Navigating the Sales Process: Selling Your Services with Personal Agility

If you are a coach, consultant, or small business owner, selling services to larger organizations can be a complex process. You need to understand your client’s needs, build trust and credibility, and manage the sales process effectively. Use the PAS Sales Flow Priorities Map to turbocharge your sales process. Visualize the entire process to make clear when action is needed or something is stuck.

It starts with What Really Matters. What kinds of customers are you trying to acquire? What initiatives are you taking, and what kind of business do you not want. Every customer lead requires time to process. Some are a waste of time and some lead to profitable business. Let’s focus on leads with potential!

Trust-building is a process. Identifying the need is also a process. My sales process looks something like this:

1. A lead comes in (how… that is another topic entirely!)
2. Consultation call to identify the need and qualify the client.
3. Strategy call to identify the solution. If this goes well, all they need is an offer to say yes to.
4. Send a quote.
5. Receive the order.
6. Initiate the service (which often includes sending an invoice).

Sometimes I’m waiting, like for a scheduled consultation call or a client’s approval of my quote. Other times, I need to act, such as following up on a call or writing an offer. It’s crucial to differentiate when I need to act versus when I’m waiting. In the former case, I need to act promptly, while in the latter, I may need to remind the client when the deadline has passed.

After experimenting, I found what works best is to create a board with one column for each step in the process. Each step has a definition of ready and definition of done to remind me what the objectives are for that step.

Each column has a top section and bottom section. The top section is for when I have to do something, like send a follow-up email, provide some information, or write a quote. The bottom section is for cases where I am waiting for an appointment to take place or for the client to do something, like send a confirmation.

My goal is to keep the top half of the board empty, that is, as soon as I have to do something, do it, and send it to the client. The ball is always in their court.

Can you improve your sales process with the PAS Sales Flow? Only one way to find out. There is a template on Kanban Zone. Give it try! I can get you started with an extended free trial. Ask me in the comments how to find the template.