B2B sales cycles are naturally long and complicated – at least when compared to their B2C counterparts. They can range in time from weeks to years, during which time sales people must find business leads, identify key decision makers, establish relationships, discover challenges and needs, and address those and other concerns in the context of the solutions that they sell in order to win a deal.
Most of what salespeople do requires direct input from customers – but getting customers to engage is almost always a challenge. So much so, in fact, that the friction experienced during the sales process often ends with customers in control of the sales process. After all, customer decision makers have their own operational responsibilities that pull them away from deals. Their reputations are at stake when offering an opinion, too, so split second decisions aren’t for them easy to make, and they are constantly on the lookout for more options, opinions, and other ways to mitigate risk. If a deal goes unaddressed for long enough, needs will change, explored technologies will become obsolete, scopes will grow, competitor discussions will pick up, and decision makers will cycle in and out of the sales process. Any of these can spell doom for what could have been a valuable deal to both parties.
When sales teams are equipped with the right training and tools, however, they regain control of deal stages, and entire sales cycles become fast and efficient processes. Vtiger is one of those tools. It’s like a 24-hour secretary for every active deal, keeping salespeople both engaged and informed. As deals progress – either when they go idle, or show new activity like an email, Vtiger notifies assigned salespeople so that they can act on the deal’s current state. To help them make the right call when taking action, Vtiger shows them a complete deal history that includes engaged contacts, an email and phone call history, notes, internal conversations and more. Together, Vtiger’s perfectly timed alerts, and deep access to knowledge about the deal helps sales teams act decisively every moment to close more deals faster.
Here is a brief illustration of how B2B business can shorten a longer sales cycle with Vtiger:
Spend more time with those leads that are a good fit, and less on those that aren’t:
Sales associates spend a lot of time on prospecting, but we all know that only a few prospects are right for a deal. Qualifying leads before expending considerable energy on trying to close a sale can ensure that sales people spend less time on those leads that aren’t a good fit, and more of it with those that are. An automatic way to qualify leads is by embedding webforms into pages on your website that capture the contact information, and reasons for contacting, of visitors to your site. When forms are submitted, Vtiger automatically creates a lead record that includes all of the data on the form, and can immediately notify sales associates to follow up (tip – following up within 5 minutes of receiving a sales lead increases engagement by 10x). Whether outreach happens by phone or even an automated email from Vtiger, Vtiger captures shows the engagement and a lead’s reply right inside the lead record. Use that information to determine if they are ripe for a sales conversation, or more nurturing might prove more fruitful.
Automate lead nurturing to accelerate sales stages:
The better informed a lead is about their own problems, and your offered solutions, the more they will desire your solution. Vtiger’s email campaigns can help you nurture leads, toward that goal. You can target, personalize, schedule, and automate email messages, ranging from content that teaches leads how your products and services help them solve key challenges, to that which addresses competitor or substitute solutions. You can even upload and attach documents like case studies and whitepapers to share. Email analytics for individuals show you what information they’ve opened and clicked on, and thus what your leads are interested in, so you know what value propositions to target during follow-ups.
Speed up your approvals process:
When closing a deal requires approvals from multiple people, getting signatures can quickly become an ordeal. Seldom is everyone sitting in a room when it’s time to close, and for the many reasons that people can get cold feet, it’s much better to close quickly. With Vtiger’s DocuSign integration you can get quotes, invoices, or contracts approved in just minutes. Create or upload documents into Vtiger and email them to the signer to get legally valid signatures from anywhere in the world. Sales associates can track the status of documents sent for approval. Documents are automatically linked to the contact or organization in Vtiger, so they’ll be easy to find when they’re needed.
Have any questions about how to build and manage a top-performing sales organization using Vtiger? Feel free to leave us a comment below, or send us an email at [email protected]
