Which criteria can be used to evaluate the quality of the sales process?

Improving the quality of the sales process should improve the overall health of the company. Generally, the process, whether for product or services, involves three separate but related departments that form a sales pipeline.

This sales pipeline can be expressed as a linear flowing sequencing system containing a feedback loop, from marketing to sales to customer support and back to marketing.

In the sales pipeline, the marketing department determines and creates sales opportunities, generates sales leads and maintains prospect flow, all of which feed into the pipeline. The sales force does the actual selling, moving the flow along the pipeline. And customer support, far from simply dealing with complaints, implements ongoing customer relationship management and gathers market intelligence.

Too often, one group – sales – attempts to perform all three chores. These dysfunctional situations work for a while when a company is first starting out, but as the company grows, inevitably problems show up, and the system has to be changed completely. Obviously, it would be smarter to get it right the first time.

In many traditional operations, these three groups work independent of each other, refusing or unable to share information. Because the marketing department is not attracting quality prospects, the sales force has to employ desperate measures such as discounting and giveaways to meet sales quotas. And because the customer support department is not funnelling customer feedback into the pipeline, the marketing department continues to find the wrong type of prospects.

Typically, these types of operations have a low sales closure rate and reduced revenue capacity. Therefore the most common methods for evaluating a sales process are to examine its sales closure rate and the revenue it produces, or its return on investment. Unfortunately, many companies merely examine successes or failures of individuals, or impose artificial quotas to boost revenue.

There are ways you can get these departments working together. For example, you can offer incentives such as prizes, cash compensation or employee recognition awards when departments provide information to each other. Also, review job descriptions so that mutual support is an explicit part of people’s work. And consider reorganizations.

No sales pipeline can be evaluated unless it is viewed as a whole and corrected as a whole, with feedback mechanisms in place. That way the entire operation can focus on the best prospects that will produce the most revenue.