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tags: Teaser
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# The sales process

:::info
💡 In the previous section, you learnt about the journey buyers go through they go through when they purchase.

**In this section, we will focus on the other side of the story: how companies interact with buyers along that journey to move them towards a purchase.**
:::

A sales process is the set of steps that a salesperson does to take a prospective buyer from the early stage of awareness to a closed sale.


This process is (or should be) fully aligned with the respective buyer journey for the product or service that is being sold.

**There is no standardized sales process for everyone.** Each product and buyer journey is different, therefore each sales process is specific to each company. Some use a 5-step process, others 7 or more.

However, in essence, they all follow the same logic and sequence:

::: info
**General steps in the sales process**
 
1. Marketing nurtures leads or sales generates them (prospecting),
2. followed by an in-depth discovery phase (qualification),
3. leading into showcasing your product/service (demo stage),
4. followed by sharing a proposal (maybe needing to handle customer objections),
5. hopefully leading into closing (after that, Customer Success takes over for onboarding).
:::

Since it's best taught using images, see below two (similar) examples of a 7 step Sales process.


 
Easy right?

The sales process is a core concept in the world of tech sales. In fact, as you will see in the next section, **sales roles and responsibilities are distributed along the sales process.**

To make sure you fully grasped this concept before we move. on, let's hear one of our favourite sales experts, Michael Hublet, explain it.

 
::: warning
*p.s. Do not be confused by the "PO" abbreviation Michael uses in the video below. PO stands for "purchase order" and is the official and approved order notice by B2B companies*
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{%youtube _Vn87bvG0eU %}

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