7 Ways to Shorten Your Sales Cycle

In this video, Austin from the WebFX Strategy team will talk about how you can shorten your sales cycle. Keep reading to find out more!

Transcript:

You probably spend a lot of time trying to drive sales at your business. And it can get kinda frustrating waiting on prospects to make it through the sales cycle. Don’t you wish it would go by faster?

Well, thankfully, there are actually a few ways to shorten your sales cycle. Just so we’re clear, you may not get it so short that people convert instantly, especially if your products or services require a substantial investment. But if you put in the work, you can definitely get a shorter sales cycle than the one you have now.

In this video, we’re going to cover 7 tips for shortening the sales cycle. Keep watching to find out more!

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1. Make sure you’re targeting the right audience

Our first tip for getting a shorter sales cycle is to make sure you’re targeting the right people. Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in trying 50 different ways of getting your prospects more engaged, all without even considering that you might be targeting the wrong prospects to begin with.

You want to make sure you’re targeting the most relevant prospects possible. Why? Because targeting the wrong people means you’re targeting people who won’t be as interested in buying from you, so it may take way longer to convince them… if they’re convinced at all.

To hone your audience targeting, it’s best to review your analytics. Look at the clients that have converted the most quickly in the past, or that have stayed with you the longest. Figure out what those clients have in common.

Whatever traits you see in those companies, go out of your way to target other companies that share those qualities. You can use those traits to build an ideal customer profile for the type of company you’re looking for.

2. Prioritize unique selling propositions (USPs)

Another way to achieve a short sales cycle is to put a lot of emphasis on unique selling propositions, or USPs. USPs are things that make your company stand out from the competition. Maybe you offer something that other companies don’t, or maybe you have a super high number of testimonials.

Whatever it is that makes you stand out, really focus on those things in your marketing. Otherwise, you risk just kind of blending in with all your competitors, and your prospects will have a hard time even remembering you. That’s obviously not good.

But with USPs, you’ll really stick in people’s minds, so they’ll be more likely to come back to you. Plus, USPs can help push people down the funnel when they’re still considering their options. They might read a cool fact about your business and say, “Oh, cool, this company sounds like a good choice!”

3. Automate routine sales tasks

Sometimes, it’s not your prospects that are slowing down your sales cycle — it’s your sales process. There are a lot of tasks that go into sales and marketing, like sending out tons of emails and scheduling phone calls. It can become easy for your team to get bogged down by those tasks.

That’s why it’s a good idea to use sales automation wherever possible. There are plenty of automation tools that can do routine sales tasks for you. Since your team won’t have to do it all manually, they’ll be free to spend more time moving the sale process along. That’ll help it go by faster.

4. Constantly reoptimize your marketing based on data

Marketing is key to sales since they’re super closely connected. You draw people in with marketing, and then those people talk to your sales team, and then your marketing team keeps them engaged… it’s this whole back-and-forth. You can’t have one without the other, which is why your marketing has to be top-notch for your sales to have any chance at success.

Fortunately, there’s a simple way to improve your marketing efforts. Just look at the data. Just like you can use your sales data to figure out which companies to target and improve your marketing, you can also use it to figure out which campaigns are the most effective. From there, you just have to replicate those campaigns later on.

Maybe you run an ad campaign targeting people who have already spoken to your representatives, and you notice that the sales cycle is much shorter with this group. Maybe the data shows that campaigns with a certain USP extend the sale cycle — not what you want from your marketing. You can adjust your campaigns from there.

With data-focused marketing, you’ll more effectively reach your prospects, and they’re likely to buy from you at a faster pace.

5. Set goals for each call and meeting

To drive home any sales, you’ll need to hold phone calls and meetings with potential clients. Whenever you do, make sure you lay out some goals in advance.

The last thing you want to do is go into a meeting without any clear agenda. You’ll just end up grasping for things to say, and it won’t be a great look. Instead, plan out exactly which topics you want to address, and then stick to that agenda during the phone call or meeting.

It’s also smart to set deadlines for how long it’ll take you to follow up, and clarify your availability for phone calls when you’re in the process of trying to schedule them.

6. Address prospects’ pain points

Pain points are a big deal in sales. Your clients buy from you because they need your products or services to fix a specific problem they have. So, you need to be very clear on what that problem is. And when you talk to your prospects, you need to address those pain points.

Make sure your prospects know that you understand their problem. Then draw a clear connection between that problem and your product or service. Show how your business will fix the problem for it. If they can clearly see that connection, they’ll make decisions much faster.

7. Talk with multiple people within each organization

Sometimes, especially with smaller companies, there will only be one decision-maker. In those cases, they’re the only person you need to talk to. But a lot of the time, there will be more than one person calling the shots.

In that scenario, it’s a good idea to get in contact with more than one of those people. You can talk with different stakeholders individually if it’s possible, and you can also try to meet with several of them at one time. Now, that isn’t always possible, especially because the ultimate decision-makers have pretty busy schedules.

For those who miss your meetings, you can prepare follow-up documentation that catches them up on the key points covered in those meetings, or that outlines more of the benefits of choosing your business. The people you met with can pass this information along to their coworkers or higher-ups, getting those people looped in on everything you have to say.

The more people are aware of the value your company can bring, the greater the likelihood that one of them will be quicker to reach a decision.

It’s best just to get all that taken care of as early as you can.

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Now that you know how to achieve a short sales cycle, it’s time to go put these tips into action at your company.

By the way, if you want to learn more cool marketing and sales info like this, just subscribe to our YouTube channel, or to our email newsletter, Revenue Weekly. In the meantime, thanks for watching. Happy trails — or should I say, happy sales!