What does a sales cycle mean?
When businesses refer to a sales cycle, they’re referring to a strategic and repeatable process or series of steps that their salesforce follows in order to convert an inbound lead into a customer. To better understand where prospective client is on their journey to conversion, many teams use a sales pipeline to visually showcase these prospects and where they are in the purchase process.
In its simplest form, the sales cycle shows the steps a buyer might take to decide to buy something from a business. For instance, marketing materials might interest a lead in a particular product, leading them to contact the business through its website to learn more. The marketing and sales team’s job is to decide if the lead is good and if the business prospect is worth following up with to convert them.
The sales cycle can be used as a guide to help sales reps see where each of their possible clients stands in the account and how close or far they are from meeting their quarterly goals.
Like words
- The stages of a sale
- Steps in the selling process
Cycles of Sales for B2B and B2C
Businesses sell to other businesses (B2B) or people directly (B2C). Both B2C and B2B sales teams may use a sales cycle to see where each of their leads is in the buying process. However, there are a few key ways in which these two sales cycles are not the same. Josh Bean, Zen Desk’s Director of Marketing, lists three main ways in which B2B and B2C sales processes are different:
When to buy it
People decide pretty quickly most of the time whether to buy a service or a good. This is because, in the case of a customer, there is usually only one person who needs to decide to buy.
It can take a lot of time and work to sell to a business because the sales cycle has to consider things like budget, decision-makers, product demos, and pitches.
People Who Had a Say in the Decision
One of the most significant differences between B2B and B2C is the number of people with a say in buying decisions. When you sell directly to a customer, you usually only need to persuade one person that your product or service is worth buying. But when you sell to businesses, you may have to negotiate with and impress a hierarchy of decision-makers.
One Hundred Leads
Even though it may seem straightforward, there aren’t as many possible customers when you sell to businesses as when you sell directly to someone. This is because there are more people than businesses worldwide, which means you have a better chance of making a sale in the B2C area.
Steps in the Sales Cycle
You need to make and stick to a sales cycle that works for your business if you want your salespeople to be able to plan, carry out, track, and improve their work. Hubspot says that sales cycle management is how managers, sales reps, and business leaders keep an eye on and record every step of the sales process so that they can meet goals and help the company grow. They look for patterns and determine which parts of the process are working well and which need work.
Looking for
At this point in the sales cycle, you and your team must look for possible customers. You can do this by searching LinkedIn, calling people who have taken action on your website, or getting in touch with people others have referred.
Your marketing and sales teams will work together to find and qualify sales-qualified leads (SQLs) to move into your sales process. Ensuring the people on your sales team are a good fit for the buyer image you’ve created together is very important to their success.
Taking Part
At this buyer journey stage, you get in touch with your clients and learn more about them and their needs. Now is a great time to describe yourself, where you work, and what you can do to help them. That way, when they need help, they’ll think of you first.
Criteria for E
Once your lead or prospect has shown interest in what your business offers, you’ll need to work to qualify them or name an SQL. A research call or even a session can help you determine what they want, how much money they have when they need it, and what they need. After that, you can decide if the lead is a good fit and if you should follow up with them.
Caring for
If your lead stood out during discovery and you’ve decided to keep in touch with them, you’re ready to take the friendship to the next level. Part of this process could include one-on-one meetings with them to discuss their problems and business issues. This will help you figure out how to help them best.
Offering a Product: Demo
Their problem is now clear to you; you know what they need to solve. They are also interested in one of your goods or services. At this point in the sales cycle, you can teach them about your product and, in some cases, make them happy with a sample. Educating people is essential, and one of the most critical steps is showing how your product can fill a need.
Talks about it
Ensure you and your team agree on where there is wiggle room and where there isn’t before you start negotiating with a potential customer. You should be able to make the deal more appealing by going to the party, but you should also make sure you don’t lose money.
If sellers won’t let you negotiate on price, you can try to cross-sell, offer a trial period, or add a service that makes the deal better.
Last Call
Finally, after all your hard work and care, you need to ask your possible clients if they’re ready to buy what you’re offering. If they say yes, you’ll need to work with them to make a contract and agree on how to pay for it. If the answer is no, you may need to end the connection and focus on something else.
Managing the sales cycle
When you manage your sales cycle, you keep track of what happens at each stage of the planned sales cycle. The goal is to adapt to the buyer based on how they act through the funnel.
The main reason for planning a strategic sales cycle is so that the sales team and workers can look back on the process and see what could be done to make it work better for the company and its customers.
The sales team will be able to do an intelligent study of the cycle, find weak and strong spots, and make changes to operations, processes, and technology using critical sales data.
To grow, you need to improve your sales cycle optimization.BDC Business Insider has developed five essential steps that sales teams can take to understand their sales cycle better and determine what changes they need to make to improve it.
Look at the current process.
What works and what doesn’t? For a sales team to be able to answer this question, they need to have a strong structure in place that sets the goals for the business. Making a good map of the sales cycle is essential so that each salesperson can see how well they’re doing at each stage.
Make KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).
What does a win look like for your company? Suppose the primary goal of your business is to sell as many items to as many people as possible. In that case, your KPIs will differ from those of a business whose primary goal is selling specific items to wealthy customers. You can keep track of your leads as they move through the stages of your sales cycle once you know what success means to you. KPIs that sales teams often look at are the number of sales so far, the average sales value, the close rate, and the total time spent on the sale.
Measuring Every Chance You Get
Communication is essential, and regular catch-ups where the whole sales team can get together to talk about problems, look over sales data, and work on improving things are essential for managing the sales cycle.
Spend money on technology to keep an eye on
Automation will take away stress that isn’t necessary and give you more time to chase ideas and think about the big picture. Getting a CRM system that stores all of your sales data and information about your clients in one place will help you examine and report when you need to.
Making predictions is essential.
“By measuring your conversion rate at every step, you’ll be able to figure out what you need to do to reach your sales goals,” says BDC. You’ll know where to put most of your efforts if you see a significant drop in conversions at a certain point in your sales process.
