By Tibor Shanto

In Good times and bad, the one thing most sales professionals are trying to do is shorten the length of their sales cycle. A shorter cycle brings with it a number of benefits. How to do that becomes a real challenge, especially with the nervous markets we have now where the natural tendency is to put things off, involve more people in the decision for safety reasons, taking things to tender or double checking everything in an effort to be prudent.

While we have our own ideas on how to shorten the cycle (which will share), we took the question out to others in an effort to ensure we were covering all the bases and to go beyond our base of knowledge. This lead to a number of good things, and only to some small irritating things. On the plus side, there is some great thinking out there, and while there were no quantum revelations, there were some interesting perspectives and variations on the theme (let’s face it, the wheel has been invented, it’s now a question of how one spins it).

The common agreement was that the better the quality of the prospect, the better the quality of your engagement, the more consistently you were going to spend time with people ready to make a decision, notice we did not say buy from you, but make a decision.

Two elements that were missed by many, but were common to some of the better feedback we got were:

1. Understand the buyers’ process for making decision, both prioritizing and buying
2. Have a clear and detailed plan that allows you focus on the journey and ensure that your prospect is able to follow

O the surface these two things could be seen to be diametrically opposed; after all, advancing the sale according to the buyer’s process, could negate your plan, but done right you can achieve both. The key is to have a plan that is interactive and is inclusive of the buyer.

Let’s break it down. Regardless of what you sell you should understand what your product or service offers a potential buyer, (other than being a cheap alternative). With that knowledge you will come to understand at least two things, what is the real value clients realize from buying your product, and what are the questions that you need to ask that bring those issues to the surface that the prospects see value in addressing.

With that understanding it becomes easier to create a process that allows you to plan out the steps of the sales, and to focus on the buyer without focusing on the sale.

With that rule number one for the process is that it must force you to eliminate those buyers that are not likely to decide or buy now (now equals this cycle). We did not say discard prospects, as we have stated before, leads and prospects are recyclable, and time is not. So move the non-deciders out of your active pipeline, and revisit them in the future when the time is more appropriate.

As a seller your plan should give you a clear picture of what has to happen for a buyer to make a decision. What hurdles they have to clear internally, why they would want to clear them, and how to get them to actually act. You have to know how many meetings/calls/webinars/demos or generically interactions you have to have with the prospect from the time you engage to close. What defines success for the client, and defines success for you at crucial points of the sales, these usually align with points where the sales progresses from stage to the next.

Armed with that knowledge you can begin to plan your next step strategies. A while back I wrote an article titled “How to shorten your Sales Cycle?” (you can also check out the podcast), in it we got sales people to focus on next steps as a means of shortening the cycle, primarily focusing on the metrics and mechanics of it. But to get the most out of it, you have to evolve and focus on your next step strategies. By understand key pivotal points of the sales, and understanding where hurdles have to be dealt with, where you can accelerate things, and where you will need to hold the prospects hands, you can plan next step strategies. These strategies are aimed at aligning your sales cycle with the clients’ buy cycle. When you know which next steps will satisfy both, based on experience and analysis, you can plan and ask the kind of questions that will motivate your prospect, and then extending that you can mobilize or get them to act. That's not to say buy right away, but act; as action is the only real measure of interest. Once they have taken action, you can build momentum.

The key here is a series of next steps that make it easy for the buyer to execute their buying process. Like your sales process there are things that have to happen in a certain logical sequence. Where most sales people extend their sale is when they fail to align the two, and try to get the buyer on to the seller’s sequence. Won’t work, you can get meeting schedule, but these are not next steps, these are next meetings that could in fact slow or derail the process.

The art in the process is the nature of the questions you ask to create the interactive buying atmosphere and having the confidence in you ability to ask the real questions that put a focus on the buyer’s agenda, taking yourself out of the process to allow the prospect to fully engage and create the buying environment. These are not hard questions, but direct, and ones with real measurable implication to the buyer, real impact questions. Ones that quantify the opportunity, risk and return for they buy; in other words the value, (with all it components that help you build the value for them).

The good news is that, in building this kind of sale, you continue to evolve with your customers, as you are truly able to create a buying environment. You also develop the confidence to sit back manage the process as opposed to ramming it for the sake of making it shorter.

Which raises a question that is the subject of the side bar article, can cycles always be shortened?

While we ponder that, I’ll get you to look and see What’s in Your Pipeline?

Tibor Shanto , Principal with Renbor Sales Solutions Inc., and find out how he has helped dozens of organization to fill their pipeline with real prospects - - driving real revenue.

You can also read the blog edition of The Pipeline at www.sellbetter.ca/blog. For more information on helping your team sell better, write to: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , or call 416 671-3555. You can also follow Renbor on Twitter http://twitter.com/renbor.