What's the best way to build a good B2B customer-centric sales process?

You are exactly right in being concerned that your "steps" are simply a list of activities and not a sales process. Most people think a process is about disciplining people to some kind of method or procedure, but that is only part of the idea. The most important issue is WHY a method should be followed. If that is not clear from the beginning, people will not readily follow your process. A better way to look at it is that processes are about creating value. They must create value for everyone involved. For example: Your customers will follow your sales process if it creates value for them (makes things simpler, easier, quicker, seems more trustworthy or professional or what ever). Likewise, your salespeople will follow your process if it creates value for them. If following this process actually makes selling easier, saves time, gets better results, etc. So, if your customers don't follow your process, don't expect your salespeople to follow it either!! It is amazing how often this happens, as when salespeople are taught some "Always be Closing" techniques or other ways to try to pressure, push, or cajole people to buy. That no longer works very well in B2B. You asked how to translate ... : customer "buying processes" into the vendor's sales process, in a way which will help the vendor measure how efficiently various activities take the customer through their buying process in the most efficient way. The key is to realise you are operating in a "sales production system." A factory becomes more productive by continuously improving their ability to distinguish value ("what the customer will pay for") from waste (everything else).  In your sales production system, you become more productive by continuously improving your ability to get the right prospects and customers to "pay" attention, give you their time and information, and decide to trust you. These have to be earned long before you'll ever get a chance to earn any of the customer's money. A successful sales process helps the customer take an action that moves them along their customer journey (hopefully with you). If this goal is explicit, you can gain constant feedback on how well it is working, and this enables you to iteratively figure out the bottlenecks and fix them. The goal is to automate what ever can be automated, and have salespeople do what can't be automated. Voice of Customer (from salespeople, service people, or customers themselves) can answer questions like "What problem is the customer trying to solve?" You have to meet them where they are, you should not try to get them to do things they are not ready to do. For example, they might have difficulty understanding the extent of their problem ("Do we really need to spend money to solve this now?). Or, they might have a challenge getting others in their company to understand the importance of doing something ("How can I get my VP of Finance to realize how important this is?") It doesn't matter if it is a salesperson, a case study, or a testimonial, if it helps the customer take another step, it creates value. If not, it is waste.  Your company is unique, and so are your customers. So there is no "canned" solution that will work. Any outside sales training, CRM, or what ever is bound to create all sorts of immune reactions and be a partial solution at best. Your current employees are the best assets you have to begin figuring out what problems you need to solve, and what changes will create improvement. Here is a recommended approach to get a team engaged in this process: 1) Prepare to map the process. Many of salespeople’s most crucial problems occur because they are not on the same page with the customer, the support departments, or with each other. You need to get all these things "out on the table" so they can be dissected and prioritized. This is where you prove to your salespeople that the process is going to solve some of THEIR problems, not just management's problems. 2) Identify the customer's journey You can have different types of customers, and each will have a difference in their customer journey (e.g., how they make decisions and what they base decisions on). Pick an important market segment and get as much authentic Voice of Customer as you can. Do post mortems on deals you have won as well as deals you have lost. Get your team to settle on a depiction of the customer's journey that contains from four to eight steps, preferably defined in terms of visible customer actions (each step should contain a verb and a noun). 3) Identify the work you do that aligns with the customer journey This part of the work may generate the most learning as your team settles on a common description of what they should be doing at each step, and how they know if it actually worked (again, each step should contain a verb and a noun). You will find holes and gaps, some of which are easily filled (yay!). You will also find areas of disagreement. You are shooting for a minimum level of "respectful agreement" around how the work should be done, and at least two clear measurements: an input (this is a qualified sales opportunity we are going to invest in) and an output (this is a closed sales opportunity, meaning we either won it, or lost it, or it went down to no decision). 4) Manage the process using the process map With this respectful agreement in place your team has framed the realities the they have to cope with. Now, the REAL learning begins. This is not process for process sake. Far from it. The value of this map is to help everyone see where the problems are, so they can apply the right kind of work to solve it. People are often surprised to learn that they don't really do what they thought they did, or what they said they did. Now is the time to acknowledge these things and deal with them honestly as a team. Do you ignore the customer journey by pushing demos or samples on companies who have not agreed they need your product? Good luck with that. Are your salespeople having difficulty finding enough qualified opportunities?  No amount of discounts or special promotions will solve such problems.  Anyway, there is obviously a lot more that can be said. Some examples and diagrams can be found at http://salesperformance.com/how-do-you-map-a-sales-process. Hope this helps.

It's a common question from people new to managing sales. Is there one process, one script, one predefined template that will take me through all the necessary steps from cold to closed, to land a deal perfectly? And no, there isn't one process. There are many that promise to help you do just that. Many SaaS apps that advertise as such too. Focus on the customer, and the revenue and happy employees will follow.