Building A Coffee Roaster Sales Program

Sales - some think it's a dirty word but no matter what you think about it, your coffee roaster needs it to survive. In our experience, most roasters don't have an established sales process. This results in unpredictable sales results, prospecting, partner care, and growth.

Creating a sales process that is iterated on and improved over time removes the anxiety of, "What happens if this superstar salesperson leaves" and it also removes the guesswork around, why aren't sales working because it is a honed, iterated, and continually improved process rather than a sporadic and inconsistent approach to sales.

If you don't have a process or aren't satisfied with your sales outcomes this would be a great place to start. You shouldn’t be afraid of your sales person leaving. Your process is the thing that alleviates this fear. Your sales process is something that you should be iterating on, learning from, and making continual adjustments to increase your overall close rate.

Do you dream of building a robust wholesale program but your attempts feel half baked, half hearted and yielded half the results you hoped? Or perhaps you had a stellar sales person but when they left so did new sales. This anxiety is due to a lack of a sales process.

Effective Sales Programs Are Built On Process

Effective sales programs aren’t built on the charisma or tallent of a salesperson. They are built on effective processes. Imagine your salesperson as the driver of your car and maintenance is the process. You maintain the car, put fuel in it, make sure they have good tires and that the AC works. They are responsible to put the car in drive and navigate to the close of a sale. As long as the maintenance is taken care of, new drivers can be added or changed easily. The sales car is able to be put in drive and be navigated toward a close no matter who’s in the driver seat because the process is being executed.

Answer These Questions First

But before you can start developing a sales process, you need to get clear on some big picture strategy and goals. Answer these questions first because these questions will inform some of the process:

• What is your sales strategy?

• What are key sales activities.

• What are your short and long term monetary goals?

  • 1 Year Goal: $

  • 5 Year Goal: $

  • 15 Year Goal: $

Before Hiring A Salesperson, Answer These Questions

So you’ve answered the initial big picture questions around goals and strategy, it’s still not time to hire a sales person. The next step is to define the actual sales process. Here's a few questions need to have answers for to build the coffee sales process:

• Who you are selling to and who you would like to sell to?

• What, specifically, are you selling?

• What are the steps in the process of onboarding a new account?

• How do you prospect and who is an ideal client?

• Who is responsible for partner training, support and nurturing process?.

• What is the partner training, support and nurturing process?

• What CRM you will use and how you will use it?

• What is your sales script? - Even just bullets or a loose outline is more than most.

• What is the sales process from prospecting to close?

Once you’ve answered the above questions, you’ll be in a much better place to hire a coffee salesperson and set them up for success.