So are you selling or are your customers buying?
Or not buying, or not right now, as is often the case in today’s tough times.
Something we’re hearing a lot about at the moment is how slow sales have become during these times of economic uncertainty. Pipeline full, even bursting at the seams, but very slow to come out at the order end.
So how can you accelerate your sales process?
Probably the start of the answer to this is another question;
How much do you know about your customers’ buying process?
Some ways of finding out how your customers buy:
- Involving marketing closes the customer buying circle and vice versa if sales aren’t already involved.
- Talking directly to the people doing the buying as well as looking at what your competition are doing can be instrumental in really understanding the process.
- And try looking at a traditional sales process.
Then when you look at it from the buyers stand point you can maybe see the mismatch. By the time you are ready to identify the problem your customers are already a step ahead of you.
In today’s digital age customers no longer need the sales person in the awareness stage like they used to. By the time sales get involved working with the traditional model the requirement has been defined and often the supplier that can meet it identified.
Try starting to get involved early in the process by mapping your sales activities to the way your customers buy. When you do this and provide valueable information to your customers you start to shape demand rather than just meet it and so accelerate the whole process. Forrester Reasearch reports that 65% of vendors that create the buying vision during these early states get the deal; evidence to support that by starting the communication with your customers well before you enter the sales process helps you to shorten sales cycles and increase win rates.
So to what extent is your sales process aligned to your customers’ buying process? Are you confident that you are engaging early enough with your customers? And if not, what impact is it having on your top line revenues?
If you’d like to explore this further to see how you could accelarate your sales process and increase your top line sales revenues call me on 01189 526993 or email me at cathy.bennett@verticalsales.co.uk