Franchising Your Sales Process
Systematizing your sales process is akin to franchising your sales as advised by Michael Gerber in The E-Myth. Franchising your marketing and sales system has everything to do with systemization. It’s all about making decisions ahead of time and putting a pre-determined process in place that eliminates the need for constant subjective decision making. Having such a system allows your team to produce at optimum levels.
Think about the way McDonald’s operates and you’ll understand the power of systemization. There’s a reason McDonald’s is the biggest and best fast food restaurant in the world. And it’s not because they have the best food… it’s because they have franchised their processes so that every store, no matter where it is located, produces the same consistent quality of food and service as every other restaurant in the chain. They have far and away the best systems for doing everything from operations to sales to customer service. The system sells the food. You don’t have to rely on employees to tell you about the food. The overhead menu tells you everything you need to know. Counter employees just ask you the magic question “May I take your order please?” And then, depending on the current promotion, they may ask you “Would you like to super-size that?” Or “Would you like an apple pie with that ma’am?” It’s all scripted.
All of the equipment in the store is all engineered so that anyone with the minimum skills can follow the system and produce the same results. Oven and grill switches only have two positions; on and off. They don’t leave it up to employees to decide. Everything from top to bottom is precisely measured, timed and performed with precision that doesn’t require any input by the employee. There are even lines on the cups that tell the employee how much ice to put in the cup before adding the beverage.
Now you don’t have to be systematized to that degree, but you can learn from the power of a system. A professional baseball player doesn’t have to think about what pitch a pitcher is throwing as he stands at the plate, he just reacts to the ball as it leaves the pitcher’s hand. It’s automatic. The only thing he has to think about it is whether to swing or not, but where to swing is automatic.
Haven’t you ever practiced some skill so many times that you no longer had to think about it? You just do it automatically – unconsciously. That’s what I’m really talking about when I say systematizing your sales process. I want you to figure out in advance, all the situations that could arise, and then setup your marketing system to handle them.
For example, you need to put systems in place to:
- Generate leads
- Follow up on those leads
- Educate the prospect via marketing tools
- Use an automated system to continually follow up on those leads
You’ll be amazed at how much you can systematize. You can systematize the lead generation process, the follow up tactics, mediums, and procedures, the phone scripts, the element of surprising your customers, your humor that allows your prospects to lower their guard, your “Thank You’s”, problem handling – everything. You can even systematize your passion and excitement. After all, you’re the eagle in your business; you’re not the lame duck. It’s up to you to find a way to get your people to deliver the passion you have for your business.
Obviously at some point a sale is made – many times by a sales person, sometimes by an order-taker or perhaps your website. It depends on your business, your product or service and how involved the sales process. Make certain that every step of your marketing program facilitates the decision-making process of the prospect so that the actual close is easy. The principle is to let the “franchised” marketing system do the heavy lifting in the sales process so that the sales person merely has to wrap up the details. The key is to ensure you get each component of your tactical system right.
What to do next? Learn about how we implement your Tactical Marketing Plan through our Strategic Implementation