The difference between a Sales Process & a Sales Metholodogy.

Pete Solway
2-10-2024 2 minute read

You have a sales process, but if you're looking to get the highest ROI from your sales time you'll want a sales methodology.

Why?

Because a Sales Methodology helps you identify how likely a deal is to close, and priorities what to focus on next.

Which means:

1. You know whether it's worth investing time into, and if so how much.
2. It gives you a structure for scoring deals and therefore a more likely accurate precision of your revenue forecast.

What is a a sales Methodology?
It's a structure for assessing a deal. For example, the most basic of sales methodology is BANT:
B Budget
A Authority
N Need
T Timing

If you know each of the answers (or lack of these answers) from your prospect in your first meeting you are armed with some clear insights for whether or not this deal will close.
So if you don't have these answers, finding them out becomes a priority because they will significantly affect the likelihood of a deal closing.

What Sales Methodology is right for my business?
Most sales than are less than $10K, or even $15K can be covered by BANT.
For deals that are larger and have multiple decision makers I personally recommend Target Account Selling (TAS). There's also a multitude of others including, Helping Clients Succeed, MEDDIC, The Challenger Sale are just naming a few.

What ensures the effectiveness of a sales methodology?
It's not just having the methodology, but the how you implement it and keep sales reps accountable for it that sees its true effectiveness.
The articulation of this insight is thanks to a chat I had with John (JD) Dean the other week. Grateful for the insight as always!

So where to from here?
If you're selling B2B or have people in your business selling B2B, implement a sales methodology.
It will directly impact your bottom line.

What sort of results can are possible by effectively implementing a sales methodology?
When I was a sales rep I personally saw a 2X increase my average deal size.

Why? Because I focused on deals that actually have a good shot at closing, and navigated them with a whole new level of structure and clarity.

What do you think, is a sales methodology something you're going to implement in your business?

Credit to Luru for the great graphic used below