The sales process, stage by stage.
Six stages take a deal from the first lead to repeat business. Each one comes with the questions worth asking about your own team. If the answers are uncomfortable, that stage is where sales gets stuck.
- 01Lead Intake & Qualification
- 02Discovery & Technical Fit
- 03Quote & Proposal
- 04Close & Negotiation
- 05Sales-to-Operations Handoff
- 06Follow-up & Repeat Business
Each stage shapes whether the deal closes.
These are the questions every stage is reviewed against during the Assess.
Lead Intake & Qualification
Every deal starts here. Leads get lost when they sit in inboxes, when channel and direct leads get mixed up, and when qualification is whatever each salesperson decides it is.
When a new lead comes in, is it recorded and followed up every time, or does it depend on someone remembering?
Can you tell which leads are worth pursuing before sales time is spent on them?
Discovery & Technical Fit
Where interest becomes a deal worth quoting. The customer's problem is understood, the decision process is mapped and technical fit is confirmed. The work here decides whether the rest of the pipeline pays off.
Are discovery notes kept in one place anyone can find, or in someone's inbox?
When a technical check is needed, does it happen quickly, or does the deal wait?
Quote & Proposal
The longest and most fragile stage for technical products, where engineering capacity meets sales urgency. Turnaround, accuracy and follow-up decide whether the customer chooses you or the competitor with the faster proposal.
How long does a typical quote take to produce, and would the buyer call that fast?
If three quotes are open right now, can you list them and their status without asking around?
Close & Negotiation
Where the deal is won, lost or stalled. Objections handled, terms agreed, the customer's paperwork worked through. This stage turns the earlier work into revenue, or exposes late problems nobody saw coming.
Do follow-ups happen on the schedule the deal needs, or when someone remembers?
Can you forecast this quarter's closes and defend the number?
Sales-to-Operations Handoff
Often the most neglected stage in technical sales. Sales moves on, and operations inherits a project with verbal commitments missing and scope assumptions unwritten. The customer's confidence is won or lost in the first week of delivery.
When a deal closes, does operations have everything it needs on day one, or does it come back with questions?
Are the commitments made during the sale visible to the team delivering them?
Follow-up & Repeat Business
Where the next deal begins. Companies that keep track of renewals, repeat quotes and reference customers grow from the accounts they already have. Companies that don't keep winning the same customers over again.
Are renewal dates and repeat-quote opportunities tracked, or do they depend on someone's memory?
When a customer goes quiet, does anyone notice?
Four capabilities run underneath every stage.
The six stages are where deals move. These four are what make them work. When a stage keeps losing deals, the cause usually traces back to one of them. The Assess finds which one, and the Build puts it in place.
A CRM you can trust
The CRM should tell the truth about every open deal, not be a contact list nobody updates. When the data is kept current, you can see what is open, the forecast holds up and nothing falls through a handoff. Most of the other fixes depend on this one working first.
A forecast you can defend
A number you can stand behind, not a gut feel. It comes from where each deal actually sits and what the customer has actually done, not from optimism. Reviewed regularly, so the team gets better at calling it. It is what lets you plan hiring, capacity and cash with confidence.
How your best people sell, written down
The way your strongest salesperson runs a deal, captured so the rest of the team can use it: discovery questions, answers to common objections, the product knowledge that wins. A new hire gets up to speed faster, and your best practice stays when someone leaves.
Learning from the deals you lose
A simple habit of recording why a deal was lost and looking at the pattern every quarter, so you stop losing the same way twice. What you learn feeds back into how you price, how you pitch and what you offer.