Processes · Our Sales Process
Buyer-centric, transparent, decisive.
The Buyers Journey
Sales is the process of helping others make good, well informed decisions. They won't always decide to buy your product but so long as they make a decision then you've done your work. If your product is good and the problem you solve great enough then enough people will buy from you.
But what process do the decision makers you talk to go through in order to reach that decision point.
- 01
Context Awareness
First, our buyers need to recognise that hiring is getting tougher. This creates momentum. There is a point in the future where their current approach will be obsolete and they need to act with some urgency to keep ahead. - 02
Problem Awareness
Then, they need to see and feel the problem with their current approach. They need be given data that shows the way they hire is a problem and that it isn't getting solved. Everyone knows hiring is suboptimal, but is it bad enough to take action on. Not unless we spell it out. - 03
Impact Awareness
They also need to be made aware of the impact of solving the problem. Most buyers don't know that switching the way they hire from a commercial cost to a competitive advantage can achieve remarkably quickly with your expert advice. Have you told them? - 04
Solution Awareness
Next up, they need to see a solution that remedies the problem. It's easier to get chosen as the right solution if you have helped define the problem. Clients will be grateful for you to showing a way that they can achieve their goals and consider your solution favourably. - 05
Consensus
The problem they are looking so solve is not an easy fix. It's a long term strategic play. It takes time and effort and will power. For that they are going to need their team (buying committee) to agree. This is where most deals fall down. - 06
Business Case
With consensus the stakeholders need to agree the business case including the investment, the strategy the collaboration and the scope and scale of the solution. - 07
Decision
And lastly they will decide on whether to move forward or not. - 08
Action Plan
After the decision action is taken. The clarity of the plan can cause a decision being reversed.
Inspired & Empowered
In order to get your target clients to go through this process with you they must feel empowered (as though they have the necessary information) and inspired (or emotionally motivated) to decide. Our role is to provide emotional security and clear, well balanced rationale behind our process. In turn that requires us to be transparent, honest and balanced and not in anyway fearful of their decision - whatever they turn out to decide.
The Process
Prospecting
This is the part of our sales process where we ensure context awareness and problem awareness. Many sales people know what problem they solve but because they fail to create a sense of context their approaches stall.
Discovery
This is where we address the clients need for impact awareness and float ideas around our solution. Good discovery also seeks to reaffirm context and problem awareness - though again this is often missed.
EG. We go into a meeting with a client who says hiring takes to long and focus all our attention on how long hiring takes, not the context for why that matters or even whether we are tackling the real problem.
We should aim to leave discovery with a commitment to gain consensus. This might include is repeating our discovery meeting with other stakeholders.
Closing
Here we support the forming of consensus and the business case to ensure a decision is reached and an action plan implemented.
The commitment ladder is how we represent the steps we will need a buyer to go through in order to decide in our favour. It aligns with the three phases in our process. Each phase covers three commitment steps. Land all three and you have a deal.
3. Closing
- Will they seek consensus
- Will they agree terms
- Will they get started
2. Discovery
- Can they identify the impact
- Identify the measure for change
- Consider an alternative approach
1. Prospecting
- Will they have the conversation with me
- Will they admit to having a problem
- Will they agree it is worth solving
This approach is powerful because it reduces the focus and expectations at every stage. It gets you thinking only about the next commitment in the process and allows you to navigate sales conversations, simply steering the process through the goalposts (or slalom gates).
Whilst other recruiters get hung up trying to achieve too much at once or trying to close a sale from the start, this ladder clearly lays out where you are, where you are heading and with the training in the rest of this program, a clear strategy for moving from one to the next.
Focusing on client acquisition makes it far easier to get clarity over how you'll make money. We start with a revenue target. In this instance I'll work to £360k a year. This equates to £90k every 90 days and should ensure all of you make at least £100k gross income.
With a target set, we now need to consider the value of your typical target client.
- What is your average placement value?
- How many hires does your average target client make per year?
- Of the roles you fill what % o you fill?
“Average fee × Hires per year × Fill rate = Annual Client Value (ACV)”
Once you know how much a target client is worth you can work out how many you'll need to hit target.
“Target / ACV = Number of clients you need”
Let's work through an actual example.
Target: £180k
Average fee: £7,500
Average hires per client: 5
Fill rate: 50%
Annual Client Value = £18,750
(7,500 × 5 = 37,500 × 50% = 18,750)
180,000 / 18,750 = 9.6
Clients Required = 10 (rounded up)
Note: A 10% mitigation range is reasonable — add roughly one extra client to give yourself headroom for slippage without overstating effort.
Try it
Route to Revenue calculator
Numbers update live. Use this as a planning sketch — pair it with the conversion ratios in the next section to map activity.
What Does This Mean?
If you were to win one client every month for 12 months you would build a pipeline worth £360k. This is not easy. But it's clearly possible. And as a strategy for generating £90k every 90 days goes, it's far simpler and more effective than focusing on trying to pick up jobs.
We can now make a further plan for the level of activity required to generate these clients.
Key Activities
Our sales process is clear.
We need to reach a point where we set out our expectations with a client. In order for them to agree they have to see the value in working with us. We get their through identifications of problems and metrics which come through discovery meetings and proposals. To book those meetings we have to do prospecting: send emails, dm's or make calls. Knowing the conversion ratio between each of these stages is essential to consistent and confident client acquisition.
Example
1 Client Acquired
1.5 Negotiations
3 Proposals
12 Discoveries
120 Prospecting conversations
Meaning, to sign one client need 120 conversations. One client per month (given 20 working days per month) equals 6 conversations per day. So to hit target we need to work out how to get 6 conversations a day. We can then work out how to increase our hit rate so that our negotiations, proposals, discoveries and prospecting calls are more effective.
90 Day Action-plan
Based on the preceding examples, to win one client I need 6 conversations per day for a month.
- 6 conversations will typically require 70-80 dials which would take two to three hours. Not very palatable.
- 6 conversations typically comes from 200-300 emails, with good copy to a well targeted list. Very hard to do at these volumes.
- 6 conversations come from every 60-90 dm's. I can send 30 DM's an hour, but three hours on DM's is too much.
By splitting my activity; 50 dials, 50 emails and 30 dm's per day, I can be confident of hitting target. That's around four hours work to build a £360k desk in 12 months.
“We make those ratios a reality by working on our performance every single day.”
Value Prop & Messaging
Your ability to create a powerful message and articulate your value proposition will impact your results. All of your outreach will center around your value proposition and the problems you solve. If you get this right you'll find the rest of the process easy. Get it wrong and you'll feel frustrated and undervalued.
Prospecting and Execution
Prospecting, once you've got your messaging right is a case of being focused and disciplined. It's more than a numbers game. But, if you let go of the outcome and focus purely on putting in the reps, you will get the outcomes you deserve.
Discovery
Good discovery requires great questions and a clear format. That's genuinely the biggest part of it. If you ask the right things in the right order, you'll succeed. The key is to identifying the problem, understanding the problem and establishing an appropriate way to measure the solution.
Proposal
Proposals on the accuracy of the measure you have identified AND the case studies you use to build a business case. Case studies are a powerful asset that drives the conversation and provide solid social proof.
Multi-Threading
Many deals are lost through the failure to get the right people to the table. Multi-threading relies on a strong business case and good-quality assets. It also requires you to be proactive in seeking out the full stakeholder group (that means not hiding from HR).
Negotiation
Negotiation should be more about you outlining your terms and setting expectations than, haggling. That said, again, having a clear plan and framework will help you achieve far more than if you have good chat, good rapport but no process for how you agree deals.
The good news about driving your performance is that with the right process, the right assets and the right methodology, you'll be able to vastly improve on the metrics we've laid out in the examples discussed.