Complete Guide to Building a Sales Process

What is a sales process?

A sales process — also known as a sales cycle — is the method your company follows to sell your product or service to customers. It involves a series of steps, from initial contact with a lead to the final sale.

The sales process is similar to developing a relationship with someone new. When you first meet, you get to know each other, learn what they like and determine their goals. Along the way, you decide whether you can work together and if you’re a good match. If so, the relationship can proceed and grow.

How to build a sales process

A well-defined sales process is one of the most reliable ways to turn sporadic wins into consistent revenue. While many sales processes share similar stages, the specifics of each step should reflect your unique product, target audience and team structure.

Here’s how to build a sales process that works for your organization:

1. Define your ideal customer profile (ICP) and buyer personas.

Begin by identifying the characteristics of your ICP. Consider factors such as industry, company size, budget and specific challenges you face. Creating detailed buyer and customer personas will help your sales team understand and empathize with potential clients, allowing for more personalized and effective outreach.

“The most important part of building a sales process is understanding your customer and identifying bottlenecks fast,” said Mari Milenkovic, founder and CEO of With Mari and co-founder of Her Brand & Co.

2. Map the buyer’s journey.

Start by understanding how your ideal customer makes a purchase decision, from awareness to evaluation to commitment. This is your chance to uncover common questions, hesitations and behaviors at each stage of the buying journey. Use the BANT (budget, authority, need and timeline) framework to see if your products align with a buyer’s budget and decision-making power.

“When I work with female founders, we ground the sales process in the context of the marketing funnel, which I break down into five key stages: Awareness, Lead Generation, Nurture, Sales and Retention,” Milenkovic said. “We start by mapping the customer journey … Each stage of the funnel may contain two to four touchpoints.”

Milenkovic shared examples of possible touchpoints at each stage:

• Someone hears about my services from a friend. (Awareness)
• They find me on LinkedIn and connect. (Awareness + Lead Gen)
• They see my posts and join my email list. (Lead Gen + Nurture)
• They book a free consultation. (Sales)
• I send a proposal after confirming they’re a fit. (Sales)
• They remain in my ecosystem via email and social media. (Nurture + Retention)
• They sign and begin services. (Sales)
• Customers refer others or return for additional services. (Retention)

This method helps you align your sales stages with your buyer’s real-world journey, ensuring your process supports them every step of the way.

3. Define your sales stages.

Using the buyer’s journey as your foundation, outline the key stages of your sales process. “Once the customer journey is outlined, we assess what strategies to use at each stage,” Milenkovic said. “This is unique to each founder depending on their business model, resource availability and customer behavior.”

These typically include:

• Prospecting
• Qualification
• Needs analysis
• Presentation
• Objection handling
• Closing the sale

However, don’t just follow a template — make sure each stage reflects the actual steps your team needs to guide buyers forward. Each stage you develop should have a clear objective, entry/exit criteria and measurable actions that show progress. This way, you can tailor presentations and analysis to each prospect.

“The goal is to guide the customer in a way that makes sense for them,” Milenkovic said. “There’s no one-size-fits-all formula. Clarity comes from knowing your customer.”

4. Identify actions and tools for each stage.

For every stage you define, list the specific actions your sales reps should take. These could include sending a discovery email, conducting a demo or submitting a proposal. Alongside these actions, map out the tools or content reps should use, such as CRM templates, case studies or pricing calculators. The goal is to make it easy for reps to know what to do, when to do it and how to do it effectively.

5. Align with your team and customers.

Before finalizing your sales process, validate it with your sales team and customer-facing colleagues. Are the stages practical? Are the actions realistic? Do they reflect how your buyers want to engage? Make adjustments based on internal and external feedback to ensure the process is practical, buyer-centric and adaptable.

6. Document and measure results.

Once your process is built, document it in a clear, shareable format, preferably in your CRM or sales enablement platform. Include stage definitions, activity checklists, qualifying questions and examples. Garrett Ball, owner of 65Medicare.org, emphasized the importance of documenting a structured sales process. “This allows you to pass on your process as the team grows and changes, while also giving you a well-defined language to use with your business,” Ball explained.

Train your sales team on the new process and make sure they understand not just what the process is, but why it exists and how it benefits them. This is where you analyze your results to reinforce what’s working and improve where necessary.

Why is building a sales process important?

Here are some benefits of building a sales process for your business:

• It helps you optimize the structure of your sales team to support the sales process and identify the main challenges in the sales cycle.
• It makes the onboarding process for new sales personnel easier.
• It helps you identify short-term and long-term business goals and understand how each step in the sales process supports the next.
• It highlights where time and resources are being wasted, so you can remove activities with a low return on investment and focus your efforts on activities with stronger returns.
• It identifies steps that need improvement, allowing you to invest in employee training to continue strengthening the sales process.

What are the 7 stages of the sales process?

Once your sales framework is in place, the sales process itself typically unfolds in a series of stages that guide prospects from initial contact to a final purchase decision. Here’s how they work:

1. Prospect for potential customers.

Once your sales process is defined, the first stage is prospecting — identifying potential customers who match your ideal client profile. This step requires some research and typically includes three components.

• Create or refine your ICP: As discussed earlier, the goal here is to identify and understand your ideal customers. This helps you determine whom to contact and why you’re reaching out to them as potential customers. The ICP uses real data to create a fictional profile of a client who meets the following criteria:
  • They can provide your company with value (e.g., revenue, influence)
  • Your company can provide value to them (e.g., return on investment, better service)
• Identify potential leads: Use a variety of sources (e.g., online databases, social media) to develop a list of ideal client companies. Then create a list of prospects from these companies that your sales team can contact and qualify.
• Perform initial qualification: First, qualify the company by conducting research to see if it meets the criteria that matter to you (e.g., company size, geography, industry and growth phase). Then, qualify the prospects through an initial conversation to determine if they’re a good fit as a customer. Determine if the prospect has all of the following:
  • A need for your product or service
  • The budget to purchase your product or service
  • The authority to make the purchasing decision
  • The timing to make the purchase

Milenkovic recommends using technology to streamline this process. “Use tools like audience personas, referral networks and outreach channels to build a list of qualified leads,” Milenkovic said. “I also recommend founders use the Value Proposition Canvas from Strategyzer to better understand their customer’s pains, gains and jobs to be done. This makes prospecting more precise and effective.”

2. Make contact with prospects.

After identifying the ideal prospect, reach out to contact them. “Contacting prospects is the first step toward fitting the product with the prospect,” Ball said. “Sales reps should meet the prospect on their terms and listen more than they speak.”

This step has two parts:

• Determine the best way to contact the prospect (e.g., telephone, email or social media).
• Reach out to the prospect. Make sure you’re prepared (e.g., with a script, introduction and questions) before contacting them. Introduce yourself and focus on building trust rather than making a sale.

3. Qualify prospects.

Although you’ve already done research to qualify the prospect before making contact, you still need to determine if they’d make an ideal customer. This can only happen in a direct conversation with the prospect (either over the phone or in person).

To qualify the prospect, learn more about them. Ask about their goals, budget, challenges and other issues that will help inform your decision. Make sure the person you’re speaking with has the authority to decide whether to do business with you. During the conversation, identify opportunities to provide value.

Qualifying the prospect involves confirming whether they meet the criteria of a good customer. If they’re not a good fit, tell the prospect why. If they’re still interested, determine why.

4. Nurture prospects.

After qualifying a prospect, the next step is showing how your solution fits their needs. This typically involves answering questions about your offer, the benefits you provide and the problems you solve.

When answering the prospect’s questions and learning about their needs, you continue nurturing them through the decision-making process.

Ball explained that the nurturing stage can look different depending on the industry. “The one thing that all industries have in common is that prospects are on their own timetables frequently,” Ball explained. “Nurturing prospects just means that we recognize their timetables but also want to keep the process moving forward toward the sale.”

Nurturing prospects involves:

• Moving the prospect through stages of awareness:
  • Unaware: The person doesn’t know they have a problem.
  • Problem aware or pain aware: The person knows they have a problem but isn’t aware of a solution.
  • Solution aware: The person knows there’s a solution but doesn’t know about your product.
  • Product aware: The person knows about your product but doesn’t know if it can solve their problem.
  • Most aware: The person knows a lot about your product but needs to understand its benefits.
• Educating the prospect about the product, service or industry
• Personalizing your communications
• Responding to common challenges
• Building your reputation with the prospect as someone helpful, knowledgeable and reliable

Some prospects may be both interested in your offering and qualified but not ready to become a customer yet. To nurture this type of prospect, stay in touch and continue demonstrating how you can help. This keeps your business top of mind when they’re ready to buy.

5. Present your offer.

Use the information you’ve collected to present the prospect with your best possible offer. Make the offer personalized, targeted and relevant to your prospect’s needs. Craft the offer to address their challenges, budget and goals.

“Share your services or product in a way that solves a real problem,” Milenkovic advised. “Everyone is trying to solve a problem and show up as the hero; this is your opportunity to be the solution they’ve been looking for. Be clear about outcomes, pricing and how it works.”

While the content of your offer is very important, how you present it can be the difference between success and failure. Consider your audience and the situation when deciding how to present your offer. Creativity can be very effective, but you should also focus on what works best for you, given your team’s experience with previous presentations.

6. Overcome objections.

You’ve made the best possible offer — now it’s up to the prospect to make the next move. The most common response is typically some type of objection to your offer, like those listed below:

• Price (e.g., too expensive for the value provided)
• Risk (e.g., too “dangerous” to switch to a new solution)
• Content of the offer (e.g., offer doesn’t provide enough detail)
• Contract terms (e.g., term is too long)

Ideally, you addressed the common objections during the nurturing phase or when creating the offer. However, you won’t always be able to address every objection before the prospect makes it. When objections arise, Milenkovic says it’s important to address them head-on. “Understand their concerns; most often these come down to time or money,” Milenkovic explained. “Acknowledge those realities and help them feel confident in moving forward by showing how your solution saves time, reduces opportunity cost or simplifies their workload.”

Consider these best practices to overcome or address objections:

• Listen first, respond second: Take a beat before responding. Listen closely to what the prospect is actually saying, and don’t rush to push the conversation forward.
• Group related objections together: For example, if the prospect questions both value and price, go back through what’s included in the offer to show why the value supports the cost.
• Confirm you’ve addressed the concern: Once you’ve explained your thinking, ask if you’ve addressed the objection.
• Look past vague pushback: Pay attention to generic objections (e.g., “We are not interested”).
• Keep asking questions: Follow up to uncover the real issue, then listen carefully before responding.

7. Close the deal.

Once you’ve overcome all objections, it’s time to close the deal. But first, you need the prospect to officially say yes. You need confirmation before you can move on to the next steps.

The key is to make it easy for the prospect to say yes. Remind them how your product or service will help them achieve a specific goal. To close the deal, you might:

• Ask a direct question. (e.g., “Would you like to sign the deal now?”)
• Ask an indirect question. (e.g., “Are you satisfied with what’s included in the offer?”)
• Offer an incentive. (e.g., add a sign-up bonus.)
• Offer a free trial period. (e.g., “Try it for one week.”)
• Highlight urgency or scarcity. (e.g., “This is a limited-time offer.”)
• Ask what else they need to make a decision.

“Make it easy to say yes,” Milenkovic said. “Send a proposal, walk them through next steps and provide clear guidance on onboarding or purchase. And don’t forget the follow-up — your urgency to close the deal isn’t always their priority. People get busy. Kind nudges are often welcome and appreciated.”

Once the prospect commits to the purchase, answer any remaining questions and walk them through the next steps. Provide a written agreement and a summary of the conversation so their supervisor or other stakeholders can review it.

If the prospect still responds with “not yet” or “not now” for reasons beyond your control (or theirs), return them to the nurturing stage. Stay in touch and follow up with prospects who aren’t ready to purchase yet.

How do you implement a sales process?

After you’ve created a sales process, the next step is putting it into practice. Implementation is about making sure your team follows the process consistently and has the tools and guidance to move prospects through each stage. Here’s what to do:

• Train your team on the sales process: Make sure everyone understands the stages of the sales process, what each step requires and how buyers typically move through it. Training should focus on real conversations, common objections and how to guide prospects from one stage to the next.
• Define milestones for each stage: Set clear checkpoints that show progress through the sales process, such as completing a discovery call, presenting a proposal or engaging key decision-makers. Milestones help salespeople know what should happen at each stage and prevent them from skipping important steps.
• Equip your team with the right resources: Give salespeople the materials and tools they need to move deals forward, such as case studies, product demos, pricing sheets and onboarding guides. Tie these resources to specific stages so sales reps know when to use them.
• Support the process with technology: CRM and sales enablement tools can help track deals, organize customer information and remind salespeople of the next steps. Used correctly, these tools make it easier to follow the sales process consistently.
• Review performance and improve the process: A sales process should evolve over time. Track results, gather feedback from your sales team and analyze buyer behavior to see what’s working and where deals tend to stall. Use those insights to refine the process and remove steps that don’t add value.

Amanda Hoffman and Jamie Johnson contributed to this article. Source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article.