer that’s already settled for a deal. Pursue that prospect that needs assistance through the sales funnel. Figure out the most constructive ways to persuade them to buy.

This sequence is vital and creates order. Everything will happen when it should without repeating steps and wasting valuable time.

Why Do Prospects Convert?

This is your primary concern. You want to know what makes a prospect a client.

At this stage, you need both positive and negative feedback. Get it from your sales reps and customers.

By doing this you will see a cause-effect in your former process. You should know the reasons people buy from your dealership as well as why they walk away.

Derive lessons from your past experiences. Then include these lessons in your sales process. Keeping doing what’s good and drop the bad stuff.

This is the best way to replicate success: copy what you did earlier and succeeded. Then do away with what did not work.

Fine Tune Parts of the New Process

At this point, you can improve the selling process. 

By now you have assessed the strengths of your existing process. You have also compared it against a general framework. You have therefore identified what needs to change and what doesn’t.

It’s now time to consolidate your findings and get started with a new sales process.

Some of the things you can question include;

What are our best practices?

Do the steps contribute to the general practices?

What doesn’t?

Are there redundancies?

The list is not exhaustive. In short, you are looking at the effectiveness of your current sales process. You are pinpointing the errors observed and planning on how to eradicate them.

Leave no stone unturned when looking for errors. They cannot afford to ruin your next big deal.

Sales Process

If you have the best sales process, your business will boom. The best one has clear sales process steps with no ambiguity or redundancy.

There should be evidence of results during the transition from one step to another. Signs could be that more prospects convert into customers or you’re getting more information about what works and what doesn’t. 

Creating a sales process should no longer be a problem. With these steps, you won’t have to sweat it out. If your dealership needs help generating sales, check out our online training courses. We’ll show you how to convert leads into sales!