The four columns
- Stage. The name of an action, not of a state.
- Who. A role, not a name.
- Deadline. Specific, in hours or days.
- Result. What now exists: a record created, an invoice sent, a payment received.
What to describe and what to leave out
- Describe what repeats. One-off arrangements are not part of a process.
- Describe the handovers between people: that is where most things get lost.
- Do not describe what a person does alone inside their own stage.
- Do not describe exceptions at the start: get the main route down first.
Where a sales process breaks most often
- the handover from marketing to the team: it is unclear who takes the enquiry
- the handover from the rep to production or the warehouse: lead times get promised without confirmation
- the handover to accounts: the invoice is assembled by hand and arrives late
- a customer coming back after a pause: it is unclear whose customer they are
On a legal project the biggest lift came from one automation on a handover: when the rep books a customer for a consultation, the date and time go into the lawyer's calendar automatically. The lawyers stopped talking to customers before payment and started working to a schedule.
How to test the description
- Hand it to a new rep and ask them to run one deal using the document alone.
- Write down every question they asked a colleague. Each question is a hole in the description.
- Fix it and repeat with the next new rep.