Tested ways to shorten your sales cycle

Time is money. We all know that, but it’s even more true for small businesses. And among their owners, it seems that everyone wants to shorten their sales cycle. As it turns out, more than 30% of small businesses believe that this is one of their most crucial objectives this year. And if you know that small businesses fail most often because of a lack of cash flow, this doesn’t come as a surprise. So, if you also have this as a goal, you’re at the right place. We have a few tested ways to shorten your sales cycle that we want to share with you here today.

But if you’re not sure what we’re talking about, let’s pause for a second and explain it. You see, when your sales cycle is brief, your customers spend less time in the sales funnel, and they buy sooner. And the less time your leads take to convert, the higher the ROI for your company. And when you put it that way, it makes perfect sense. However, this can be a tricky thing to achieve. But that’s why you’re here. Let’s get started and sort it all out. Here are the tactics you should use.

5 ways to shorten your sales cycle

#1: Lead scoring

Lead scoring is a powerful tool with which you can accelerate your sales cycle quite significantly. Whenever you get a new lead, run a detailed evaluation process. If they show a serious interest in your product or service, there’s potential. And here’s how you can check that.

• Site visitors spend a lot of time on your website, reading about your products;
• They checked out your pricing page;
• Those same users keep coming back to your site multiple times.

If they tick all boxes, you can hope for the best. But don’t jump to a conclusion just yet. If someone reads your content, that doesn’t have to mean that they’ll become a customer.

So, what you should do is monitor their engagement. If they’re leaving comments and asking questions, you can safely assume that they’re qualified leads. And at this point, you want to find a way to contact them. Or even better, let them contact you. If you have lead engagement software, this is something you don’t have to worry about, as they’ll probably call you. But if you don’t, try to get their contact information.

#2: Uncover your prospect’s pain points

Once you get a chance to talk to your leads, you need to be on your own. No one wants to hear those uniform and boring pitches. Instead, instruct your sales reps to take a minute to understand your prospect’s situation. If they jump to selling right away, they might miss the point. You want to get all the relevant information you can beforehand. So, when the time for the actual pitch comes, they can craft and fine-tune their offer. This is what will win them over and make a customer from your lead.

To put it simply, make sure your reps are actively listening to prospects. They need to hear their objections and complaints to figure out what’s behind them. You’re never further than just a few questions to get to the prospect’s true pain points. And that they need to understand. If they can run a serious conversation with the lead, they’ll establish a connection with them. And from that connection, they’ll be able to get all the information they need. So, one of the best ways to shorten your sales cycle is to spend more time with each prospect.

#3: Feel free to talk about pricing

More than often, talking about the price of your product or service is unpleasant. There’s no denying that. But one mistake that many sales reps make is avoiding the subject until later stages of the sales process. In their minds, once they exhibit all the benefits of the product, prospects won’t mind paying for it.

But this isn’t how things really work. As a matter of fact, there’s no point in sugarcoating the pill. It’s much better to be straightforward from the start and let your future customers hear the price as soon as possible. Of course, at the same time, you should explain what they can expect to get for their money.

If you’re transparent from early on, you’ll build loyalty and trust with your customers. On top of that, you’ll avoid the awkward situations of them train to lower your price or changing their mind at the last moment. And if they withdraw as soon as you mention the price, they weren’t the right prospects all along. Luckily, there are always ways to convert web traffic to leads. So, you don’t ever have to worry about not having who to work with.

#4: Make signing contracts easy

Everyone today has a smartphone and a tablet, so why wouldn’t you use the full advantage of those? Let us explain what we’re on about. In our experience, the best way to nudge your leads toward closing is to allow them to sign a contract from any device they have on hand. You really don’t need much more than their signature. And if you can get it with one simple click, go for it.

In general, people aren’t eager to sign up for something if they have to deal with lots of paperwork and forms. They want it to be quick and easy, and you should make that possible. Respect their time and preferences, and they’ll respect you.

#5: Get rid of cold prospects

Yes, we know that this sounds harsh. But you need to do it if you want to succeed. Cold leads are only taking up your rep’s time and energy. And they can use that time to focus on people to who you can actually sell.

Now, we’re not saying that it’s never possible to warm up those cold prospects. But even when you can do it, it takes a lot of time and effort. And since your goal is to find ways to shorten your sales cycle, you should just let them go. Clean your list regularly, and your business will only see benefits from this.

Bonus round – invest in callback software solutions

Having gone through the simplest ways to shorten your sales cycle, it’s only logical to mention the one that ConvertMore offers. With our callback widget, you can engage customers before they end up leaving your website. You can start conversations with site visitors, saving time on having to track them down and schedule calls later on. Instead, you instantly reach out and either give them your pitch or schedule a meeting. And all this with a very customizable widget that take 15 minutes to set up. Register today and earn 20 free credits/calls!