11 Ways to Shorten Your Sales Cycle

During times when business can be happening slower, in a slowed economy, finding any way to speed things up is important. What if there was some science around helping your buyers buy in a better way, or an easier manner? One of the reasons I did some heavy research seven years ago was that as a sales trainer and consultant, I could not show enough ROI for the time and money clients were investing in our work. Why?

BLACK HOLE

Sales training is notoriously a “Black Hole” where money gets sucked down and performance improvement is always subjective and often questionable. The more I engaged with companies the worse I felt by not being able to be more data oriented.

The game changed for me seven years ago when I set out to find tools, systems, and methodologies that would help company leaders measure the performance of their sales ecosystem. They could take that data and make smart decisions. We now have a process and tools to do this.

Based on the results of nearly 2 million sales team members, one piece of research offers eleven ways to shorten your sales cycle:

Start with Sales DNA – (these are elements internal to you – part of how you are wired or were raised)

1. How you make decisions
2. How strong your need to be liked is
3. If you are able to really discuss money and the investment to the buyer
4. How calm and level-headed you are in discussions with buyers
5. How unaffected you are by rejection

Now add Sales skills –

1. Know how to sell consultatively
2. Qualify thoroughly
3. How you deal with a put-off or a stall
4. If you have a healthy amount of skepticism (I call it realism)
5. If you have beliefs that support ideal sales outcomes or not

Finally, you have a strong, effective, and scalable sales process in place.

I’ll be diving into each of these in future posts. For now, know that how you begin with a buyer and how you proceed with a buyer on their journey lays the foundation for your success. If you’d like to know more about how all this works, reach out on LinkedIn or drop me a note.

Lori Richardson  is CEO of Score More Sales, a top B2B sales strategy firm helping mid-sized companies grow revenues by solving key issues in their sales department - like recruiting, retention, diversity hiring, process, pipeline and leadership. Lori is also President of Women's Sales Pros - a community created to help move the needle for more women in sales and sales leadership roles. She speaks at CEO groups on topics of sales growth and the importance and value of diversity. Clients include companies in the technology, telecom, manufacturing, distribution, and professional services industries. LinkedIn named Lori as one of the