Every business wants to shorten their sales cycle and is looking for ways to accelerate sales cycle. Why? Because they want to increase revenue and attain goals faster.
This can even assist you to close deals more effectively. But it is not always as easy as it sounds. Just look at these numbers.
- According to research done by Implisit, B2B sales cycle length takes an average of 84 days to convert leads into opportunities.
- According to a study conducted by Harvard University, at least 25% of B2B sales cycles take a minimum of 7 months to close.
- As per SiriusDecisions, because there are more decision-makers today, the typical sales cycle has lengthened by 22% in a span of 5 years.
These numbers indicate that it is very important to accelerate B2B sales where you can. With this guide, learn what is a sales cycle, steps involved, and different ways to accelerate the sales cycle.
What is Sales Cycle?
The sales cycle outlines the complete selling process of a business. It depicts the customer journey through different stages from lead generation to closure.
It includes the various activities involved in moving prospects right from their referral to being paying clients.
There is, however, no fixed definition for the sales cycle. It will differ from company to company, as per its complexities.
A strong sales cycle helps your sales representatives by providing them with a solid framework to follow.
Sales Cycle Step By Step
Sales cycle comprises several stages that align with your sales funnel. Each stage has a purpose and it specifies an activity your sales representative must finish before advancing the sale towards a close. Some of the typical stages involved are:
Prospecting
At this stage, your sales rep uses your buyer personas to help them identify leads that match your ideal customer profiles.
Leads could be generated via LinkedIn or through marketing campaigns like missed call marketing. After refining the leads, they put together their list of prospects to call.
Contacting
The next step is to connect with your leads and find out which stage of their buyers’ journey they are on.
This will help them analyze what the prospects will need next. Make sure your sales rep contact the leads as soon as possible.
Qualifying
At this stage, sales rep ask a series of key questions to.prospects, typically, based on BANT ( Budget, Authority, Need, and Time).
The sales rep will determine whether the lead is serious about solving their problem and might be making a purchase in the future. So, time or resources are not wasted on the wrong prospects.
Nurture
Now you know the prospect’s problem, it’s time to nurture them. You can send them timely email marketing campaigns or SMS marketing with relevant content to keep your leads engaged with your company.
Make An Offer
Check for leads actions, such as signing up for a demo, asking quotations, etc. At this stage, make a sales pitch that concludes with an appropriate offer.
Handle Objection
Your leads may need some further information or have objections relating to pricing, timing, and the like. This may infer them from closing the deal.
Your sales rep should respond to these questions effectively, so they can remove these roadblocks towards closing success.
Close The Deal
At this stage, your lead is convinced that your solution is right for them, thereby closing the deal.
Upon closing, welcome the customer and solve the additional queries that they may have.
How to Accelerate the Sales Cycle?
Now that you are armed with the sales cycle management knowledge, you can begin to plan your next step strategies to accelerate the sales cycle.
Lead Qualification Automation
Lead qualification is a very important part of a salesperson’s day to day work. If done correctly, it can increase your team’s success rate.
On the other hand, if it is taken for granted, your sales team will lack results since they will be wasting time on people who aren’t likely to buy.
To accelerate sales performance, you need to choose a lead management system software CRM like Teleduce which can automatically qualify leads.
By automating lead qualification, your sales team can allocate more time to more potential buyers.
This is done through lead scoring and lead grading. Lead grading checks whether a lead fits the ideal lead profile based on attributes such as company size, location, etc.
On the other hand, lead scoring gauges the prospect’s interest by analyzing their activity levels.
Lead Nurturing
As per the survey, 76% of buyers need different content at different stages of their purchasing process.
So, to nurture leads, you need to provide varied content at the different stages of the sales process.
By providing them regular updates and information through email marketing, your leads will be sales-ready when you reach them and thus require less time converting.
Automated Follow-ups
Follow-ups may seem dreary but they make your clients feel important. And it is best done with the help of a lead generation system software CRM like Teleduce with automation features.
By using drip email marketing, send follow-ups at key events of your prospect’s sales cycle.
This not only reduces the sales person’s role but also makes them effective. And there will be less likelihood of sales funnel leaks.
Track Prospects
With an integrated sales and marketing tool like Teleduce, you can make complete use of your CRM’s tracking and analytics features.
You will know exactly where your prospect is in the sales funnel. You can also glean a lot of details like who visited or downloaded the content, what actions they have taken on your website.
This way you will know when your lead is ready to buy and can approach them.
Bonus: Check out our guide on the ways to improve sales performance, along with learning how to measure sales productivity.
Accelerate Sales Growth with Teleduce
With an integrated sales and marketing CRM like Teleduce, you get access to features which allows you to improve your sales cycle and to make sure that you are working at optimum efficiency.
It gives you the best insight into which stage the lead is and when it may be a good time to touch base further along the cycle.
You can customize the dashboard with categories or reminders of the sales stage.
This will give you better visual understanding and familiarity. You can qualify leads for sales with Teleduce.
And this system also provides integration for customization, analysis, and productivity.
Ready to accelerate your sales growth? Try Teleduce today!
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