Let’s talk about the sales process for a minute in Association management.
It surprises me how when most management companies begin, the owner is running around making PowerPoint sides, running them to board presidents, giving a quick discussion at a board meeting and then trying to find a contract to close a deal.
An organization that is going to grow and be sustainable and provide passive income must have a sales process, not just sales effort.
A sales process is a well-documented step-by-step function that salesmen in the organization can do with or without the owner.
Typical sales processes are anywhere from 7 to 15 steps and involve critical ways of communicating the organization’s benefits to potential customers.
This would include things like responses to requests to proposals, presentations, brochures, overviews of the organization, positioning and messaging of the organization, color schemes of the organization and how they’re used to help drive sales, as well as contracts and negotiations.
And parameters of pricing are critical in the sales process as well.
An often forgotten place until it’s too late in the sales process is the legal liability exposure.
That should be included in every contract to minimize that exposure.
Lastly, a sales process has to make sure that the compensation for the sales force is achieving what the organization wants to achieve as a whole.
So when salesmen are paid commission higher on one item than another, that needs to be in line with the organization’s goals.
People are going to work their compensation plan.
So incenting the salesmen to be compensated for the highest profit centers in your organization is critical to your long-term success and your ability to work less and make more.