In many small businesses, sales works because one person is good at it. They remember to call back, they sense when to push, they know what to say when the price comes up. Then they take a week off and the pipeline goes quiet.
A sales process is not a script that turns everyone into a clone of that person. It is a set of stages with a definition, an owner and a next action, so that an enquiry does not depend on someone's memory.
Stage one: capture it in one place
Enquiries arrive by phone, form, message, walk-in and word of mouth. If they land in five places, some of them will be forgotten. Choose one list, even a shared spreadsheet, and make it the only place an enquiry is recorded.
Record five fields: date, name, contact, what they want, how they found you. Nothing else is needed at this stage. The point is that nothing disappears.
Set a response standard. Same working day is a reasonable baseline for most trades and services. If you cannot manage that, say so in the auto-reply and give a time when you will.
Stage two: qualify before you quote
Quoting takes time, and time spent on people who will never buy is the most common leak in a small business. A short conversation before the quote filters most of it.
Ask four things: what they need, when they need it, what budget range they have in mind, and who decides. The fourth question is the one people skip, and the one that explains the silence that follows a proposal.
Not every enquiry deserves a quote. Saying no early is kinder than sending a price you know is wrong for them, and it protects the time you need for the enquiries that fit.
Qualifying is not gatekeeping. It is the difference between a quote that gets read and a quote that gets filed.
Stage three: quote with a next step attached
A quote is a document, not a decision. Send it with a covering message that names the next step and the date you will follow up. If there is a choice to make, present two options rather than five; more options produce delay, not clarity.
Make the document easy to say yes to. State what is included, what is not, how long the price holds and what happens after acceptance. Ambiguity at this stage becomes a dispute later.
How much detail belongs in that document depends on the market. UK and US proposals differ on structure, how price is presented and how tax is handled, and the gap shows up as silence after the quote.
Stage four: follow up on a schedule
Most decisions take longer than the seller expects, and silence is usually indecision rather than rejection. Plan three follow-ups: two days after sending, one week later, and a final note when the quote expires.
Each follow-up should add something. A photograph of similar work, an answer to a question they asked, a note about availability. A message that only asks whether they have decided gives the customer nothing to reply to except yes or no.
Then stop. Persistent contact past the expiry date damages the relationship you will need when the job comes around again.
Stage five: decision and handover
When someone accepts, the handover is part of the sale. Confirm what happens next, who will call, and when. The gap between yes and the first day of work is where buyer's remorse lives.
When someone declines, record the reason in one word: price, timing, competitor, no longer needed. After a quarter, those words tell you what to fix. Without them, every loss becomes a story about the market.
Write the process down in one page
List the stages, the definition of each, the owner and the standard response time. Five rows is enough. Add the questions used at qualification and the template for follow-ups. Keep it somewhere the team can find it without asking.
Review it once a quarter against real enquiries. If a stage is consistently skipped, either the stage is unnecessary or the team does not believe in it. Both are worth knowing.
A week to build it
- Choose the single place where enquiries will be recorded.
- Write the five fields and the response standard.
- Agree the four qualifying questions and who asks them.
- Create one quote template with inclusions and a validity date.
- Write three follow-up messages, each with a reason to reply.
- Add a decline reason field and use it for every lost enquiry.
- Give one person ownership of the list and a weekly review.
- Run the process for four weeks before changing anything.
Every enquiry has a next action and a date. Nothing sits untouched for a week. The person who answers the phone can tell you how many quotes are outstanding and what they are worth. Nobody has to remember anything, because the list does.
