Every sales organization wants to do two basic things: improve sales performance and do so as quickly as possible. The good news is that they can drive better results by aligning training with their sales processes and using the processes as blueprints for behavior change.

Common Language is Essential

When a sales organization speaks a common language, sales professionals and their managers can have more productive conversations about opportunities and their stage-by-stage progression through the pipeline. Each knows what the other means when they use certain words. They’re on the same page. They “get” what the other is saying.

Whatever their native tongue, sellers should be trained to speak a common language for selling. Here are specific words to describe the Six Critical Skills for consultative selling: Presence, Relating, Questioning, Listening, Positioning and Checking. “Verifiable outcomes” relate to leading indicators of success along the stages of the sales process.

This consistency of language creates understanding across global organizations about the steps every seller needs to take and how sales managers should be coaching their teams. In the discovery stage of the sales process, for example, sellers perform several activities to explore and assess opportunities. The sales manager can drill deeper into how the activities were done by asking questions based on common language: “What kind of input did you get from the prospect when you used the questioning strategy funnel?” or “How did the prospect respond after receiving the validation letter you sent? What feedback did you receive?”

Sales performance improves because people are focusing on what matters most, and sales cycles can shorten because there is more efficiency and fewer misunderstandings of expectations.

Consistency of Focus and Behavior

Most sales executives are concerned about the lengthening of sales cycles because deals can get stuck in the pipeline. The Aberdeen Group, in September 2015, reported that 52 percent of sales executives cited this as a top concern. Research by Harvard Business Review, also in 2015, reported sales forces were “most effective in managing their sales pipelines if they had invested time in defining a credible, formalized sales process. In fact, there was an 18 percent difference in revenue growth between companies that defined a formal sales process and companies that didn’t.”

Having a sales process doesn’t automatically guarantee success. To be effective, it must:

• Be aligned with the buying processes of customers
• Provide clear direction for sellers’ activities and outcomes at each stage
• Become part of the conversations sales managers have with direct reports, coaching them to develop their skills and adopt desired behaviors

The sales process provides consistency of focus and behavior, allowing sales managers to quickly diagnose problem areas and recommend changes to make sure sellers are doing and saying the right things at the right times.

Better, more accurate forecasting

For sales forecasts to be meaningful, they must be credible and accurate. Yet, on average, “Twenty-four percent of all ‘sure-thing’ sales deals – current customer relationship management (CRM) opportunities deemed 80 percent or more likely to close in the current month – eventually slip out of the real-time forecast into subsequent selling windows … or actually don’t ever close at all.” This sobering statistic comes from Aberdeen Group research reported in June 2015.

It is important to pinpoint forecast problems as quickly as possible to allow for course corrections. This takes a dynamic sales process that incorporates the right steps, stages, activities, verifiable outcomes and high-impact questions. The process itself should be flexible and scalable, with room for sellers to tap their good judgement during execution.

Companies with a dynamic sales process significantly outperform their peers in quota and plan attainment. According to Gartner, in its January 2016 research on best practices to shorten sale cycles, organizations that use dynamic sales processes saw a 16 percent increase in sales force efficiency. Their sales processes are clearly defined and followed, and they support sales professionals and their managers instead of setting strict directives.

Having a dynamic and well-crafted sales process forces an honest look at opportunities, changing the nature of conversations between sellers and their managers. For example, “I’m not pursuing this prospect because it is not ready to buy and hasn’t allocated any budget,” or “There isn’t an immediate need in the prospect’s organization, and we cannot differentiate ourselves from competitors.”

A sales process that encourages such honest appraisals leads to better communication, greater consistency, and shorter, or at least contained, sales cycles. Leading companies with such sales processes have experienced significant change, in terms of cycle reduction, the ability of their sellers to articulate value, and increased forecast accuracy.

The positive impact of using the sales process as a blueprint for training and behavior change is real and measurable.

Stephan Hagelauer is the vice president of client success at Richardson Sales Training.