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Sales , , , Leave a comment

Shorten Your Sales Cycle

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We’re at the halfway point of the 4th Quarter, that time of year when many businesses expect to bring in the lion’s share of their revenue. You have only a few short weeks to motivate prospects and current customers to do business with you before the calendar year ends. Best case scenario, you’ll have until Wednesday December 22 seal your deals. But time is only one obstacle in your path. A much more formidable adversary you face this year is inflation and its noticeable impact on the price of everything is fueling nervous talk of impending recession. The recent lay-off of 11,000 workers announced by Meta (Facebook) can only rev up the recession drumbeat and its a tune reflexive clamping down on budgets.

There’s been plenty of debate about whether or not we’re in a recession now, but whether we are technically in a recession or not, many Freelancers are worried and with good reason. Difficult economic times do not make it difficult to generate sales. Businesses cut spending and conserve cash. The threat of a recession, in particular, one that could be prolonged, can make it very difficult to fill your sales pipeline.


That said, businesses are still doing business. Decision-makers are just being cautious about spending and that makes sense during times of economic uncertainty. Your best defense to combat any anticipated or actual tough slogging is to take an active role in increasing your revenue potential by optimizing your lead generation activities. Step One is to figure out what really motivates customers to buy from you and relentlessly appeal to that motivation in every communication channel that your prospects follow and trust—print media, newsletters, webinars, marketing emails, social media and your website.

Next, do yourself a favor and revisit / follow-up any promising prospects you tried to reel in earlier in the year. They are warm lead prospects because they’ve already dipped into your sales funnel. For whatever reason those leads did not convert, but reaching back to hit the restart button is a sensible tactic when your goal is to wring the most out of your sales pipeline and shorten your sales cycle as you do.

Implisit, a San Francisco, CA based company that uses predictive analytics to boost sales organizations’ performance and revenue, analyzed the sales pipelines of hundreds of companies and found the average length from Lead to Opportunity (otherwise known as Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) to Sales Qualified Lead [SQL]) was 84 days and the average length from Opportunity to Close (otherwise known as Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) to Deal) was 18 days. So the average Lead to Close length is 102 days. However, this varies hugely based on what the source of the opportunity was. Whatever you can do to speed up the timeline is money in the bank. Here are four steps to ensure you set your 4th Quarter leadGen strategy up for success.

  1. Create a proper sales system: First, make sure you have a proper system in place to track and follow up with prospects. This could mean using a simple Customer Relations Management or sales pipeline tool. Click https://sellingsignals.com/best-sales-pipeline-software/ to explore six sales pipeline options that will help you to generate revenue faster and more efficiently.
  2. Engage with leads quickly: Once your sales pipeline system is in place, begin following up with your leads as soon as they express any interest and return to those that were promising but for some reason did not convert. The sooner you reach out, the better, but taking a second look as you close out the fourth quarter can yield a pleasant surprise or two. You have a short window of opportunity to close a sale after you’ve made initial contact with a prospect.
  3. Personalize your messages: When you contact prospects by way of marketing emails, always address them by name and tailor your offer as specifically to their needs or priorities, as possible. One-size-fits-all emails that make a generic offer are destined for either the spam or trash file. When you’re returning to a previously worked lead you’ll have the advantage of history, to which you can refer to customize your message and make yourself more credible, trustworthy and, perhaps, better positioned to make a sale this time.
  4. Continue warm leads follow- up: Finally, don’t walk away after a single follow-up. According to research by RAIN Sales Training, a global sales training headquartered in Boston, MA, an average of eight touch point interactions are required to convert a lead to a sale. Stay the course, but be sure that you don’t come across as too pushy, or you may risk turning off a potential client entirely.

Remember, other marketers might be packing it in for the 4th Quarter due to limited budgets and the holidays on their minds. But this is your perfect opportunity to double down on your lead generation efforts to finish the year off on top.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image :© Joao Souza. Fish market in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil February 12, 2021

Business Strategy , Leave a comment

10 Strategies for Surviving a Bear Market

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Step right up folks. Welcome to the bear market. Wasn’t this the party you were looking for? Probably not. But the bear market bus has left the station and you have no choice but to hang on for the ride. Get used to it—bear markets are stubborn. The bear market known as the Great Depression technically lasted for 3 years (1929-1932). The Dot.com Bubble bear market lasted 2 years (2000-2002).

However, the negative effects of bear markets—-high unemployment, inflation (higher prices paid for essential items) and downward pressure on business revenue (resulting from lower disposal income that limits discretionary purchases and higher interest rates on business loans)—-usually doubles the real-time negative effects of bear markets on the population.

So what is a bear market anyway? Economists declare a bear market when there are sustained declines of 20% or more in (recent) prices of stocks, bonds, mutual funds and commodities across several market indexes and exchanges —Standard & Poor”s (S&P 500), Moody’s, the New York Stock Exchange (Wall Street) , NASDAQ, and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange are among the well-known economic benchmark sources. Bear markets usually occur in tandem with a weak economy.

You may notice that stock and other securities prices demonstrate investor confidence and optimism. The high prices typical of a bull market, polar opposite of the bear market, indicate an expectation that big institutional investors are expecting growth and expansion of the economy. But in a bear market, it’s all about avoiding risk and conserving cash.

So, too, for Freelancers. Pulling back and going on the defense is the smartest bear market strategy. Conserve cash by trimming expenses that do not demonstrably contribute to customer acquisition, customer retention and the customer experience. Manage expenses to preserve your cash-flow. If you are able to save money on a regular basis, so much the better, so that you’ll have funds available to cover business and living expenses if revenues take a serious dip,

Be very cautious about plans to grow, expand, or scale your business and remember that business expansion costs money, a resource that is more expensive to obtain during high-interest bear markets. You can go out of business in a blink if you start drinking from the fire hose and expand too much and too fast.

You can run out of money because you can’t bring in customers fast enough to cover operating expenses. You can also be caught off guard by factors outside of your control—-like a pandemic lockdowns, a boat turned sideways in the Suez Canal, another war or assassination—- that deflates your once/ reasonable sales projections.

Furthermore, customer acquisition and retention are usually more difficult to sustain when disposable income drops and potential customers pull back on spending. Still, with the right strategy you might make money, or at least avoid big losses. Below are actions to help you minimize the bite of the bear.

  1. Open a cash reserve account and aim to deposit 5%-10% of weekly net revenues. If you encounter ether an emergency or an opportunity, you will have waiting for you an interest-free line of credit, so to speak, to carry you through an unexpected cash-flow glitch.
  2. If you sell products rather than services, find back-up supply chain resources so that your shelves will remain stocked even if your usual supplier experiences delays. You must have products to sell when customers want to buy.
  3. Be cautious about plans to expand your venture, unless trustworthy research shows the ROI the time and money required.
  4. Cut excess operating (selling, general & administrative) expenses.
  5. Boost AOV (average order value) by bundling products together to increase sales revenue. Make it attractive to buy from you.
  6. Minimize or eliminate perks —-offsite retreats, meals, travel and the like—- unless you’re spending on customer acquisition or productivity-enhancing skills development.
  7. Raise prices in response to the impact of inflation on the rising cost of goods sold, to maintain profit margins.
  8. Consider investing in long-term opportunities or capital improvements that might now be discounted significantly. Who knows, if the financial prospects are good, maybe you can buy out a competitor who has good market share, but doesn’t have the money to overcome the bear market—/and you do.
  9. Focus marketing in the top three performing channels only and drop those that don’t add much to your sales/ mart pipeline.
  10. Use cash-flow and higher operating margins( (obtained by raising prices) to provide the working capital you need. Remember that the interest you pay on borrowed money from your bank is now higher with rising interest rates.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © The New York Times The Bear struts his stuff in the Boston Ballet production of The Nutcracker.