Too often, small businesses try to jump right into sales without knowing either the sales cycle process or how to build a sales pipeline. While the prospect of making sales as fast as possible can be tempting, brands that don’t have a strong grasp of the systematic and theoretical underpinnings of the process are hurting themselves in the long run.
That’s precisely why it’s important for all businesses to understand the sales cycle: the journey that buyers go through from realizing they need a solution to a problem, to hitting the checkout button and beyond. When brands understand how the process works, they can implement changes to make it as efficient and profitable as possible.
This article will give you a brief introduction to the sales cycle and how to optimize it so that you can either start your sales efforts out right, make sure they’re going in the right direction, or redirect them so they can generate more revenue.
What Is a Sales Cycle?
A sales cycle is the process that a buyer – and by extension, sales – goes through when making a purchase. In other words, it’s the specific set of steps that almost every sale goes through.
A sales cycle is a theoretical framework, so not every sale will conform to it – some may skip steps, for example. But having a general idea of what your sales process looks like the majority of the time will help you fine tune it and make it more efficient overall.
Typically, a sales cycle includes between five and seven different steps. However, this varies depending on the industry and products being sold – every business is different.
That said, these are the steps you can generally expect a sales cycle to follow:
1. Finding Leads
The first step is to identify some prospects that may be interested in your product. There are many different ways to do this, from doing market research to identify leads for cold outreach to newsletter signup forms on your blog posts.
2. Connecting With Leads
Once you have some leads lined up, the next step is to reach out to them. Sometimes this can be a slow build up, like a weekly newsletter, but it can also be more direct, such as reaching out to schedule a product demo.
3. Qualifying Leads
Once you’ve made contact, you’ll need to ask questions and gather information to decide how likely it is each individual lead will make a purchase. This is called qualifying leads, and it’s done to help you prioritize prospects.
4. Making an Offer
If all goes well, you’ll need to make an offer. For this to be successful, you’ll need to convince your leads that your product solves their pain points, and does so within their budget.
5. Respond to Objections
Few offers are accepted immediately without any pushback. At this stage, you’ll answer the lead’s questions and respond to any complaints or objections that they may make.
6. Close the Deal
If the lead is interested, they will make a purchase. Depending on your industry, this may involve paperwork, or it could be as simple as hitting the checkout button.
7. Nurture the Lead
The sales cycle doesn’t end when a single purchase is made. Instead, it just restarts – hence the word “cycle.” Current customers can become new leads for future upsells or new products if you nurture them correctly by keeping in touch with them and providing great customer service and support.
Why Is a Sales Cycle Important?
The sales cycle is the framework behind all sales. Without understanding how sales work and how they’re made, it’s harder to be successful at actually making sales. If you don’t know how the sales cycle works, you might skip steps, misread cues from the leads, or make other mistakes that can cost you revenue.
For example, imagine that a sales rep doesn’t know about step five, responding to objections. They may make an offer, get a bit of pushback, and think that this is the right time to call it quits on the sale and move on to a different lead.
However, if they have an understanding of the cycle, they’ll know this is a normal part of the process and will potentially be able to save the sale instead of giving up on it.
Similarly, if the sales team doesn’t properly qualify their leads, they may end up wasting a lot of time on low-probability buyers all while the more interested leads slowly move towards your competition.
In short, the sales cycle gives you a bird’s eye view of how sales works so that you can hone your process and make it as efficient and profitable as possible.
Optimizing the Sales Cycle
For the most part, sales cycle optimization is a very individualized process. You’ll need to thoroughly examine your own cycle and pinpoint where you see the biggest problems to truly enhance and optimize it.
However, there are a few general rules that you can use to make sure things go as smoothly as possible.
For starters, all sales teams should be thoroughly trained – and that includes educating them on the sales cycle.
Second, sales reps should have access to case studies and testimonials to use as social proof during consultations with leads.
Finally, sales teams should consider investing in sales enablement tools that can streamline these processes, provide useful analytics and actionable insights, and reduce some of the busy work that takes time away from doing what sales reps do best: making sales.
Key Takeaways
Understanding how the sales cycle works is a crucial part of implementing a profitable and efficient sales email sequence. By getting both sales leadership and sales representatives on the same page, they can work together to hone their processes and make more sales, faster.
