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Easy Way to Shorten Your Sales Cycle

Written by: Cheryl A. Clausen

Article Overview: If a “yes” decision requires a significant investment you probably have a relatively long sales cycle. Some of you currently have sales cycles of 12-18 months. Long sales cycles require a huge investment of your resources: time, money, and energy.

Easy Way to Shorten Your Sales Cycle

If a “yes” decision requires a significant investment you probably have a relatively long sales cycle. Some of you currently have sales cycles of 12-18 months. Long sales cycles require a huge investment of your resources: time, money, and energy.

Do you accept a long sales cycle as just the way it is? What if you could shorten your sales cycle by 10-30%? Just think how much your profit margin would increase and how much your cash flow would improve.

No matter what you’re selling there’s a low cost easy way to shorten your sales cycle. Just think about how people’s buying patterns and habits have changed in the last 5 years. It used to be if you wanted to buy something you actually visited the business you were buying from in person first. In fact, you visited a number of businesses before making your choice.

What do you do when you want to make a purchase now? If you’re like the majority of people in ever growing numbers the first thing you do is you go to the internet. You do all your research there.

More often than not after you do your research online you visit a business offline then you make your purchasing decision. Here’s why this is important to you no matter what business you’re in. If you do it right when a potential buyer visits your website you give them the information they need then direct them to take the next step.

What this all means for you is it frees up your time and energy to focus on talking to the people who are ready to buy now. Plus you can design your website so you help the people who are gathering information to get the information they need and move them closer to buying. Now you can easily balance more potential clients and clients because you have automation working for you.

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Article Tags: automation, cash flow, gathering information, profit margin, sales cycle, sales cycles, time money



Related Forum Posts
Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing
Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz] I second the request...
Re: e-Commerce and e-Payment providers - When I came back to Japan in 1999 I sometimes used to ask my students if they would buy anything on the Internet and at that time most thought it was too risky. I'd encourage them to try by using well known sites such as Amazon.co.jp and also pointed out that using a credit card on a reputable site was safer than using it at a restaurant. I can't remember the last time I had that discussion or when the "tipping point" occurred in Japan. To answer your other question, I use Paypal for several reasons: 1. Brand familiarity 2. Easy to use 3. Free to withdraw 50,000yen+ to my Japanese bank account - a huge benefit (but maybe other systems also offer that...?) 4. Easy to cancel subscriptions On the down side, their transaction fees are quite costly, they are difficult to contact and when disputes arise you can sometimes lose even when you can prove via your tracking service that the disputed item was "delivered" to the customer's address!
Re: Domain name sugestion - Hi Anelly, Support-Box.com sounds very good to me. Easy and catchy.
Delegating - Good info and interesting list. Easy to see how the authority or power is slowly passed to the person - the secret would be knowing WHEN to move to the next step. I like to avoid people who are stuck at the #1 level. Chris


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