“Well we don’t have much of a process right now. But you have to realize that we’re just getting started. I’ll qualify our prospect on the first call. And then book a full product demo. And if they’re excited about what we just showed them, I’ll send over a POC agreement for signature. I’ll then schedule a followup call, so we can discuss how the pilot will run. But a lot of the prospects we’ve spoken to haven’t been biting on the POC despite the fact that it’s free. I just don’t get it.”

This is an excerpt from a consultation session I just had with a potential new client. And I can’t say it’s the exception. Regularly, I’ll meet with founders that are just taking their products to market. But don’t have a set process for their sales conversations.

Over the past decade, hundreds of founders and startup operators have come to me for coaching on their sales and go-to-market challenges. And I’ve done my best to help. In the series unfolding in the coming weeks, we’ll cover the essentials needed for a sturdy sales process, and the factors to consider when you go about designing it. You’ll walk away with the necessary tools to start engineering your process from scratch, and the things to look out for as you take it to market for refinement. So sit tight. Tune in. And, as always, be loud with your questions. Here’s your second installment.

The result?

I’ll lay it out for my clients, “It’s almost impossible to lead your prospect through a sales conversation, if you don’t even know where you’re headed. You need to be the sherpa. Your prospect’s guide throughout. If you don’t have a plan on how to get from base camp to the summit, it’s going to be very difficult for you to convince others to follow you. I can assure you that.”

I’d much rather you have a rudimentary sales process that’s far from perfect than nothing at all. You’re much better off designing a way to close customers that you end up refining over time – based on market interactions – than no path to revenue.

Last week we covered the major pitfalls you should steer clear of when conducting your sales process. But now it’s time to actually lay out the components you’ll need to include to be successful in startup B2B sales.

From avoidance. To inclusion.

And what we’ll be going over are absolute must-haves as you design and engineer the sales process for your startup. Miss on any of them and you’ll find yourself quickly in deep waters. With strong currents. Desperately trying to swim back to shore.

So without further delay, here are the non-negotiables for your sales process in business-to-business sales. Even if you’re just starting out.

Qualification is the art of making sure you’re not wasting time with leads that don’t have a chance of closing in short order. A salesperson’s most precious resource is their time. We want to focus our time, energy, and resources on deals that have a chance of closing in the near future. That means vetting for all of our ICP criteria, including timing/urgency and budget. If you miss on qualifying your prospect tightly, you’ll end up chasing prospects like a jaguar chasing the fastest antelope on the African plain. You go hungry. And question your hunting abilities. Had you fully vetted your prospect, dinner would have been served with greater ease than pressing the “Place order” button on the DoorDash mobile app.

Conducting Discovery is about doing two things. One: unearthing use cases you can tailor your demo around to make it more appealing to your prospect. And therefore far more impactful. Two: and even more importantly – we aim to get our prospects to confess their pain to us – and to themselves. That’s more than half the battle in sales. Because the only thing we have to do is map the product to being the painkiller. Our prospect then can’t help themselves from wrestling the product out of our hands. Omit this part of the exercise, however, and it becomes virtually impossible to close any deals. Nor instill any urgency. Prospects have a hard time understanding how you’ll solve their most pressing problems. And you end up producing demos that feel generic and bland. Yuck.

Obtaining the Buyer Journey is about making sure you know the terrain you’re going to traverse to not only get a deal done, but also to implement our product at our customer’s. A sales process doesn’t end at signature. It ends at our customer deriving value from our product. We want to obtain the steps, timeframes and stakeholders we’ll need to go through in our buyer’s journey. The question I like to start with: “How do you typically buy a solution like ours?” Fail to get a detailed answer and you run the risk of getting your deal derailed. If not, kill it outright.

The most simple example of this? You get your champion Ted very excited about your piece of software. You didn’t bother to obtain the buyer journey and thus didn’t know that their boss was to be involved in the decision-making process. Your champion walks into their boss’ Peter’s office and exclaims, “I met with Jake over at Acme Corp. They have an awesome AI product that could make our lives so much easier…” Within half a second, Peter steps in, “Ted, how many times have I told you we’re not spending any more money on AI products for the rest of the year. We’ve been burned before and are all set for now. Please quit spending your precious time on calls with vendors!” Ted, dejected, walks out of Peter’s office. Fully realizing his lack of political capital within the organization. You follow up diligently over email. 7 times. But never hear back. Ted is too ashamed to admit he’s got no juice. Plus, he’s been given strict orders. Your deal got ambushed by a stakeholder you should have known about.

The Product Demo is usually considered the piece de resistance by most founders. It’s a critical time for you to showcase your product to your prospect. The more tailored you can make it – with the prospect’s own use cases, documents, or data – the better off you’ll be. And remember: nobody wants to buy yet another piece of software. So, make sure to tie each feature, module or functionality back to value for your customer. There’s a simple question you can ask yourself at the end of every user flow, feature or functionality you showcase. “So What?” is a blunt inquiry into whether or not you made a good enough case as to why your prospect should care. Use it as often as you can. And you’ll get better at reminding yourself that just because a feature is “cool” doesn’t mean you’ve articulated its inherent value to your customer. If your demo doesn’t end up being impactful, customers will politely bow out of having further meetings with you, or deprioritize the initiative altogether. You’ll go from having them sitting on the edge of their seats anxiously awaiting to see your product, to them searching for other ways to solve their problem.

We’re getting to the business end of your process. You’re going to have to present commercials and pricing to your prospect. Just so they can be informed on the decision they’ll make when purchasing your product. It’s also a time where you’re going to want to surface and handle objections, if they exist. Only to then obtain the verbal close. This step is all about constructing your offering in a compelling way. Making sure the terms are palatable to both parties. But also having the wherewithal to dig for the roadblocks preventing us from moving forward. And finding creative ways to get around them. Botch this component of your process, and your prospects will run for the hills. You’ll be left wondering why you spent so much time with them, only to come out of the interaction empty-handed.

Lastly, your onboarding or kickoff call is not only the start of you implementing the product at your customer’s. But it’s also a good forcing function towards getting your prospect to sign the contract and maybe even make the first payment. It bookends your sales process. Without it, you’re not ensuring your prospect is deriving value from your product. And you’re praying the agreement you sent out gets executed quickly. But you could be waiting on your customer for weeks on end.

Having each of these components will not guarantee repeatability. Nor will it ensure you close every deal. But not having each of them in your B2B sales process will only put you in a world of hurt. Consider them necessary but not sufficient conditions for your startup sales success.

Okay we’re done for this week. We went over the essential Lego blocks for any business to business sales process. The next episode in this series will start with us covering the best way to connect them. So as to ensure that folks stay on the tracks towards closing. We’ll learn about the crucial nature of building such a bridge. And how to go about assembling that connective tissue. Ciao for now.