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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

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3 Easy Hacks to Grow Organic Searches

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In the lazy waning days of summer, ambitious Freelancers (and we are all ambitious) can implement a few quick hacks to ramp up leadgen and bring fresh possibilities to our sales pipelines. Now is the time to energize your marketing tactics and push to bring in potential clients who have both motive and money to do business. Setting up for a healthy fourth quarter is everyone’s goal, whether your target clients will return to the office soon or delay until January. Freelance consultants would be wise to encourage local organic traffic to their website, that is, site visits that are not prompted by pay-per-click campaigns by way of Google adwords or some other paid advertising service and are made by bricks and mortar businesses in your geographic location. Enhancing your company’s presence in local organic searches is a potentially game-changing inbound marketing strategy for any company and it’s within your reach.

Let’s pause here for a minute and discuss what is known as referral traffic—- it has significant impact. When a visitor clicks a link to move from one website to another, the original site is considered the referrer. The referring site can be a search engine, a social media platform, a blog, or any website that contains links to other websites. So—-the more you post in digital publications, social media sites and whatever online forums, the more your company name and URL will appear in direct searches. A potential client who has your company on a short list for follow-up will probably visit a big search engine and type in your company name to see what comes up. You’ll want to have several impressive postings available.Organic local site traffic is sent from search engines, most often Bing, Google and Yahoo, and is influenced by Search Engine Optimization.

The better your website ranks for descriptive keywords common in your product or service category, the more readily will your business appear in local organic searches. Big businesses have the advantage, but small and mid-size companies should nevertheless strive to be found. Your digital presence, bolstered by relevant keywords, including long-tail keyword phrases that impact the increasingly important voice searches, will eventually produce an increase in your website’s local organic search traffic and improve your positioning in search results. Here are three free actions that you can take now.

I. Frequent posts

Blogging, writing articles that appear in digital publications and getting quoted in online media outlets will enhance both your credibility and visibility. Frequency is a big plus. If you can keep up and publish a blog or other article or get quoted about once a month, in a few weeks or months your company may show in organic searches, even if not in the coveted top 10 (first page). In 2018, we learned that powerhouse Google follows the E.A.T. algorithm—-Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. In other words, quality content counts.

Your use of key words and long-tail phrases should not be heavy-handed. Sprinkle them into your content where they fit, so when prospects type those words into a search box, or speak them into Alexa or Siri, you’ll increase the chance that your business name will appear in local searches, at least in the top 20 names for your locale.

II. Social media presence

Being active on social media is one of the best ways to communicate and engage with current and potential clients, as you become familiar with their priorities and also drive traffic back to your website. The website hosting service Go Daddy found that 61 % of its high-traffic sites had an attached Facebook page.

While having a Facebook page and Twitter account is more or less considered a requirement for most businesses, establish your company presence on platforms that your clients and prospects follow and trust. B2B likes LinkedIn and Alignable is growing, as is Clubhouse.

III. Search engine sign-up

Register your company on Google My Business and Bing’s Places for Business, free services that will give your organization a boost in local SEO. For best results, provide lots of descriptive info about your business, including optional categories.

Treat your Bing and Google listings like social media platforms. Update them at least quarterly by adding educational info, text. or video and discuss some aspect of a company product or service is a reliable and efficient solution for goals that users want to achieve (but not a sales pitch). If it will be politically correct, ask a couple of clients to write a (positive!) review. Rumor has it that both search engines ignore reviews and other content that is more than six months old.

Thanks reading and Happy Labor Day,

Kim

Image: Traffic gets heavy in a Venice canal, August 2013

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Speeding Up Your Sales Pipeline

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How wonderful would it be if your prospective clients would just hurry up and make a decision about if and when they’ll give you a sale? Even if 80% decline, as predicted in Pareto’s 80/20 rule, think of the time and aggravation that you’d be spared.  There’d be no more chasing so-called prospects who either can’t or won’t green-light a sale for you.  Your numbers would probably increase, if for no other reason than you’d stop wasting time on lost causes and look for better possibilities.

Getting a commitment to either fish or cut bait in maybe a week or two is a fantasy, but learning how to get better at qualifying prospects is within reach and here are four tips to help you do just that.  Implement these tactics and you’ll move prospects through your sales pipeline faster than ever before.

1. Sell to the decision-maker

Is the person who you think is the prospect really the prospect? Does this person have the authority to make the decision and approve the budget? If not, there will be no sale until and unless you get in front of the real decision-maker.

Especially in B2B sales, a gatekeeper or other lower-level employee could be enlisted to find out the details and then report back to the actual decision-maker.  Alternatively, the decision could be made by a committee of senior staff members, one of whom may be speaking with you, but s/he alone cannot give the green-light without getting agreement from other committee members.

In either case, you’ll need to get around the stand-in, learn the identity of who has the most influence and focus your attention on addressing that person’s hot buttons, so that the sale can move forward at a faster pace.

Step One in ferreting out the identity of the real decision-maker is noticing the job title of the person with whom you’re speaking.  If s/he ranks lower than Director or Vice President, most likely there’s someone in the background pulling the strings.  Unless you’re selling office supplies, ask the stand-in if s/he is able to directly approve the budget and if there are others who might like to directly ask you questions about your product, service, or project.  Be respectful of feelings, but do encourage the participation in the sales process of the one who can sign the check.

2. Discover what worries your prospect

Get a big-picture understanding of your prospect’s most urgent and top-of-mind challenges and near-term objectives, as they apply to what you can bring to the table in terms of a product or service.  What does your prospect think will happen if the product doesn’t get purchased or the project doesn’t get done?  How will company leaders feel when the problem is resolved and objectives are achieved?

Learn as much as possible about what your prospect wants and how committed s/he is to achieving goals and resolving issues.  Ask “what” and “how” questions to discover these key insights.

3. Confirm that your solution is a fit 

Ultimately, all salespeople want to close deals. But ironically, it’s sometimes better to walk away from a potential sale if the product or service isn’t a good fit for either you or the prospect.  Pushing for a sale that won’t bring about the best outcomes never ends well and it should be avoided, even when you’re desperate to do business.

In these situations, your objective is about getting to “no” faster.  Then you can move on and pursue other prospects who may be better positioned to buy from you.  It’s  preferable to speed inappropriate prospects through the pipeline and devote the time saved to identifying and meeting with qualified prospects who might say “yes.”

To ensure that your product or service can solve the problem or help the prospect meet a goal, ask pointed questions and listen well to determine whether your solution will produce the best results and be cost-effective in the long run.

4. Learn the prospect’s timetable

Is there an urgent need or deadline that compels your prospect to take action and implement a solution quickly? If you know that to be true, you can most likely expedite the sale (and get the price you want, as well).  Ask questions to help yourself evaluate whether the prospect could be ready to do the deal in a week or two, or in months.

One important line of questioning should concern available funding for the proposed sale or project.  In some cases, the prospect would sincerely like to move forward, but there is insufficient political support in the organization for his/her agenda.

The information will allow you to adjust your expectations for the sale and decide if you should continue to pursue, pick up the thread in a few months, or close the book on a pipe dream.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Portrait of Evdokiya Nickolayevna Chesmenskaya (1780) by Jean-Louis Voille (1744 – 1806) courtesy of the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow