I stumbled into sales by accident. After a few years of freelancing, I realized that the part of my work I loved most was meeting business owners and helping them identify ways to overcome their biggest challenges. But is that sales? It never quite felt like it, which is probably why I’ve always enjoyed it.
To add to that, there’s a pervasive attitude in sales that success requires a relentless grind. While I certainly appreciate hard work, there’s another approach that’s just as important for achieving sustainable, long-term success: frictionless selling.
In this post, I’ll take you through what frictionless selling is, how you can reduce friction in your sales process, and why you should adopt this approach.
Table of Contents
- What is frictionless selling?
- The Frictionless Selling Framework
- How to Minimize Friction in Sales
- Why Use the Frictionless Selling Method?
What is Frictionless Selling?
If the name didn’t already give it away, frictionless selling is all about reducing friction in the sales process. It’s about implementing strategies to eliminate objections, barriers, complications, and distractions that derail deals as they move through the sales funnel.
The goal is to make the sales process as seamless and hassle-free as possible for the customer. This is why frictionless selling is centered around a consultative, collaborative approach rather than a transactional one.
Of course, achieving 100% frictionless selling isn’t realistic, but the aim is to remove as many obstacles as possible. By minimizing friction, you can increase your sales team’s productivity without requiring more effort, which can significantly impact close rates.
If you’re intrigued by frictionless sales, I highly recommend diving deep into HubSpot’s Frictionless Sales Program and earning certification. Otherwise, keep reading for a quick overview of the three stages of implementation, some personal examples, and the benefits of using this approach.
The Frictionless Selling Framework
Whenever I hear the word “framework,” I expect things to get overly complicated. Thankfully, that’s not the case with HubSpot’s frictionless selling framework. So, what are the stages of the frictionless selling framework?
Simple:
Let’s break down the stages and dive into specific tips you can apply at each one.
1. Enable
In many sales teams, reps—especially less experienced ones—struggle with time management. Without clear strategies, their erratic outreach becomes like searching for a needle in a haystack.
To eliminate this friction, help your salespeople prioritize their efforts and spend more time on high-impact tasks. Here’s how you can do it:
- Examine your sales processes: Are they up to date? How can you improve them to maximize efficiency?
- Review your sales tools and technologies: Are there redundancies? Are there any gaps compromising your team’s performance? What integrations could streamline the process?
- Analyze reps’ daily tasks: What are they spending most of their time on? Which parts of the sales process are most time-consuming? What tasks can be automated to free up more time for revenue-generating activities?
Pro tip: Instead of relying on self-reporting, which can be inaccurate, encourage your reps to use time-tracking apps like HubStaff. These tools provide valuable insights and help you improve time management while identifying areas that need improvement.
2. Align
Once you’ve equipped your team with the right processes, tools, and technologies, the next step is aligning them with your target buyer. The goal is to reduce friction and make it as easy as possible for your buyer to say “yes” (or “no,” if they’re not the right fit).
Here’s how you can do it:
- Ensure 24/7 availability: Don’t just offer support during business hours. Use live chat on your website and set up off-hours reps to cover international time zones.
- Simplify meeting scheduling: Use tools like Calendly or HubSpot’s built-in scheduling feature to eliminate the back-and-forth of finding meeting times.
- Provide transparent pricing and discounts: Being upfront about pricing builds trust and helps buyers with tight budgets self-qualify.
- Make cancellation easy: Don’t lock customers into long-term contracts unless absolutely necessary. Clear, fair terms and an easy cancellation process reduce buyer anxiety.
Pro tip: To go beyond these tips, analyze past customer interactions. Look for patterns in the questions prospects asked before they became high-quality clients. If many of them wanted to know about integrations with other software, it might be time to develop that feature.
3. Transform
The final stage of frictionless selling involves fostering a culture of continuous learning within your team. Here’s what to focus on:
- Become data-driven: Move away from spreadsheets and start using real-time reporting tools for instant insights.
- Encourage mentorship: Pair new or struggling reps with experienced mentors to improve their skills.
- Incentivize internal collaboration: Foster a culture of sharing insights and best practices. Don’t expect this to happen organically—create incentives for collaboration and track its ROI.
- Coach, don’t micromanage: Great reps don’t need micromanagement. They need coaching to refine their weaknesses and leverage their strengths to meet their goals.
Pro tip: If you want to create a culture of learning, don’t just mandate it from the top down. Get involved, identify roadblocks in the sales process, and work with your team to come up with solutions. When your reps have a say in decisions like software investments, they’ll be more motivated to make those tools work for them.
How to Minimize Friction in Sales
The best way to reduce friction is by identifying bottlenecks or delays in your sales process. Once you’ve identified where friction occurs, focus on the areas that offer the greatest value.
For example, shortly after starting my current role, I set up a meeting scheduling page. After just one or two email exchanges back and forth, I realized how much time I could save by eliminating the scheduling hassle. This simple change had a profound impact on our sales cycle—and it only took 15 minutes to set up.
Other improvements are about adopting best practices. Are your reps scheduling follow-ups during calls? If not, make it a priority. When I was new to sales, a mentor suggested this, and it immediately made my process more efficient.
As you address simple friction points, you’ll begin to tackle more complex issues. For example, creating tailored proposals for different industries can be time-consuming. To address this, I’m working on building templates and exploring tools like PandaDoc to streamline the proposal-to-signature process.
Every sales funnel is unique, so your friction points will vary. But by identifying and improving your specific pain points, you’ll be on the path to frictionless selling.
Why Use the Frictionless Selling Method?
I’m a big advocate for this approach because I’ve personally seen its benefits. While it’s clear that salespeople and prospects will appreciate a smoother process, here are a few data-backed reasons why you should adopt frictionless selling:
- Boost Efficiency: With reps spending 70% of their time on non-sales tasks, there’s huge potential to increase productivity by reducing friction.
- Improve Conversion Rates: Overcomplicated sales processes overwhelm buyers. Simplifying things can lead to better conversion rates.
- Enhance Customer Loyalty: A frictionless experience keeps customers loyal, even if mistakes are made. In fact, 75% of customers will continue doing business with a company that offers great service, even after errors.
- Generate More Revenue: Friction causes prospects to drop out of the sales cycle. By eliminating friction, you can close more deals and increase revenue. It’s estimated that $22 billion is lost annually due to friction.
In short, frictionless selling is the path to higher sales, happier teams, and more loyal customers.
In my experience, sales can be both fun and rewarding—if you’re focused on solving interesting, complex problems. But without this focus, you could find yourself stuck in tedious tasks that drain your energy. When I first encountered the idea of frictionless selling, it resonated with me immediately. While achieving perfection takes time, I try to make incremental improvements each week toward a smoother, more efficient sales process for myself, my team, and my prospects. I encourage you to do the same.