The sales cycle is an essential metric that businesses use to understand how long it takes to close a deal. It’s defined as the time from initiating a sales process to closing the sale, and it can vary from customer to customer.
While B2B companies have been working on improving their sales cycles for years, there are still many opportunities for them to shorten the time between prospecting and closing deals, and that’s what this article will help you do.
Identify Missed Opportunities and Work on them.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the most vital contributors to global economic development and job creation. They make up around 90% of the total organizations. However, many SMEs fail because of a lack of business growth, and one of the most significant reasons behind this is missed opportunities.
You can’t just fire off a cold email and hope for the best. You need to know who you are talking to when they will be receptive, and what messaging would appeal most to them.
Establish Urgency With a Pipeline Plan
Establishing urgency with a pipeline plan is essential in the sales process. This can be challenging to get right, but you can do a few things to make it easier. One of these is creating an automated pipeline management system that helps you keep track of your leads and opportunities, so you know how many deals are on deck at any given time.
You can use automated marketing technology and platforms to streamline your sales pipeline. Several options range from automated email marketing to scheduled social media posts. Data shows that 96% of marketers are already using automated marketing platforms. Moreover, the global marketing technology industry was valued at a whopping $344.8 billion in 2021.
Another way to establish urgency is using data from companies in similar industries that have already implemented X products or services. For example, “if Company A had implemented our services last year, they would have been able to reduce their annual costs by $1 million.”
Leverage Account Planning
Account planning is a strategic approach to identifying and executing the best opportunities for a company’s offerings. It helps you identify and prioritize your best prospects, target them more effectively, and build relationships more likely to result in sales.
Using account planning in B2B sales will shorten the sales cycle and improve efficiency by enabling sales teams to spend less time on candidates who aren’t likely to move forward in their pipeline. The better you understand your customer’s needs, the more quickly your team can determine whether they’re right for each other.
Use Technology to Automate Repetitive Tasks
A lot of work can be automated with the help of technology. This can reduce errors, save time, and improve the productivity of your employees. For example, in most organizations, several repetitive tasks must be done daily. For instance, sending out marketing emails.
Instead of asking someone to send out these emails manually, you can use a service like MailChimp or AWeber to automate this task for us. These services allow us to schedule when our emails get sent out daily, so it’s much easier than having one person do it manually all day. According to research, email is the most automated marketing channel, as stated by 65% of survey respondents.
Update CRM to Eliminate Cold Leads
A salesperson’s CRM is a treasure trove of information. Hence, 91% of companies with ten or more employees use a CRM. It can help you identify opportunities, prioritize leads, and track sales. But it can also be a source of frustration when it becomes inundated with poor-quality leads that need to be eradicated from the system.
One of the biggest problems with bad CRM data is that it creates inaccurate historical records for future sales reps to rely on when trying to build their own pipelines. Suppose you have many stale contacts in your database. In that case, they’re going to skew your pipeline reports and make them less relevant than they should be, not only for yourself but also for anyone else in your organization who relies on these reports.
Conclusion
Remember that sales cycles are constantly evolving, so it’s essential to stay updated on the latest industry trends and be flexible with your approach. So much of sales is about being able to adapt your strategies based on what’s working and what isn’t, and if something doesn’t seem to be working, try something new.
Keep in mind that there is no single way of doing business that works for everyone: different industries have different needs and preferences when it comes to sales cycles.
