Most sales cycle is too difficult to understand.
Since we can never perceive when you will get introduced to a new prospect, and more importantly when your new prospects will actually close the deal and become your customer, even if you are using a business CRM software for predicting the outcome of your sales pipeline.
As a sales representative, it is your responsibility to stay on top of things as much as it is possible, try to understand, and even predict your prospect’s very next action for ensuring long-term success in your business.
Therefore, let us find what are some of the best practices to predict the result of your sales cycle and understand whether or not it is set up for the success of your brand?
Enter The Mind Of Your Customers
The life of any sales rep would have scored much better if they could enter and read their prospect’s mind.
However, predicting the behavior of the customers may be much simpler and easy than you think.
To do this, primarily mastering the industry that you are doing business with, by understanding your business is indeed a great place to start. Since being knowledgeable about your industry will provide you with context and empower you to make predictions that management and customers can rely on, which in turn will allow you to find a competitive edge in your marketplace.
Therefore, lean on your business CRM software, which is capable of providing you with all the necessary information that you need about your leads, and prospects that are stored in the CRM database.
Right from apprehending something generic such as the size of your deal, to any small comments that your prospect might have stated on a call, your easy to use CRM is the most preferred tool that you can use to help you predict the outcome of your sales cycle.
This is because the best small business CRM software platforms are filled with actual real-time data of your prospects stored in the CRM database.
Develop Listening Skills Of A Therapist Throughout The Sales Cycle
It is no brainer that we must learn to listen carefully to other people while working in support and sales. However, it is shocking to learn the degree to which the talk-to-listen ration can affect the success of any sales call, which furthermore translates to the length of the overall sales cycle in every business.
This is the reason why listening more during your sales calls empowers sales reps to tune into exactly what their prospects are looking for and develop a better idea of how their sale will move in the sales pipeline.
Even scientific research has proved that that top performers talk significantly less on calls than their lesser performing peers.
Therefore, next time you feel that you have something interesting to talk, remain alert, since keeping your sales-speeches on hold will fetch you better rewards.
Keep Out Of Gut Feelings
For many sales reps, sales cycles are based on “systems” that comprise a variety of perceptions.
Therefore, basing your sales cycles purely on gut-feelings and intuitions, or even at times solely on unfound perceptions is most unlikely to bring the sales that you need. Since by doing this, the outcome of your sales cycle will be based on banking more on conjectures instead of relying on an analysis by looking into different acceptable metrics in your sales CRM system.
This is because the predictions that you require needs to be based on reliable and accurate data, which can only be found by analyzing information stored in your CRM database.
Better Discussions On Price Equals To More Predictability
No matter what is your experience in sales, you like most salespersons probably do not like talking about pricing to your prospects in a call.
However, the better you can understand how your prospects are feeling or how much they are responsive about the pricing of your offerings, the easier it will be for you as a sales rep to predict the outcome of your sales.
In terms of timing, if you are using a lead scoring system in your easy to use CRM software, it can show you the right time to mention about your pricing to your prospective leads, and you will be surprised to know it may be much later than you probably guessed.
Actually, according to certain studies done on business growth ideas and best practices in sales, introducing the pricing to your prospective leads is three-quarter of the way into a sales call.
Therefore, while top and average grade performers in sales mostly mention their pricing after 13-20 minutes once they are on a call, top sales reps hold back their ultimate and final pricing discussion with the prospects until the very end.
This is because, once you are capable of keeping the main pricing discussion till the end, you will find a longer chance to impress your prospective lead with the benefits of your offerings that will make the pricing less an issue during the closure of the deal.
Conclusion
In a gist, your prospects will always be temperamental, but with appropriate human behavior, and using the right tool such as a business CRM software, you can actually statistically predict by analyzing your sales cycle and thereby make a better forecast for rapid revenue growth.
