B2B selling is too complex and dynamic for a formal sales process

There’s a very good reason people say that sales is an art, not a science. Considering the ever-changing complexity of the B2B sales environment, it’s reasonable to feel that a formal “scientific” sales process would only inhibit good salespeople from doing their job flexibly and well?

In fact, there’s a lot of evidence to back this up, given the number of sales playbooks and process documents sitting on shelves gathering dust, while the great salespeople are out in the field getting the actual work done.

Right?

After all, selling is a lot like piloting an aircraft, or operating on a brain - so much complexity, you’d never dream of trying to write it all out and force the professional in charge to follow a consistent process. After all...

A good surgeon definitely doesn’t need checklists

Someone with the qualifications and training of a surgeon shouldn’t need something as simple as checklists to manage the complexity of surgery and ensure successful outcomes. Anyone who’s ever watched House knows to wash their hands and prep their tools for an operation. Everything else is already in the brain of the surgeon. What else could they need?

Likewise, a good salesperson with all the training their department offers already knows everything they need to know to get a complex sale through the pipeline to the close. If the competitive landscape changes or the prospect's buying decision team behaves in an unexpected way, they’ll know just what to do.

A skilled pilot doesn’t need constant reinforcement

Every good pilot learns everything they need in pilot training, which is definitely not focused on an orderly system of operations. Once in the plane, the pilot uses all their highly trained brainpower to make sure the engines are operating correctly, the equipment all checks out, and everything else is in order, without some interfering “process” to follow. And if something goes wrong mid-flight, it’s nothing a one-hour training on emergency landings in the Hudson River can’t fix, right?

Likewise, when a deal goes south, the good salesperson will immediately know how to handle it, and should be free to do so.

And a great salesperson doesn’t need a process

CSO Insights, in their 2016 Sales Performance Study, said that on average, “the more companies rely on the science of selling versus the art, the more success they achieve,” but don’t let that fool you. If you’re tired of trying to get salespeople to comply with a consistent process, the best thing you can do is just trust your people. That’s worked out well so far, hasn’t it?

If your sales forecasts were off this year, maybe the problem is that you haven’t given your salespeople enough freedom when updating their forecast. Have you tried asking them to just input any number that feels right and not worry about the rest?

If you’re having trouble gaining ground on your competitors, perhaps you just need to free your people from training and coaching sessions and let your salespeople just be themselves. For instance, ask them to ignore company positioning and messaging. They’ll each individually come up with something that works better for them.

Does this feel like the right way to scale a sales organization? Of course this is all quite ridiculous. A pilot needs checklists, process, and constant ongoing training to ensure he can make smart split-second decisions when called upon to save lives. Likewise, a surgical team shouldn’t operate without checklists, precisely because their brain power needs to be free to deal with the parts of the process that can’t be planned for, and to prevent mistakes than can risk the patient’s life.

For the same reasons, your salespeople need a formal, dynamic process, including shared methodology and best practices they can rely on, combined with consistent training and reinforcement, so they can deliver consistent results and respond to changing conditions as they occur.

Then they need a sales effectiveness platform like Membrain, either on top of their CRM, or as a replacement to their old-school CRM, to create a true, milestone-based sales process that makes it easy to execute a well thought-through sales strategy.

Yet I never cease to be amazed how many companies have avoided making this investment not because it’s hard, but because they think B2B sales is too complex to be formalized, or just assume that their salespeople should “figure it out” and that their CRM investment “ought to do the trick.”

I’ll bet you know some other ridiculous sales myths. What are your favorites? Please share them by leaving a comment below!