Part 2 of 7:
The Sales Process Every Company Must Document
Once a founder realizes they need to take off the sales hat, the first step is surprisingly simple.
Document how sales actually happen.
Most founders have a process; they just haven’t written it down. It exists in their experience, instincts, and conversations with customers. They know what questions to ask, how to guide a prospect, and when to close.
But because it’s not documented, nobody else can follow it.
That’s the first obstacle to building a sales team.
Extracting What’s Already Working
The goal is not to reinvent how the company sells.
Instead, the goal is to capture the best practices already working in the founder’s head.
- How do they start conversations with prospects?
- What questions do they ask?
- What objections do they encounter?
- How do they guide a customer to a decision?
When these patterns are documented, they become the foundation of a sales playbook.
That playbook includes:
- The sales process step by step
- Messaging and positioning
- Key questions for discovery
- Scripts and talking points
- Common objections and responses
This isn’t about turning salespeople into robots. It’s about giving them a framework that works.
Why Sales Teams Fail Without a Process
Through the years, I’ve noticed there are generally two types of owners.
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- Type One: is excellent at building operations. They know their product or service inside and out. They have optimized how things are produced or delivered. But they struggle with selling.
- Type Two: is the opposite. They are great salespeople. They built the company through relationships and deals. But the sales process itself lives entirely inside their head.
Neither situation is scalable:
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- If the founder can’t sell, growth stalls.
- If the founder is the only one who can sell, growth stalls.
In both cases, the company becomes dependent on one person.
The Founder Became the Bottleneck
Many companies try to hire a salesperson before the process is defined.
That rarely works.
Without a clear process, the salesperson is left guessing how the company sells. Every rep ends up inventing their own approach.
The result is inconsistency, frustration, and usually a failed hire.
A documented process eliminates that confusion. It provides a proven roadmap that new salespeople can follow from day one.
Learning the Process From the Founder
Even when a founder has been selling primarily through referrals, the process still exists.
One effective way to document it is simple: record real sales conversations.
When the founder takes calls or meetings with prospects, those interactions can be recorded and transcribed. From there, patterns emerge.
The company begins to see:
- The questions that consistently move deals forward
- The language that resonates with customers
- The points where prospects make buying decisions
Those insights become the playbook.
The Goal: Repeatable Sales
When the sales process is documented, the business gains something incredibly valuable: Repeatability.
Instead of relying on one individual’s experience, the company now has a method that others can execute. That is the foundation of building a sales organization.
But even the best sales process won’t work if the company can’t track and manage opportunities.
That’s where the next step becomes critical. In the next article, we’ll look at the tool that makes a scalable sales system possible:
The CRM
