A blueprint is a flowchart of all the steps in the sales process. Blueprinting, when applied to sales process, allows the planning of resources required at each step in the sales process to maximise conversion to the next stage and minimise the time needed to complete the sales cycle. The resources include the number of hours, needed by skill type, such a pre-sales engineer, sales, sales administration, fulfilment, legal and technical support, as well as the systems, budgets and supporting documentation needed at each stage of the sales process.

The blueprint includes the metrics for conversion rates between different stages of the sales cycle and the value added in each stage.

The benefits of blueprinting the sales process include:

• Matching the sales process to the client’s buying process, which increases the probability of a successful sale.
• Identifying the up-sell and cross sell opportunities.
• Identifying ways to add value.
• Getting the right people doing the right things, at the right time, with the right resources.

In developing the blueprint, it is important to plan for when something goes wrong and work out what will be done to recover from failures, and to ensure that the capability and capacity of the resources needed by sales are available to meet the revenue and transaction targets.

The blueprint can be used to identify the minimum time required to complete a sales cycle and to identify the “moments of truth”, or points of contact with all the people in the decision making group, which need to be managed to ensure the right brand experience.

Lastly, the sales process blueprint allows the role of the various channels used in the sales process, such as web, mobile, call centre and sales force to be agreed and the handovers between the different channels to be engineered, to provide the best possible customer experience in the sales process.