Shorten Your Sales Cycle
How do you shorten your sales cycle? Match your sales process to the buyer’s buying stage. A common question in sales, how do we shorten our sales cycle? We hear that often, but not many people have the answer. It’s not something many people talk about, but many think about it often.
First, I will ask you: where do you intersect the buyer or prospect in their buying continuum? Meaning, have they ever heard of you? Or what do you offer? Do they know who you are, and do they even have any interest in what you have to offer?
Some buyers will be already way past that. They know they are ready to buy. They know they are ready to take action, and the real question is:
Are they going to buy from you?
So your first question is whether or not the buyer is ready to buy, if they know what you are offering, and if it fits their needs. Then your second challenge is to develop a sales process that matches where that buyer is in their process.
One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to take a buyer already prepared to purchase and put them through a lengthy explanation process. If they’re already sold on your idea, don’t waste more of their time or yours. Go ahead and start talking pricing.
Please don’t put the customer through a lengthy sales spiel when they have already decided they are ready to buy.
It sounds simple, and it makes sense, but the truth is some companies only train sales reps one way. They say what they must say, almost as if following a script. Too often, they get stuck in the script. They must remember how to ad-lib and listen to what the consumer is saying and feeling. They need help in saying their lines that they need to do better on closing a sale.
You need to train your sales reps to spot where a potential customer is at in the buying process and then latch onto that to meet the consumer’s needs and when possible, to shorten the sale.
We discovered that you find out where the buyer is on the buying continuum. You must then make sure you have a process that matches where the buyer is. You want to make sure your sales process is facilitating the sale, not getting in the way of you making sales.