subject: How to Shorten Sales Cycles in an Economic Downturn [print this page] Pleasure on sales teams to achieve forecasts in a time of economic downturn is exceptionally strong. With the loss of business confidence, we often see lengthening sales cycles and low quota achievement while companies struggle to keep their heads above water. Many businesses are forced to cut cost, eliminate waste, and often freeze their spending. Organisations who have continued to spend in the downturn have engaged in intense due diligence through various online sources, such as consumer-generated content forums and other third-party information providers, to ensure their purchasing decisions will deliver the best outcomes for the investment. The hard reality for sales representatives is that the time-tested practice of "putting the right message in front of the right person at the right time" is becoming more of a challenge. In order to meet the demands of this new selling environment, top companies are implementing sales intelligence initiatives as a way to improve the effectiveness of the sales force and enrich the quality of leads in the sales pipeline. Companies who view the current economic climate as a prominent factor in their decision to incorporate sales intelligence use prospecting tools or industry news sources to improve sales effectiveness. Building more complete profiles on their current customers and prospects for segmentation purposes equips the sales force with relevant information on key accounts and industries is essential to future sales growth. Top performing organisations better understand the business challenges and corporate hierarchies of prospective clients resulting in a more effective method of mapping products and services to the prospect's needs and shortening the sales cycle. Business Intelligence is essential to any organisations ability to weather the business confidence storm and so its not surprising the successful ones use CRM to maintain this intelligence. Dont think for a minute companies who use CRM solutions will automatically achieve their sales forecast when business confidence falls away - they will struggle as well but the amount of time it will take them to rebound is shortened and often leads to much stronger achievement against forecast post business confidence rebound.
How to Shorten Sales Cycles in an Economic Downturn
