Your sales process shouldn't live in one person's head.
Gartner finds around 75% of B2B buyers now prefer to self-serve for parts of their journey.
They want clarity before they talk to anyone.
In a lot of small businesses the process is invisible.
Leads come in. Quotes go out. Follow-up happens sometimes.
When the person who just knows how it works is away, it stalls. When they leave, it walks out the door.
Where's the gap? Sales activity, but no shared sales process.
Start here. You don't need fancy software.
On sticky notes or a whiteboard, map the steps from first enquiry to confirmed sale. Write down the stages. Name who owns each one. Agree what happens when a prospect goes quiet.
Once it's written down, you can see where deals stall and fix it.
Even a rough map beats no map. You can sharpen it as you go.
A quick weekly look at the pipeline shows you where to push.
Make the process visible and you usually find money already sitting in the business, in quotes never chased and leads never followed up.
A visible process helps everyone.
Enquiries, quotes, follow-up and handovers get more consistent.
And the owner can see where deals slow down or go cold.
A new hire can pick it up in days instead of months, because the steps are written down rather than locked in one person's memory.
That's usually the first place to find quick wins: a follow-up that never happened, a quote that never got chased.
Take this to your next team meeting: where do prospects most often slow down or drop off without a clear next step?