How to Map The Sales Process for Customer Acquisition?

One of the most critical challenges is understanding and managing the Cost of Customer Acquisition (COCA) [You may see it around as CAC (Cost of Acquiring Customers)]. Many entrepreneurs, driven by optimism and a focus on product development, often overlook the intricate and substantial expenses associated with acquiring new customers. This oversight can have several adverse effects on your startup's financial health and long-term sustainability.

Today, we’ll guide you through the sales process and how you can develop a short-term, medium-term, and long-term sales strategy. By mapping out your sales process, you can gain clarity on the cost drivers and make informed decisions to shorten the sales cycle and reduce costs over time.

Let’s define first what is a sales process. Salesforce defines it as a systematic and structured approach that outlines the steps taken by salespeople to convert leads into customers. Usually, this process consists of 5-7 steps such as: Prospecting, Preparation, Approach, Presentation, Handling Objections, Closing, Follow Up.

In "Disciplined Entrepreneurship," Bill Aulet provides a comprehensive guide on developing short-term, medium-term, and long-term sales strategies based on your sales process. This knowledge is crucial for effectively managing said process and ensuring your startup's growth and success overtime.

Short-Term Sales Strategy:

• Direct Sales: Engage in one-on-one sales to create initial demand. This method allows for immediate customer feedback and quick iteration of your product.

• Web-Based Techniques: Utilize social media, email campaigns to reach potential customers. Consider offering free trials or robust documentation for web-based products.

  
  

Medium-Term Sales Strategy:

• Shift Focus: As demand for your product grows, shift your focus from creating demand to fulfilling orders.

• Client Management: Ensure you retain existing customers and create additional sales opportunities through effective client management.

  
  

Long-Term Sales Strategy:

• Order Fulfillment: Focus on fulfilling customer orders efficiently with minimal demand creation efforts.

• Adapt to Competition: Continuously adjust your strategies to stay competitive and responsive to market changes.

  
  

Steps to Map Your Own process:

1. Understand Your Customer Segmentation

   
   

   The prospecting stage is crucial in the sales journey, aiming to discover and connect with potential customers. By targeting the right audience, maintaining a multi-channel approach, and following up diligently, you can cultivate a strong pipeline of prospects, laying the groundwork for ongoing sales success and customer relationships.

   For deeper understanding of Customer Segmentation, we have dedicated an entire issue on the topic with a step by step process to find your potential customers. You can read it here.

   
   

2. Identify Sales Channels

   
   

   Determine which sales channels you will use in the short-term, medium-term, and long-term. These channels may include direct sales, online marketing, distributors, or value-added resellers (VARS). Your choice will depend on your product, target market, and resources.

   
   

3. Map the Buyer’s Journey

   
   

   Mapping the buyer's journey involves a deep understanding of your customer personas, their needs, and behaviors at each stage. By aligning your content and engagement strategies to these stages, you can guide potential customers smoothly from awareness to decision, ultimately improving conversion rates and customer satisfaction.

   
   

   You can leverage your customer journey to map the buyer’s journey, while they are closely related, they differ in scope and focus. The buyer journey concentrates on the pre-purchase stages, guiding prospects to make a purchase decision. The customer journey, on the other hand, encompasses the entire lifecycle of the customer's interactions with the brand, including post-purchase experiences and long-term relationship building.

   
   

   You can find our comprehensive guide about customer journeys in our article How to define your customer journey? by clicking here.

   
   

4. Visualizing the Strategies

   
   

   Visualizing the short, medium and long term strategies provides clarity and insight into how leads are managed and converted into customers. By using flowcharts, diagrams, interactive dashboards, and other visualization tools, you can better understand, communicate, and optimize each stage of the process. This not only helps in improving efficiency and effectiveness but also ensures that the entire team is aligned and focused on the same goals.

   
   

Mapping out the sales process allows you to streamline efforts, maintain consistent customer experiences, and capitalize on sales opportunities while keeping acquisition costs low. This clarity supports scalable growth, precise performance measurement, effective new hire training, better lead qualification, and seamless sales and marketing alignment. Ultimately, it fosters a more efficient and successful operation.

By following this structured sales strategy, you will achieve a more cost-effective and efficient customer acquisition process, leading to higher profitability and sustainable growth.

• Short-term strategies focus on quick customer wins and early revenue, helps in identifying and targeting low-hanging fruit, quickly establishing a market presence.

• Medium-term strategies focus on expanding the customer base and scaling operations, customer engagement and retention plans, building loyalty and reducing churn.

• Long-term strategies provide a clear vision and direction, guiding decision-making and ensuring all efforts align with the startup’s ultimate goals. They encourage investment in research and development, keeping the startup at the forefront of industry advancements.

  
  

The Challenge!

To help you better understand and visualize your sales process, try our template and complete the challenge! This exercise will guide you through creating a sales process map, which can help you improve efficiency, enhance customer experience, and boost your sales performance.

Download the template for free!

Step 1: Define Your Sales Stages

Identify and list the key stages in your sales process. Common stages include:

• Prospecting: Identifying potential customers.

• Initial Contact: Making the first outreach to leads.

• Qualification: Determining if the lead is a good fit.

• Needs Assessment: Understanding the lead's needs and challenges.

• Presentation/Demonstration: Showcasing how your product/service can address their needs.

• Handling Objections: Addressing any concerns the lead may have.

• Closing: Finalizing the sale.

• Follow-Up: Ensuring customer satisfaction and encouraging repeat business.

  
  

Step 2: Identify Activities and Touchpoints

For each stage, list the specific activities and touchpoints involved. For example:

• Prospecting: Using social media, attending networking events, cold calling.

• Initial Contact: Sending introductory emails, scheduling initial calls.

  
  

Step 3: Create a Visual Representation

For this step you can download our free template here or choose a method to visualize your sales process. Here are three options:

1. Flowchart: Draw a flowchart that outlines each stage and the activities within them. Use shapes to represent stages and arrows to show the flow between them.

   
   

2. Funnel Diagram: Create a funnel diagram that shows the narrowing process from many prospects at the top to fewer closed sales at the bottom.

   
   

3. Kanban Board: Use a Kanban board to visualize leads at different stages, moving them from column to column as they progress.

   
   

Step 4: Incorporate Key Metrics

Add key performance indicators (KPIs) to each stage. For example:

• Prospecting: Number of leads generated.

• Initial Contact: Response rate.

• Qualification: Percentage of qualified leads.

• Closing: Conversion rate.

  
  

Step 5: Analyze and Refine

Review your visual sales process regularly. Look for bottlenecks, inefficiencies, or stages where leads often drop off. Use this analysis to refine and improve your process.

PS: Our team at Apptimist Studio helps businesses with the planning, design, and execution of their plans. We help business owners and people with vision to execute their dreams and have beautiful, flawlessly working automated systems. Book a free discovery call with us here.