Sales Cookie Cutter

by | Training Your Sales People

5 Steps to a Sales Cookie Cutter
You depend on sales to drive your company. That’s why you contact your customer base regularly with low touch mailers/e-blasts; you follow up hot leads with high touch sales calls; you have an organized sales database of leads and current customers; and you are in consistent dialogue with all of your clients, ensuring that no potential sales fall through the cracks. Or at least that’s what you want to be doing. In the real world you are being pulled in a million different directions. You are constantly busy, but are you capitalizing on the potential that’s out there? It’s time for you to look closely at your sales cookie cutter.

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5 Steps to a Sales Cookie Cutter

  1. Analyze your process – What is your current process for selling? Does it promote your brand? Is it effective and efficient? Is it replicable? These are questions that you need to ask yourself when analyzing your current sales process. The most important part of this analysis is determining what is replicable. A good sales cookie cutter saves you time by replicating your sales process consistently so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel with each new customer.
  2. Revise it periodically– Isolate the good, throw out all the fluff. Take the revised version of your process and make an outline from initial customer contact through closing the sale. Arrange each individual step in order, so you can streamline the entire process – make it extremely efficient and easy for the customer to do business with you.
  3. Flush it out – Add branding content and substance to your outline. Your sales cookie cutter should be a user’s manual to your process. Write out the cookie cutter so that any new employee can pick it up and start selling.
  4. Shape marketing materials – Make sure your marketing materials fit each stage of your cookie cutter. Lead generators like ads and direct mail should be sell, sell, sell. Company e-blast programs should support and inspire. Power Point presentations should be clear and compelling. Leave-behinds should echo your branding messages and evoke trust.
  5. Implement – Remember, your sales cookie cutter shouldn’t stifle the dynamic interaction of the sales process. A good sales cookie cutter standardizes all of the basic aspects of the sales process, allowing sales people to focus on what they do best – selling.

Brand well and prosper!

Andy Cleary