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

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