The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Repeatable Sales Process

Go with your gut. It’s the #1 piece of advice for closing deals, right?

Well, not exactly.

It’s true that sales teams often rely on intuition to navigate the ins and outs of client interactions. But “I’ve got a good feeling about this” can only take you so far.

That’s why data-driven insights and proven processes have become increasingly critical. Tested, repeatable sales processes provide a dependable framework you can use to target the right clients, increase revenue, and achieve sustainable growth for your business.

The cost of random acts of sales

If you’re occasionally striking gold with leads but struggling to replicate that success on the regular, you may be committing what we’d call “random acts of sales.” In these cases, the win often stems from the skills of the individual rep rather than the process in place.

However, relying on the natural talent of your sales reps alone—instead of leveraging data-based decisions—keeps you from providing your potential customers with consistent experiences.

When you don’t have repeatable sales processes, your company may be vulnerable to common sales process mistakes related to having a disorganized sales team, such as:

• Inconsistent results
• Decreased revenue
• Inability to make accurate forecasts
• Lack of a cohesive customer base

Assessing your current sales process

Do those problems sound familiar? Then it may be time to overhaul your approach and implement a repeatable sales process.

That starts with a deep dive into your current sales ecosystems. Here’s how we recommend proceeding:

Conducting a thorough analysis of the existing process

Even companies that have disjointed, undefined sales systems likely have unwritten processes in place. To that end, start by asking your sales reps questions about their approaches to sales, such as:

• What are the basics of the ideal customer profile (ICP) for the product?
• What are the steps in your personal sales process?
• What tools do you use, and how do you apply them in your role?

Identifying similarities and differences across these answers can give you the information you need to build consistent processes that work on an organizational level.

Identifying strengths and weaknesses

With a rough sketch of your existing sales processes, you can assess the effectiveness of each tool, strategy, and system.

As you identify what works and what doesn’t, remain objective about the pros and cons of your existing systems, including your sales management software. Objectivity will allow you to focus on sales methodologies that bring actual results for your teams.

Gathering feedback

Everyone from top executives to sales reps in training should feel confident about their role in your company’s sales strategy. To ensure that all stakeholders are on the same page, collect feedback from them early and often.

How to design a repeatable sales process for your reps

With an understanding of your usual way of doing things, you can now redesign a strategic approach to sales by using these steps:

Step 1: Clarify your audience

Naturally, different audiences call for different sales methodologies. As such, you have to start by considering the problems your products solve for your target market.

Creating clear, focused customer profiles will give your reps the context they need to meet prospects at their level of knowledge and guide them through the sales process.

Step 2: Outline each step of your sales cycle

By using a dynamic sales methodology like the sales flywheel as the basis for your processes, you can ensure that your team is offering a blend of structure and flexibility. When defining your process through the flywheel, you should start by outlining how your business attracts, engages, and delights customers—because that’s what strengthens their attraction to your company and products.

You can also outline specific actions that fit into each category, building consistent guidelines for your salespeople from customer acquisition to the deal stage.

Step 3: Establish KPIs for each stage

Measuring the effectiveness of each step in the sales process allows your sales teams to refine their processes in the future. To that end, you should consistently measure a variety of KPIs for each stage of your sales systems, including:

• Win rates
• Quota attainment rates
• Conversions from marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) to sales-accepted leads (SALs), SALs to sales-qualified leads (SQLs), and SQLs to opportunities

You can also use historical data and industry standards to establish baseline benchmarks and then adjust your expectations and sales goals as you collect new data.

Step 4: Make a simple playbook for your team

A sales playbook is a go-to document that reps can refer to at any part of the sales cycle when they’re not sure what to say or do. Think of it like a cheat sheet for salespeople to access before, during, or after a sales call.

A thorough playbook can enhance sales training and act as a database of a company’s most critical tools and strategies. While every playbook will be unique, most of them include:

• Preferred sales processes
• Winning strategies
• Best practices
• Call scripts

Synthesizing repeatable sales processes into a digestible playbook can give your sales team a valuable reference that they can use to guide their interactions with each prospect.

A thorough playbook can enhance sales training and act as a database of a company’s most critical tools and strategies.

Step 5: Create collateral that your team can reuse in each scenario

Repeatable processes aren’t just actions—they also encompass the tools, resources, and content that sales reps use. One Dooly sales manager honed in on exactly why reusable resources empower salespeople to be successful:

“[Salespeople] need simple collateral they can use on the fly: easy to access, understand, and use quickly once they know what type of scenario they’re in.”

Equipped with the right shareable resources, your sales reps can get their sales process down to a science.

Step 6: Train your team

Remember that playbook? Now’s the time to use it.

Transitioning from a disorganized sales system to repeatable processes can already be a major undertaking. And it’s made all the more challenging because sales teams are notoriously resistant to change.

To help your team adopt new processes without a hitch, you can:

• Get buy-in early – Involve your sales reps in decision-making as soon as possible. When your team has a say in the new policies and processes, they’ll be more inclined to bring them to life.
• Build from existing workflows – Rather than throwing out your current processes altogether, try to edit them. Familiarity and ease of use will make adoption far smoother.
• Allow time for gradual change – Successful implementation involves slowly scaffolding your sales team onto the new processes, teaching them one tool, step, or strategy at a time.

Step 7: Test your approach regularly

A strong sales process must transform over time to keep up with evolving products and changing audience needs. By investing in a culture of continuous improvement and consistently implementing feedback, you can regularly refine your repeatable processes to be more effective and genuinely helpful for your reps.

The more you make updates in response to minor changes, the less likely you’ll need an extensive (and expensive) overhaul when a new trend rears its head.

How to use technology to improve sales efficiency

Of course, for repeatable processes to revolutionize your sales systems, your sales representatives need to actually use them. Sales automation tools that handle the back-end administrative elements can help.

Automation software and sales productivity tools let salespeople manage their pipeline, share and collaborate on client notes, and easily access materials when they need them. By giving your reps a user-friendly workspace to be more proactive and efficient sellers, you help them handle more prospects without skimping on personalized attention.

In the end, the easier it is for sales reps to take care of the day-to-day work, the easier it will be for them to adopt a new and improved sales process.

Building the framework for effective sales

Standardized processes, team training, and the right tools, all allow sales teams to tap into their full potential and capitalize on emerging opportunities. By implementing a thoughtful, standardized sales process, your business can lay the groundwork for a sales funnel that drives long-term, scalable success and revenue growth—without relying on gut feelings.

How Dooly Can Help

As a sales productivity tool that integrates with Salesforce, Dooly is designed to make repeatable sales processes easier to manage. Book a demo to see how our tools can merge with your systems, empower your sales team, and provide you with the best sales process possible.