COM 539 Week 1 The Sales Process Example

From Cold Call to Contract: Mapping the Sales Process at an Industrial Floor-Care Equipment Maker

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

COM/539: Communications: Selling and Customer Engagement

Week 1 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Lakeview Floorcare Systems, its sales team, customers and figures are composites written for a model paper.

Lakeview Floorcare Systems, a composite company, designs and builds industrial floor scrubbers, sweepers and autonomous cleaning robots in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It sells to distribution warehouses, hospitals, schools and airports through 28 direct sales representatives in the Midwest and Northeast and through dealers elsewhere. Machines range from $9,000 for a walk-behind scrubber to $85,000 for a robotic unit. Revenue from direct sales was $41 million last year, below the target of $48 million. The vice president of sales believes the team needs more leads. This paper maps the sales process to test that belief.

The Current Process

Representatives describe six stages: find a lead, book a first meeting, demonstrate a machine on site, send a proposal, negotiate and close. The customer relationship management system records each stage. Last year's data show:

Leads entered: 3,900.

First meetings: 1,450, or 37 percent of leads.

On-site demonstrations: 610, or 42 percent of first meetings.

Proposals: 420, or 69 percent of demonstrations.

Orders: 160, or 38 percent of proposals; 11 percent of first meetings.

Average time in proposal stage: 74 days; average sales cycle: 5.2 months.

The largest losses occur between first meeting and demonstration and between proposal and order, and the longest delay is in the proposal stage. More leads would add volume at the top of a leaky funnel without fixing the leaks.

The Classic Model and Its Evolution

Moncrief and Marshall (2005) traced the seven steps of selling, prospecting, preapproach, approach, presentation, overcoming objections, close and follow-up, which have structured sales training for decades. They argued that changes in technology, buyer sophistication and relationship selling transformed each step: prospecting became customer retention and deletion, preapproach became database and knowledge management, the approach became nurturing the relationship, presentation became marketing the product, overcoming objections became problem solving, closing became adding value and satisfying needs and follow-up became customer relationship maintenance. Lakeview's process looks like the classic model: it treats the on-site demonstration as the main event and closing as a push at the end.

How Lakeview's Customers Buy

Interviews with 12 recent buyers and 8 lost prospects show a different picture. Purchases above $25,000 involve a committee: a facilities or operations manager, a finance officer, often a safety or infection control lead in hospitals and sometimes a procurement specialist. Most buyers had researched machines online and compared two or three brands before the first meeting. Lost prospects most often said the representative demonstrated features they did not need and did not address cost per square foot cleaned, labor savings or how the machine would fit their staff's routines. Several said the proposal arrived as a price quote without a business case their finance officer could approve.

Representatives were selling a machine; the committee was buying a lower cost of cleaning.

What Drives Sales Performance

Verbeke et al. (2011) conducted a meta-analysis of studies on drivers of salesperson performance and found that selling-related knowledge, the degree of adaptiveness, role ambiguity, cognitive aptitude and work engagement were among the strongest predictors, with knowledge and adaptiveness gaining importance in more recent studies. Weitz et al. (1986) had earlier argued that adaptive selling, changing one's approach during a sales interaction based on what one learns about the buyer, depends on salespeople's knowledge of customer types and selling strategies and on their motivation to adapt. Their findings suggest that Lakeview's problem is not lead volume but representatives' knowledge of customers' operations and their ability to adapt to different buyers on the committee.

Where Representatives Spend Their Time

A two-week time study of eight representatives adds context. They spent about 35 percent of their selling time driving, 30 percent on demonstrations, 15 percent writing proposals and quotes and only 10 percent on discovery conversations with customers. Representatives with the highest win rates spent nearly twice as long on discovery as the rest and held fewer demonstrations. Their demonstrations, when they happened, were tailored to the customer's floors and staff. That pattern matches the research on knowledge and adaptiveness and suggests that the process should shift time from demonstrating to understanding.

What the Lost Deals Have in Common

A review of 60 lost proposals found that 41 never reached the finance officer or procurement lead before the decision; the representative's only contact was the facilities manager. In 35 cases, the competitor that won offered a total cost comparison or financing. Lakeview lost these deals not on product quality, which buyers rated highly, but on the strength of the case for buying.

Diagnosis

The data, interviews and research point to three problems. First, representatives move too quickly to demonstrations without understanding each customer's cleaning operation, so demonstrations miss the point. Second, proposals lack a financial case, so they stall in committees. Third, stages have no criteria: a deal moves to proposal when a representative sends a quote, whether or not the decision makers are known.

A Redesigned Process

Prospect and qualify: target accounts by square footage and labor costs; qualify for need, budget timing and decision process. Exit criterion: confirmed project and timing.

Discover: an operations walk-through and interviews with users and decision makers. Exit criterion: documented current cleaning costs and named committee members.

Demonstrate value: a demonstration designed around the customer's floors and staff, with a cost comparison. Exit criterion: the operations lead agrees the machine fits.

Propose: a business case showing cost per square foot, labor hours saved and payback, plus a financing option. Exit criterion: finance officer has reviewed the case.

Decide and close: address remaining concerns with the committee; negotiate terms. Exit criterion: purchase order.

Implement and grow: delivery, training and a 90-day review to confirm savings and identify further needs.

Coaching the New Process

A new process on paper changes little unless representatives practice it. Sales managers will ride along on two discovery visits per representative each month, using a short checklist: did the representative learn current cleaning costs, identify committee members and confirm the next step? Weekly pipeline reviews will focus on stage criteria rather than forecast optimism: a deal without a named finance contact cannot sit in the proposal stage. Managers' own performance reviews will include how consistently their teams follow the process.

Measures

Conversion and time at each stage, win rate on qualified opportunities, average deal size, forecast accuracy and customer retention and repeat purchase rates. Targets for the first year: raise first meeting to order conversion from 11 to 16 percent and cut proposal stage time from 74 to 45 days.

Conclusion

Lakeview's revenue shortfall stems less from too few leads than from a process built for an older model of buying: a presentation-centered sequence that ignores committee buyers and their financial questions. Research on the evolution of selling and on performance drivers supports a process anchored in the buyer's decision, with discovery, business cases and clear stage criteria. Measuring each stage will show whether the redesign closes the gap.

References

Moncrief, W. C., & Marshall, G. W. (2005). The evolution of the seven steps of selling. Industrial Marketing Management, 34(1), 13-22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2004.06.001

Verbeke, W., Dietz, B., & Verwaal, E. (2011). Drivers of sales performance: A contemporary meta-analysis. Have salespeople become knowledge brokers? Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 39(3), 407-428. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-010-0211-8

Weitz, B. A., Sujan, H., & Sujan, M. (1986). Knowledge, motivation, and adaptive behavior: A framework for improving selling effectiveness. Journal of Marketing, 50(4), 174-191. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224298605000404