The building blocks of a sales cycle are sales stages. Apply BANT to the first qualification call by asking the project timeframe.
“What is the disired go-live date for the new solution?”
Timeframe is the customers’ not ours. Pro salespeople can do all to contract the sales cycle by quantifying opportunity cost of delay. Many sales cycles go on forever because there are no controls. To control your sales cycles apply sales stage durations like this:
- Lead: 10 Days
- Qualify: 10 Days
- Working: 10 Days
- Demo: 10 Days
- Quote: 10 Days
- Win: 0 Days
This is a 60 day sales cycle. Set your sales tool to alert you if stage durations are exceeded. Our online sales software turns the record a bright red when the sales duration is exceeded. If the sales opportunity is making normal progress the record text stays normal color.
Now to contract sales cycles manage the durations. By glancing at the opportunity list sales management can see the Red records or see all normal progress. The glance tells us that opptys are moving OK or bottlenecked. Focus on the bottlenecks to fix them and then take days from the set sales stage durations.
Ratchet the sale stage durations down, monitor carefully and cut days out of your sales cycles.
