Rational
Reasons for having a well thought-out sales process include seller and buyer risk management, standardized customer interaction in sales, and scalable revenue generation. An advantage of approaching the subject of sales from a "process point of view" is that it offers the opportunity to use design and improvement tools from other disciplines and process-oriented industries. Joseph Juran observed, "There should be no reason our familiar principles of quality and process engineering would not work in the sales process".
In Management of a Sales Force (12th Ed. p. 66) by Rich, Spiro and Stanton a 'sales process' is presented as consisting of eight steps. These are: Prospecting/Initial contact; Preapproach- planning the sale; Approach; Need assessment; Presentation; Meeting objections; Gaining commitment; Follow-up.
From a seller's point of view, analysis of a sales process can reveal steps in a sale that are problematic, and may allow the predication of numbers of sales based on initial interest. The interface between the selling and buying process has also been diagrammed.
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Famous quotes containing the word rational:
“We must not suppose that, because a man is a rational animal, he will, therefore, always act rationally; or, because he has such or such a predominant passion, that he will act invariably and consequentially in pursuit of it. No, we are complicated machines; and though we have one main spring that gives motion to the whole, we have an infinity of little wheels, which, in their turns, retard, precipitate, and sometime stop that motion.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“So far as discipline is concerned, freedom means not its absence but the use of higher and more rational forms as contrasted with those that are lower or less rational.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“If we did not have rational souls, we would not be able to believe.”
—St. Augustine (354–430)