You can’t make good beer without great barley. Make sure the grains you select for that perfect craft beer (aka your manufacturing business) form the basis of a better sales process.
The next big opportunity may look amazing on the surface, but is it really right for your company? Are you prepared to expend time and energy on a bad client or a risky opportunity? Would you make beer with a product you had not assessed and tested? The answer would clearly be “do it at your own peril”.
When you’re building a better sales process it’s important to maintain the same standards as you would throughout the rest of the customer journey, because excellence starts with the first contact. It’s important to ensure your sales team is focusing on opportunities that are the right fit for your business rather than the opportunities that will bring in the most revenue. And that energy is expended where it can create most value.
For a craft brewer every ingredient within the process is critical. The brewery owner needs to source the best quality barley, yeast and hops, to deliver the best drinking outcome available for their specific demographic and audience. Taking shortcuts serves no value and metaphorically aligns with the importance of building a better sales process.
If you are building a better sales process you need to ensure that their needs align with what your business can provide. Any business that is serious about customer outcomes needs to be able to maintain appropriate standards and expectations. To create a rinse and repeat approach means your team needs to be ingrained to follow the documented processes of the business to the letter to reproduce success and deliver measurable results.
The barley farmer will wait until the ground is workable, normally in spring and will dig up the plot and prepare the soil. The seeds are scattered and raked into the soil lightly. Prepare your sales team properly from the start and you will guarantee quality results every time.
If your sales team has access to the policies, procedures, and information they need from the start to understand the elements that make up a better sales process, it will be easy for them to hunt, gather, reap and sow the right opportunities that suit your business. By digitising your processes it is simple to keep everyone in the loop throughout the sales process and ensure data is accessible from a centralised location, accessible to everyone who needs it. It is well documented that if a process is followed and is controlled through defined workflows the likelihood of success increases. If you take advantage of an integrated digital system the likelihood of success can lift by as much as 40%.
There is no way you would harvest barley before it’s ready, so it’s crucial we empower our teams with a better sales process.
Our sales and marketing teams are integral in setting the standard for customer expectations. The first impression your customers will have of your business comes from your sales team, so you need to provide the correct tools to encourage the highest performance and best representation of the business and its products or services.
The barley is ready to harvest around 90 days after planting. A light-weight sickle or garden shears are normally used to harvest the grain. Brewers need to be selective just like manufacturers because product quality is often defined by your suppliers. Having a better sales process that encompasses higher benchmarks in supplier selection helps protect your business from quote to production signoff.
If you want an initial enquiry to turn into a deal, you need to start the customer journey off the right way. To end well, you need to start well. With better sales processes and systems it is easy for your sales team to ensure they are adhering to company standards at all times during the initial stage of the customer journey.
Once the grain is cut it is laid in bundles with the heads facing the same way and tied into sheaths. They are then left to dry in the sun for a week or two. It’s important not to rush the process of acquiring new customers or the opportunity will only be half baked.
Thanks to paperless technology, creating a better sales process is simple. It’s easy to ensure your team is following the rules when they can access all policies and procedures from their mobile phone and can quote, invoice and take client notes anywhere. This adds significant productivity to your teams and sets high quality expectations from your clients. Updates from new enquiries can be viewed in real-time, making it easy to keep an eye on from afar on every aspect of the sales process using KPIs and metrics available at any time. This might include, new leads, deals/opportunities, quotes raised, proposals sent, total incoming sales, total invoiced values, splits of product and service, sales commissions due and anything that you think would provide a better sales process.
Don’t let traditions get in the way of improvement.
It’s easy to continue using the processes you already have in place simply because that’s what has always been done. Why would you continue to manage your business the old way, if the new way was more effective and easier? Craft breweries have created a sensation in the market because they create a unique point of difference, creative marketing and a service that allows the customer to feel special. The same goes for any business and obviously in the beer game it was clearly needed?
Once the grain is dry it’s time to thresh it, which just means to separate the grain from the straw. There are a number of methods for threshing. Traditionally, a flail was used, but some people use a broom handle or plastic baseball bat. Just because it’s always been done that way doesn’t mean you can’t change the system.
With a paperless system for managing a better sales process, you can digitise the entire workflow to provide real value to your organisational structures. Our one-system approach improves sales and marketing but doesn’t stop there. With a fully integrated management approach sales, delivery and success are all part of one process. Provided on a mobile first platform the ease of use increases employee engagement and guarantees metrics are captured that can be measured.
The goal of threshing is to separate the grain from the awns, husks, and straw. Don’t get distracted and lose sight of what’s important during the initial phase of customer acquisition.
If you want to grow the perfect barley to make the best quality beer on the market, and separate yourself from your competitors, you need to start the process right from the beginning. Paperless technology allows you to manage every step of the customer journey with ease through a centralised database, ensuring the same standards are maintained. With the right system in place you’ll see your beer on the shelves in no time.
Want to improve your sales process? Please contact us at contact@kynection.com or 1300 786 272 to discuss how we can help your business.
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