Implementing Sales Policies Within Your Company

In episode 171 of Journey to $100 Million, Kevin talks about our sales policies we have recently put together here at Array Digital. We have never created sales policies before - it used to just be Erik and Kevin hitting the streets and closing deals. But, now that we have Glen (our new sales manager), and plan to hire more sales team members, we realized a need for structured sales policies within our organization. If we hope to hire new sales team members in the future, it is crucial to have sales policies in place. These sales policies include standard procedures and regulations within our sales teams. These sales policies are not yet complete, and still a work in progress, but as we continue forming this, we are going to add to our policies and fine tune it just like any other document that we have. Throughout these sales policies there are many different aspects, and in this episode, Kevin goes into depth about a couple. One of the aspects we cover is a minimum commitment term. This is something you must ask for as a salesperson within our company. When asking for a commitment, we ask for (by default) a 12-month minimum commitment. If that doesn’t work, the prospect has some leverage to go down to 9 months or 6 months, but we always start off going for 12 months - that is what we want and is our standard ask. Another aspect we included is an agreement policy, for example a “valid for only 7 days” agreement after we send a contract to a prospect. We ensure that these agreements cannot be copied from prior agreements, and must also be signed by either Kevin or Erik. We also cover pricing in within policy. Under no circumstances do we lower prices or give discounts. This plays into our fundamental professional services as well. We require these services for all clients, and a salesperson cannot sell any services at all without them. Payment options is one of the most important aspects out of our sales policies, because you need to get paid! In the payment section of our policy, we cover things like ACH, credit cards, and checks. At Array Digital, we prefer default ACH, but you have the ability to use credit card if need be. If a bigger company is not capable of either, we can take a check, but we must ensure that this is a client that we are comfortable taking a check from. Also in this payment section we cover things like commissions, operations, and how the sales team integrates and works with the operations team. We also speak on how involved the sales team should be, to ensure that we are not pulling in too many resources when trying to make a sale. These are just a few things that we have to embody in our policies. If Kevin were to hire another salesperson, he wants to be able to say: here are your policies, here are the things you have to follow, and here is what I expect from you. Do you have sales policies within your organization? If you don’t, don’t worry, because we just recently made ours and it is growing every day! — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups. — Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is the also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.