In an increasingly online world where remote work is here to stay, a competitive and effective digital marketing strategy is more important than ever for B2B startups.
According to a DemandGenReport study, only 16% of B2B marketers rate their lead nurturing initiatives as “excellent.” There is a great deal of progress to be made in B2B marketing, especially in the field of sales cycles.
This article will explain sales cycles, why they’re so long, and how you can speed up the entire sales process to get more conversions quickly going into 2023 and beyond.
What is a sales cycle, and what are call cycles?
Simply put, a sales cycle is the sequence of steps a company goes through to close a sale with a customer.
In B2B marketing, a sales cycle may involve multiple interactions with a potential customer. It may take longer compared to a B2C sales cycle due to the transactions being more complex and involving more decision-makers. There are several steps in the B2B sales cycle, including lead generation, qualification, solution presentation, negotiation, and closing the deal.
On the other hand, call cycles are more specific, referring to a repetitive pattern of contacts and activities that a sales representative follows to move a potential customer through the sales cycle. This process involves reaching out to leads at the right time via a series of planned calls, emails, or other forms of outreach to a prospect to move the prospect closer to a purchase decision.
Call cycles are designed to keep the sales process organized and structured, helping to ensure that sales reps are consistently engaging with prospects in a way that is likely to result in closed deals.
How to shorten the sales cycle: 5 tips to speed up the sales process
A productive digital marketing strategy is efficient at converting leads to customers. Here are 5 tips on how to speed up and improve the effectiveness of your sales cycle.
Qualify better leads
By qualifying leads more effectively, you can eliminate prospects unlikely to make a purchase, freeing up more time to focus on those more likely to close. Lead qualification can be improved by using targeted questions to determine the prospects’ needs, budget, decision-making process, and timeline.
Utilize a lead scoring system to quantitatively evaluate and rank leads, considering their demographic information, website behavior, and engagement with your company’s content. Higher-ranking leads will be the ones that have a higher likelihood of turning into a customer.
This will allow your sales team to focus their efforts on the most promising leads who are most likely to close, shortening the sales cycle.
Automate your processes
Automating repetitive tasks such as lead scoring, follow-up email sequences, and lead nurturing can save time and increase efficiency. This can help sales reps focus on high-value activities such as selling and closing deals.
One hassle area in which a lot of brain power has gone into streamlining is scheduling meetings. Back-and-forth emailing to figure out a time that works for both parties is an awkward, time-consuming task, and it causes a lot of leads to lose momentum or falling by the wayside entirely.
You’ve probably heard of some big names, but fortunately, there are plenty of alternatives to When2Meet, YouCanBookMe, and Calendly to choose from nowadays. Many of these scheduling programs have robust features such as one-click appointment booking, easy setting of your availability, and integrations with various calendar software.
Create custom workflows
Going very much hand-in-hand with automation, custom workflows can help tremendously with all sales process phases.
Custom workflows are automated processes that follow specific steps or tasks in response to a trigger or event. In B2B sales, custom workflows can help streamline the sales process by automating repetitive and manual tasks, improving efficiency and accuracy, and allowing sales teams to focus on higher-value activities.
For example, a custom workflow can be set up to automatically send follow-up emails to leads who haven’t responded to initial outreach, schedule follow-up calls, or notify the sales team when a lead is ready to move to the next stage of the sales process.
You can even create custom workflows to automatically update lead scoring when a customer takes a specific action, such as downloading a whitepaper or attending a webinar.
Custom workflows are vital to improving the efficiency, accuracy, and effectiveness of the B2B sales process, allowing sales teams to focus on higher-value activities and close more deals.
Nurture unqualified leads
While unqualified leads may not be ready to purchase today, they may be in the future. By nurturing and attracting leads with relevant content, you can keep your brand at the forefront of their minds and increase their chances of becoming customers.
Here are three things you can do to turn those unqualified leads around:
- Educate – Provide relevant information and resources to help them understand the products/services you offer and how they can benefit from them.
- Personalize communication – Personalize your communication to make the leads feel valued and understood. Use their name, mention their specific needs, and show how you can help.
- Stay engaged – Regularly check in with your leads and offer value-adding content. This can be newsletters, blog posts, or social media updates showing your industry expertise.
Align marketing and sales teams
When marketing and sales teams work together, they can more effectively generate and qualify leads, create more targeted and impactful nurture programs, and close deals more efficiently.
With a shared understanding of the customer journey, marketing can create targeted and relevant content that supports the sales process, making it easier for sales to engage with prospects and close deals.
Collaboration between teams can help identify pain points, reduce friction, and ultimately improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the sales cycle.
Conclusion
If digital marketing and B2B sales were easy, entire careers wouldn’t be spent streamlining and perfecting the processes. You won’t achieve 100% conversion – and there will inevitably be gaps – but there are proven, practical strategies you can take to improve your B2B sales process no matter what industry you’re in. Take 2023 by storm with a lean, mean, and swift sales cycle.
