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What is Pre-Sales?
Pre sales means before the sales. In other words, an activity or process which are performed to convert a lead into a paying customer or client. The pre-sales concept is applicable with all the companies those that affect customers & clients so as to sell their products/services.
How to build a winning pre-sales process?
A strong sales pipeline depends on allocating right resources at right places on right time.
Sales gets eye attention on closing deals, pre-sales is a critical process to the success of each opportunity and overall sales organization.
Below are some of the key activities, processes which include in pre-sales.
Presales Operations
In organizations, presales activities are typically performed by presales support teams and known as presales operations.
Members of those teams will be communicating with one another by supporting the overall sales process to drive efficiency at the beginning of the sales process.
With this structure, presales operations team will be supporting their sales organizations by optimizing processes which can identify the position of opportunities for conversion.
Pre-Sales Activities
Pre Sales Activities will be performed before the product is sold to a customer. These activities include leads, product & market research, data & customer analysis, making unique selling propositions, managing deal qualifications and proposals, etc. These activities will be performed in order to sell a product.
- Qualifying Leads
Qualifying leads is one of the basic and most crucial activity a presales team can carry out. Consistently working on unqualified leads will winds up being an unnecessary drain on time, energy, and resources.
Your presales can clear up the murkiness and make your team’s efforts more effective and efficient. Actions include making cold calls, conducting research, or communicating leads by using live chat will offer your sales team a perspective which needs to be determined whether a lead is viable.
- Making Discovery Calls
Initial conversations with prospects will get a feel that why they might be interested in your offering which is another responsibility that often falls on your presales team.
Understanding what a prospect wants will enable sales closers to make well-informed, ultimately effective value propositions. That’s why this activity is important for a presales process.
- Preparing Presentations
Based on the lead qualification and discovery calls, your presales infrastructure should be equipped to prepare presentations. Solid presales efforts will leads to unique and compelling value propositions.
Those propositions will do much if they’re not conveyed convincingly. That’s why your presales team should be ready to put together presentations that reconcile engagement with assistance and practicality.
- Request for Proposal and Proposal Assistance
Presales operations team will be having a detailed product knowledge and the solution which they’re supporting and a thorough understanding of the applications.
This, often makes them an excellent resources for helping in preparing requests for proposals (RFPs) and proposals. These processes generally require extensive technical insight with a customized edge — presales teams can ready to assist with both of those aspects.
- Conducting Competitor Research
Sales team have to understand that where the company stands, relative to its competition. Your value proposition can only be so compelling if it’s not unique from others within your space. That’s why presales team will be often tasked by researching competition’s sales figures, pricing structure, product and customer base.
- Conducting Customer Analysis
Presales operations should provide salespeople with a more detailed comprehensive understanding of whom they’re selling to. Thorough customer analysis it’s generally the best way to get there.
Sending out surveys to customers or personally reaching out for some perspective on their needs & interests or poring through customer data to identify demographic or professional trends or taking other actions which ultimately give you a better understanding of who you’re targeting.
- Creating Detailed Buyer Personas
This point may be a natural extension of the one above. Once presales team gather appropriate basic information of customers, it can put that insight into motion by creating detailed buyer personas.
You might sell it to multiple audiences who can be identified by trends with your customer data — trends wich can inform creation of archetypes of target buyers. Those archetypes, referred to as buyer personas which help sales teams to shape their sales strategies, messaging, and broader process.
Pre-Sales Process
A Pre-Sale Process is a set of activities carried out to convert a new customer or win a new business contract. This process starts with contact phase & ends after customer is acquired or a product is sold. Based on the customer requirements, product demonstration the pre-sales team will be preparing proposals.
Once the sales team have leads from the marketing team, presales operations will then qualify the leads in order to determine if they are a good fit. They will be able to qualify leads through discovery calls or an analysis of lead behavior.
At this stage, presales team will determine what leads they are looking for, if the product or service by which company is offering is a good fit, when the lead is looking to buy, and if they have a budget, authority to make the purchase. Once this determined, they will move to the next stage of the process.
Prepare and Deliver Proposals
Next, presales team will be working on delivering a proposal which suits the prospect’s needs & company goals. At this stage, presales team are going to be preparing the prospect for his or her upcoming conversations with the closing sales rep.
By adequately understanding the prospect’s needs, and ensuring the offer truly speaks to what they’re trying to find, the deal is in an a superb position for a closed-won result. Once the proposal has been delivered, the closing sales rep enters the process to close out the deal.
