There are times when giving your best is not enough, and no matter how successful your sales cycle is, your team just isn’t hitting the mark. This might be a sign for you to start tracking your sales cycle timeline and check just how long it takes for you to complete the process. A faster sales cycle is generally better for the business because it can produce more results in a shorter span of time. If sales representatives can easily transition through the stages of the cycle, they can bring in more deals for the company and avoid clogging the pipeline. This can also lessen the chances of leads falling through. But being fast may not always mean being efficient. So here are some strategies to shorten the sales cycle while still being effective.
1. Automate tasks
Sometimes, sales representatives can find themselves stuck in one stage of the sales cycle because they are weighed down by paperwork, data management, backlogs, and other tasks. However, the problem might not be them but the amount of workload they have. Try redistributing menial and repetitive tasks and use sales software to handle them. It can automate administrative tasks, streamline sales-related processes, and implement a more efficient workflow within the team. Doing so will free up more time for your sales representatives to focus on selling your products or services.
2. Be proactive instead of reactive
Preparation is the key to save up time. By outlining and setting goals in your sales calls beforehand, you will have absolute control of the conversation with your clients and keep the topic from going off tangent. Take the lead on the conversation by laying out everything that your prospective customers would like to know. Be clear of the pricing early on. Highlight unique features of your products or services and offer realistic scenarios where it can help their company overcome potential issues. Explore possible objections so that you can readily counteract them.
Being clear and comprehensive can lessen lull moments during discussions, cover important bases, and lessen time having to clarify things. This can also leave a great impression on your client by seeing how well-organized and prepared you are.
3. Identify the best methods for lead generation
With today’s technology, you have a variety of methods and channels where you can gather leads. Nonetheless, juggling countless platforms all at once can be ineffective and time-consuming. Therefore, it is essential to pinpoint the best way to attract more leads. By investing in high-performance channels, you can generate more leads in shorter periods of time instead of spreading out resources on inefficient ones that won’t give you the same amount of results you get from the others. This can lessen time in combing through different channels for more leads and hasten the transition to the next stage of the cycle.
4. Single out qualified leads immediately
Prioritize those who are most interested in your products or services to close deals faster and move on to the next. This will prevent jamming the sales pipeline and avoid wasting time and effort on dead ends. Going through your contact list from top to bottom can consume too much time and may give you very little results. By filtering through your leads, your sales representative can concentrate on the more serious ones with higher chances of closing more deals. Your team can also develop a lead scoring system that can be used to evaluate and determine which audience or prospects would most benefit from your businesses. So that next time, you know who to target.
5. Work together with the marketing team
There are several benefits of having the sales and marketing team work together. By aligning the two, businesses increase their chances of closing deals by 67%. For one, marketing can help bring in more leads for the sales team. Their campaigns act as a warmup for leads so that when the sales team swoops in, it would only take a little nudge for them to close deals. Both teams can also brainstorm strategies and map out ways to entice customers into the sales cycle through a symbiotic exchange of data. Since sales teams are always looking for ways on how to accelerate the sales cycle, cold leads are often set aside and forgotten. But with the help of the marketing teams, these leads can still be brought back into the cycle given enough time through marketing campaigns.
Work smarter to be faster
Going through the sales cycle faster doesn’t always mean being efficient. In fact, it might not even yield better results. If you keep focusing on speed without a strategy, you might end up with more workload and, ultimately, burnout. Therefore, the best way on how to speed up your sales cycle is to work smarter. Approach the cycle methodically by using the strategies mentioned above. Don’t just dive right into it and move on to one stage to another. Explore what technology has to offer to cut time and effort for your sales cycle so that you can snatch up more customers in no time.
