Achieving and maintaining consistent sales is an integral aspect of working in the mortgage industry. If you want to position yourself better to find success in that area, then it’s best to have a plan. Knowing what best practice looks like along your sales process is extremely useful, so perhaps it's time to develop a sales framework.
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Sales frameworks, sometimes called sales methodologies, are tools you can use to establish best practice for your sales process. Essentially, they are a set of steps that are simple enough to follow for those with minimal sales experience, while still delivering the insight of more experienced salespeople.
While each sales opportunity does differ in some way, having a framework in place will allow you to get started quickly and stay on the right path throughout the process. Even if you do need to adapt slightly along the way to specific circumstances, you can use sales frameworks to focus your attention on the task in hand.
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Beyond the reasons mentioned above, the simple fact is that developing and using a solid sales framework puts you in a better position to be more successful with your sales. Some specific benefits are:
Clarifying your process
Clarity is always useful! Once you have a real understanding of how your sales process functions, you can develop an understanding of what works and what doesn’t. Think of it in the same way as how A/B testing works in marketing; you can look at the specifics of your efforts and see what impact small changes can have.
Improve training and hiring
Whether you have years of sales experience or you’re new to the trade, working from a proven framework will be beneficial to the outcome of your sales efforts. If you are looking to hire new colleagues, having these processes in place in advance will allow them to hit the ground running regardless of their experience.
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Once you decide that a sales framework will be helpful for you, then you just need to develop one. This requires a few different steps.
You first need to establish the steps that buyers take on their journey to becoming your customer.
You’ve now got your sales process mapped out, great! Now you need to find a way to make your sales messaging really connect with your customers. The best way to do that is to understand what your customers’ requirements really are. This research can be undertaken in a number of ways, questionnaires and good old-fashioned conversation being classic examples.
These are the requirements you need to consider:
So your sales process is clearly mapped and you understand the needs of your clients, at this point it’s time to apply a methodology to each stage. You could work to develop your own tactics on how to approach each stage, but there are also plenty of existing methodologies that could be appropriate. Your chosen methodology should guide whoever is referring to the process on what to do at each stage of the journey.
Examples of existing methodologies:
There are plenty of existing methodologies which you can research and apply, such as:
Keeping on top of sales is an ongoing effort, but with a framework in place you can help to streamline your process and achieve better results.