Having long, ineffective sales cycles is a major problem for any sales department. Sales reps want short sales cycles so they can increase their number of contracts, spend less time per sale and close a larger percentage of their opportunities. CSO Insights 2009 Sales Performance Optimization survey shows that sales reps need sales resources to reduce their sales cycle. More than half of the sales reps they interviewed had cycles longer than six months, and the survey uncovered that the length of cycles is increasing each year.

Most sales cycles are longer because reps are trying to qualify the right companies to go after, or they are spending time gathering information in an attempt to better understand their prospect’s business. Strategic account planning is one of the most beneficial actions you can take to shorten your sales cycles and discover your potential customer’s problems. In order to do account planning, you must first research your prospects and gather sales intelligence data. Sales intelligence resources can drastically decrease the amount of time your spend researching and enable you to spend more time creating a strategic plan for the account. Before making a prospecting call, it will give you a competitive advantage to have a clear understanding of their business, problems, opportunities and initiatives, are and who the people you need to speak with are.

The CSO Insights study found that qualifying your prospects and then meeting their expectations can reduce sales cycles by more than three months. The number of calls it takes to close a deal is directly related to how long a sales cycle is. CSO Insights found that half of deals are closed by calling six or more times into a company, and that number is going up on year-to-year basis. You can reduce your number of fact-finding calls and start the relationship-building process much quicker if you have sales intelligence data at your disposal. Jill Konrath of Selling to Big Companies talks about how to use the news to find “triggering events” to add to your sales intelligence data to connect with a prospect at an opportune time and how that can also shorten your sales cycle.

It is becoming more and more difficult to get in touch with decision makers on the phone. When you do get through, you had better have a darn good reason for calling them. Your value proposition needs to be clear and match with their company’s problems, opportunities or initiatives. Do your homework, plan, and you’ll see shorter sales cycles and close more business.

- Mark Kilens
mark . kilens@salesquest.com
978-749-9999 ext. 118

©2012 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.

The Aberdeen Group’s PACE Model rounds out with the “E” section, in which they define Best-in-Class sales teams’ “enablers,” or the technologies that promote sales success. While communication skill sets and documented sales processes are strategies that need to be and should be leveraged, there are a number of technological tools that have helped these companies climb to the top of the ladder.

Of course, a CRM system is a central part of this list. A Customer Relationship Management system is an all-purpose solution for the “C”apabilities defined by Aberdeen’s PACE Model; it is a vessel for documented sales processes, centralized account information and “unifying customer information.” It is this multifunctional ability that has made CRM systems so popular and almost essential for sales teams today.  Not surprisingly, some CRM systems likely support the “enablers” that Aberdeen has defined, but these tools can also be provided through alternative solutions like SaaS or Internet services.

Keeping track of campaigns, especially when they are automated, like e-mail marketing, is essential in order to ensure that leads and prospects aren’t falling through the cracks. Campaigns require a lot of sensitivity and observation in order to make sure that they are successful; personalized attention is crucial in turning a prospect to a customer. These communications can be long, drawn-out and complicated, and without a tracking system, prospects can be forgotten, or even worse, disgruntled leads may accidentally be re-contacted. Sales reps need a way to organize the communications that they have with prospects even from the campaign stage, not just during the process of a sale.

Today, e-mail marketing campaigns are an important enabler for successful sales and marketing teams, and in addition to having a solution, whether it be a CRM system or an outsourced service provider, reps need to know not only what their responses are, but also the metrics on open and click through rates. The data on the success of campaigns, whether e-mail or an alternative, is essential to either continue gaining leads, and more importantly, to highlight a campaign’s failure and consequently assess the cause and thus allow for improvement in the future.

Another success enabler is up-to-date company and account information. While it may be obvious, reps that are pressed for time and don’t have easy access to the information often overlook this step. Online sales intelligence resources such as Hoovers allow for CRM integration so that relevant company information like annual revenues can be imported and attached to an account with the click of a button. This additional information can be ignored in the lead qualification process if the access to it is not quick and easy. The list Geoffrey James put together of free online sales tools on his blog, Sales Machine, provides extremely helpful reviews.

The centrality of a CRM and the simplicity of online research tools and integration capabilities are important enablers for sales reps to be educated and efficient.

- Carolyn Sebasky
carolyn . sebasky@salesquest.com
978.749.9999 ext. 107

©2012 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.