How can a company directory help you to accelerate sales?
A sales cycle is estimated differently from one company to another. Some consider it started once the process of leads’ acquisition is launched. Others start counting from the day the engagement with a potential lead has begun. Due to that, as well as to a series of other factors, I’ll hereby consider the average sales cycle length. According to a study performed by Implisit back in 2014, the average time for B2B conversion was about 84 days. A newer study by SiriusDecisions showed that, since then, this period has expanded with circa 22% due to a larger number of decision-makers involved in the deals’ closure. Yet another study by Harvard University states that about one-fourth business-to-business sales cycles go on for at least seven months.
If B2B is your thing, in the given conditions it becomes understandable that you may be strongly willing to accelerate your sales. Here are some hints from me and my business partners’ personal experience I’d like to share to help you make things move faster.
Be honest with yourself: how well do you know who your ideal B2B client is? Who are the crucial people to help you accelerate sales? No matter how obvious this may sound, but do make sure that you can group your customers according to at least the following criteria:
- The size of the company. Can you notice any correlation between the number of your business partners’ employees and the size of the deals you close with them? Or, what if you find out that smaller companies buy from you more often than bigger ones. Even in case you know right away that bigger companies close larger deals, you may discover that smaller companies are more loyal in the long run, thus becoming more important to your business. There may be lots of other scenarios on how your business partners’ company size may influence your sales, so make sure you are aware of what exactly is going on.
- Positioning within the group structure. It seems logical that the lower the positioning of your business partner in the corporate relationships tree, the longer it may take to make the decision to close a deal. However, you should know that this is not always the case, so try to follow the impact of this factor on the amount and duration of your deals.
- Revenues. Similar to the business size from the employees’ number point of view, your business partners’ deals size may strongly depend on the revenues they make. Of course, here a lot more factors are involved, and it would be quite hard to consider them all, for each and every business partner separately. But, most probably, you will be able to define a general model that could describe the correlation between your partners’ revenues and deals you close with them.
- Industry or vertical. It should not be surprising if you find out that many or even all your business partners are operating in a certain industry. But does your product deliver solutions to that particular industry only? Or may there be a drawback in the product’s promotion and, afterwards, sales, that would impede deals’ closure with companies from other verticals? If so, you are very likely missing on a lot of opportunities.
- Addressed decision maker(s). When bargaining a deal, who is the person or group of persons within your partner company who is/are in all probability to make the decision? Is there a job title involved in every single deal you close? Who is the person that you may contact first who will help the sales cycle to accelerate? If you see a pattern here, you are lucky, because you may now know exactly who you should contact first the next time when you are willing to close a deal with a new lead, saving yourself thusly at least some time and diminishing the sales cycle.
These are just a few of the criteria you may put an emphasis on when doing your research. Obviously, these differ from one type of product you may offer to another. But do not think that once assessed, these criteria will stay unchanged for good. Make sure you do check them regularly (once in a few months would be just fine), and follow the changes’ trends, as you will surely uncover some interesting insights over time.
It is very likely that you do trust your sales team. However, how deep is their knowledge of the product? How confident are they when talking to prospects’ higher-ups and answering their particular questions? Let’s assume that you’ve got a list of highly-targeted leads, one that you’ve based on a specific issue your product can provide the solution to. Obviously, this is what CRMs are for, and that is how you can let your sales team know for what reason which lead should be contacted. But how sure are you that your sales team is able to describe the same product from multiple perspectives highlighting the particular value it brings to every user in part?
No matter how skilled of a salesperson one is, he or she will hardly sell a product if pursuing the wrong people. This is valid for both B2C and B2B. On the contrary, a sales team might not consist of sales veterans only, but still score great results when combining a deep understanding of the products on offer with lists of high-targeted leads.
And here is exactly when company directories come into play. Assume that the five criteria mentioned above are the ones that affect your sales directly, and that you know exactly the revenue and company sizes of your ideal customers. Having access to a business directory, all you may need is to apply some filters to end up with a list of hundreds, thousands and even millions of similar companies. Many business databases comprise the contact information of key figures, so you may also be lucky enough to deliver your offer directly to the person who may end up to be the decision maker for your particular case. Listing all the related data as well, these directories show some of the personal information of the key figures (respecting their privacy though), allowing you to amplify at max the degree of personalisation of your messages (be it emails, calls or demos).
Even though data acquired from an eminent provider should be highly accurate, you can also use lists of leads you already have. On the one hand, you may enrich these with the help of company directories. On the other hand, you may automate your lead qualification using, for example, a CRM system. The process of lead qualification, in the case of certain CRMs, includes both lead grading and lead scoring. Adding these possibilities to the information you get from a data provider will help save your resources big time, hence accelerate sales. On top of that, if running an email campaign, you may automate your follow-ups, so save even more time for your reps.
Good data acquired from a high-quality provider will help your sales team reduce the time spent on prospecting. You can now afford to increase rep productivity by giving them enough time and appropriate conditions to focus on sales, offering them all the information they need as well as data sources, in case they require more knowledge about one prospect or another. Saving time on all these aspects, your sales reps will end up with more meetings on their agendas, and with increased personalisation will result in faster sales and higher returns.
Prospecting may be burdensome and annoying even for the most experienced sales reps. By offering them data from business intelligence platforms, you may help them with their time management and with procrastination avoidance. Release them from boring tasks, and they’ll show a lot more enthusiasm when pursuing prospects, thusly showing off as confident reps and accelerating your company’s sales cycles.
Yet another important factor to consider is the morale of your sales team. No matter how experienced the rep, it is extremely frustrating to contact a person with a highly-customized message to learn that the information the personalisation was made on was wrong. Thus, knowing that, instead of boosting the chances to sale, the deal has just been messed up, will ultimately have a negative impact on the sales team’s morale. This would definitely affect the upcoming interactions with potential customers, and the sales rep may end up spending twice as much time on double-checking the supplied data.
No matter what you use to accelerate sales cycles, don’t forget to track the results and further act accordingly. Integrating the business intelligence platform you opt for with a preferred CRM will help you process and analyse all the outcomes at a much faster pace. If you manage to institutionalise metrics-driven sales coaching for your reps, you’ll add even more value to your investments and strengthen future sales cycle’s acceleration.
These are just a few of the ways business intelligence can help any company accelerate sales, but trust me, there is a lot more to this topic. However, if you start using at least a few of them right away, you’ll soon notice the changes. The one thing that you should remember at any stage of your sales cycle is that good data is power; when used in a smart way - it may considerably impact your returns and accelerate sales.