Your sales cycle has increased? Here’s Why!
In the fast-paced world of sales, where time is of the essence, the elongation of sales cycles is a pressing concern for businesses. One major reason for this delay is the tools the sales team has to work with. The majority of products or services being sold require the prospect to make a change, and change is a difficult step to take. Prospects do not want to make a change. They are looking for reasons to stay the course. They are looking for reasons to consider change more difficult than the status quo. They are looking for reasons to downplay the pain being caused by their current product or service provider. It is this thought process that delays the call to action of the sales cycle.
During this critical phase of the sales cycle, the prospect is looking for extremely specific and crucial pieces of information. The prospect needs to understand that they would not be your first client experiencing the challenges they face. They need to understand you are in fact different than their current product or service. They need to understand you have an actual solution. They need to understand you can make their pain go away. They need to understand that the change will not be more difficult on their business than their current situation. The prospect needs to understand all this explicitly and if you say it, they doubt it. If they say it, it’s true. This means having your salespeople tell the prospect about the value you provide only leads to ever increasing sales cycles while the prospect figures it out on their own, if at all.
The tools provided the sales team needs to leverage real world stories and customer testimonials from clients with similar situations. This can significantly enhance the sales process by instilling trust and confidence in potential buyers.
Instead of bombarding prospects with technical specifications and features, salespeople should focus on crafting compelling narratives that illustrate the tangible benefits of their offerings. By painting a vivid picture of success through storytelling, sales professionals can captivate their audience and inspire them to take action.
However, perhaps the most powerful tool in the sales toolkit is customer testimonials. In an era dominated by social proof and peer recommendations, nothing is more persuasive than hearing from satisfied customers who have experienced tangible results firsthand. By incorporating customer testimonials into their sales pitches, salespeople can provide irrefutable evidence of their product or service's efficacy.
Furthermore, customer testimonials are particularly effective when they come from clients with similar situations to the prospect. When potential buyers see how others in similar positions have successfully overcome challenges or achieved their goals with the help of a product or service, they are more likely to trust the salesperson's claims and consider making a purchase themselves.
To many, this seems pretty obvious and basic and many organizations will probably tell you that they do engage in this most basic of sales tactics. It’s not just having these tools that make the difference, it is how and when they are used. Because if your sales cycle is increasing in the current market, they are not being used properly. Prospects do their own research these days, long before they engage with a salesperson. You need to ask yourself, how is this content being delivered to our prospects? Are you relying on the salesperson to communicate? If so, there is doubt in the mind of your prospect. Not only that, it is too late. That is why the buying process is taking so long. These sales tools need to be created as content available to your prospects and needs to be made available early on in the process, when their decisions are actually being made.
Stories and testimonials are not just sales tools: they are a testament to the transformative impact of a product or service on real people's lives. That’s important. Treat it as such.