How to “Henry Ford” Your Sales Process

How to “Henry Ford” Your Sales Process

What does it mean to “Henry Ford”  your sales process? I live in the Detroit metro area and Henry Ford is a big deal here and what he represents, really, is innovation. We have a huge museum called The Henry Ford and Mo Rocca even does a show there called the Innovation Nation. You may be wondering, what did Henry Ford do and how can you do that same thing to your sales process? 

Let’s start by talking about what innovating your sales process means. Well, Henry Ford did not invent the engine and he did not invent the car. He didn’t even invent the assembly line. But, he put them all together to create a systematic process that allowed the masses to get the benefits of having a car by making them cheaper and easier to produce. So, how can we apply this to sales? I work with my clients to innovate the systems that they have. Let’s think about it in terms of marketing. Your marketing brings people to the front door but sales lets them in and sits them down. So, your marketing needs to be incorporated into your sales process in a systematic way. 

One way to systematize your marketing is to use a service like Buffer, which allows you to automate posts each week. Something as simple as that is the least you can do for your business in terms of marketing. To make sure it doesn’t take up too much of your time, you just need to create a simple process. I use Buffer and I think it’s fantastic. But you can use HootSuite or any other similar service. If you use a pre-scheduler, you don’t have to think about posting and you don’t even have to write the posts yourself. You can share other people’s posts, blogs, or business pages. And that, my friends, is an efficient way to do marketing that connects directly to the sales process. 

Let’s look at an example: if I’m thinking I want to sell to five particular businesses, I can use my marketing to start a conversation by sharing their content. So as I’m loading content into my pre-scheduler for the week, I can think of how the content I’m creating or sharing will help me to achieve my sales goals. I can innovate the sales process by bringing in people that I want to talk to and sharing their content because it’s a great way to start a conversation. I don’t even have to be a content creator if I don’t want to. 

Innovating the marketing side of your sales is the first step but once you get them in the door, you’ll need to keep innovating the conversation. In order to Henry Ford your sales process, you need to have a simple structure. Remember, the first call isn’t about making a sale. It’s about connecting. It’s about finding out about them and them finding out about you. For that first initial contact, some people call them coffee chats, the idea is to innovate and simplify, just like Henry Ford. 

Begin thinking about what parts of that initial conversation you can tweak to make it super simple and fun. How you do that is up to you but, of course, I have lots of ideas. There are three things that I like to talk about as part of my systematised coffee chat process and I ask the same questions every time. So it makes it easy and I’m really only doing these introductory calls three to five times a month. That’s it. It doesn’t have to be every single day! 

The third step in systematizing, or Henry Ford-ing, your sales process is developing a system for making offers. You need to have a proposal template, an agreement template, and an email template. This is all part of my programs, such as my Sell Like a Mutha Program, and people who are part of that course or who work with me one-on-one have access to my templates as well. 

So, if you feel like you’ve been spending way too much time thinking about what to post or who to talk to. If you’ve been spending way too much time making offers: Henry Ford it. Systematize your process. And if what I’ve shared with you doesn’t ring any bells or makes it feel even harder than what you’re doing now, maybe we should talk! Keep an eye out for my emails and join my Facebook group. Or, reach out directly and we can start a conversation that way.

It doesn’t have to be difficult OR time consuming. Let’s say you’re working three hours a day. If you’re spending more than one of those hours on creating content, connecting with people and figuring out how to make a proposal, that’s too much. You need to systematize those activities so they stop draining your time and energy.

Nobody who’s a traditionally “sales-y” person is actually in sales anymore. That style of selling no longer works. What does work is the process I just described and you can do it even if you are an introvert and you don’t like being pushy. If you still have questions about this process, head over to my website where you can find tons of free content and join my Facebook group to connect with others and make sure that you get the answers you need. Sales does not have to be hard. My goal is to make sales simple and fun. And I hope that the Henry Ford-ing your Sales process that I have outlined is something you’ll implement. I hope you take this and knock it out of the park! 

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