The key to shortening your sales cycle...

Is knowing when to ask for their business.

When an SMB salesperson is tackling their first enterprise deal. 

They often close the deal faster than a traditional enterprise seller. 

This is because they're accustomed to moving things along faster. 

It doesn't mean all deals can move fast. 

But it does mean as sellers we often get accustomed to sales cycles that may be unnecessarily long.

Speed-to-close is a metric every sales org should be focused on today.

As we implement AI and efficiency tools, don't lose sight of what may be the greatest inefficiency; your actual sales process. 

If you're unsure, try testing a shorter process with fewer stages.

You may be surprised how quickly things can move if you set that expectation from the start. 

Mid-market tends to be the sweet spot where we most often find the best of both worlds. 

But you'll be surprised how fast a well qualified enterprise deal can close if the process is staged correctly. 

Set shorter expectations on your first call. 

If you can shave just one stage out of your sales process...

It can compound to 10-20% gains YoY.

Doing more with less time is the sales playbook of 2024.

Sometimes the best (or only) way to test this is to actually let an SMB or Mid-market salesperson run a few enterprise cycles.

Breaking habits can be extremely difficult or nearly impossible for senior salespeople who have done it the same way for so long.

But watching someone else flip the process on it's head can often be what it takes to prove what's possible. 

One tactic is to reduce the length of your contractual agreement to one single page.

Then post your terms of service on your website and include the link to the terms in the single page contract.

This usually means a percentage of prospects won't even read it and they're less likely to request red-line changes. 

Ultimately a great sales leader should be going to bat with internal legal council to reduce the length of the contract and simplify it as much as possible.

Far too often it's the legal stuff that holds these deals up and if a sales leader makes a strong case for simplifying the contract they can usually get CFO support since it's often not worth the time/money to go back and forth on silly red-lines.

Happy Selling,