Have you ever had a prospect, that they were really close to sign but they disappeared on you?

I am certain you had at least one. We all had our own fair share of this experience. When this happens, it doesn’t imply that we are doing it the wrong way, neither does it implies that don’t want to work with us or like us. This can only be a signal that there is something wrong with your sale process.

If you want to significantly enhance the ability of your company to generate top-line income and getting to do it in a repeatable, scalable as well as predictable way, then you must work on several factors which include your inbound sales strategy, persistently identifying areas that are lacking and making necessary arrangement to improve them, as well as tracking the metrics associated with sales. When the factors influencing the sales process have been eliminated, you tend to shoot up the income rate more rapidly.

Have you ever had a prospect, that they were really close to sign but they disappeared on you?
Here are a few strategies on how to close sales faster and speed up your sales cycle that you can easily set up and implement to improve your revenue, reduce the sales cycle, and bring about an increase in the close rate.

Explain Each Step Of The Process

It is imperative to keep in mind that you goal is to convince your prospects that you are their best and safest option. Your customers would prefer to be informed and have a prior understanding of what they can expect, what they are getting into. All you need to do is to explain each step of the process and demonstrate how these steps are designed for them to attain their set goals.

Let go of your “too demanding” prospects

If have a new client who is second guessing your every move as you go through your process, they're going to be a very difficult client to work with you should let them go right away. Based on my personal experience, difficult clients will take so much resources of you that you could have singed up at least 2 more clients. You will save yourself lot time, and headache by letting them go, they weren’t going to choose you in any case.

Eliminate Reference Checking Stage

One of the places that your new client can get stuck is in the reference check stage. Most potential new clients need to chat with your other clients. Most of them see this phase as a major part of their selection process. They feel more secure in the talking with your existing client. They need to understand the experience and make sure that you delivered what you promised.

The major problem arises during the execution. You need to give your potential customers your references. Then, You have to call your references to give them a heads up that someone will be contacting them. Then, the prospect is going to make some calls and wait for your references to reply and scheduled a time to go through their questions. This process can take a very long time.

We have two ways to shorten the reference check stage significantly or even eliminate this unavoidable delay in every sales process.

 1. Using Video for reference

Start with; creating video references to convey similar stories prospects would get with an actual interaction with your customers. If you send a video reference to each prospect just before they request references, you'll be viewed as proactive. Tell them that this video incorporates a number of the people they'd be talking with, so in a matter of a few minutes, they can discover what working with you looks like and get some essential information prospects routinely ask of references. Although they may still want to check your references, this makes the process a lot easier and faster. They can also share this inside of their organization.

Our experience shows, video reference helps to eliminate reference request by 50% and also shorten sales cycle significantly.

 2. brand advocacy program

How amazing would it be for a prospect, in the decision stage of the buyer’s journey, to receive an email from a existing client, saying "I hear you're thinking about hiring Peak Marketers. It has been the best decision we‘ve ever made.” Don’t you think this would be amazing? Don’t you think this would eliminate or at least shorten the reference checking process?

Using Closed Loop Email

The most frustrating sales cycle extender is probably when your prospect hides from you. They are generally the most energetic and nearest to close, yet for some obscure reason, they quit reacting to messages, calls, and effort of any sort. The most baffling thing is that nobody has an idea what happened or what to do about it. Ordinarily, the best action is to simply wait and see.

The fact of the matter is more often than not, it's either something you've done or something that is going ahead in the internal selection process. Most of the time, it really has absolutely nothing to do with you or with your company. They're probably putting out some fire or crisis that came up that took priority over you.

Closed Loop Email is magical. It's a very simple email intended to revive deals that are considered dead and to get a reply from a customer that’s been avoiding you. This simple method gets 95% email response rate. Around 80% of the time, they respond that they're anticipating going forward, but they are dealing with other priorities.

All you need to do is this. From your last email thread press reply and change the subject to “Closing The Loop”and copy and past the following and press send.

“I have not heard from you for a long time so I’m assuming that our project is no longer a priority or you have chosen a different direction.

Please let me know if we can be of assistance to you in the future.”

Collaboration and Co-Creation: Creating Value

Co-creating recommendations is most labor-intensive yet the most effective. Most of us, when we finish talking to our prospects, we start to put together a set of suggestions, recommendations, the pricing options. We send this off along with a proposal. The prospect has almost no input. They're likely going to be checking the pricing and the deliverable section of your proposal and maybe look at the proposed expected results. This is not effective. It may surprise them. Keep in mind the objective of our sales process is to inspire prospects to feel safe working with us.

I'd recommend a series of meetings during the stage of recommendations and proposals to make them at ease with your process and get your prospect feel safe working with you. By working closely together you will be able to better understand their pain point and earn their trust by giving them a sneak peek of your ideas and what they can expect from you.

In your presentation, What your customer gets has to be to be precisely what they need. How could they not sign the final agreement if they have already signed off the same thing during the co-creation stage? If at the end of your co-creating recommendation stage the prospect are not saying “We need to hire these guys”, you must have done something wrong during your sales process.

Look At Your Paperwork From Their Perspective

Your contract, proposal, or agreement has to be simple. It should highlight all the points you've been working together with your prospect during your co-creating stage.

If your contract or agreement is all about you, or it is too extensive, or they have a lot of questions, or it is full of legal jargons; they are going to get nervous and delay singing it. You don’t want to make them feel nervous.

If at this point your prospect doesn’t have 100% confidence that you are the right business partner for them they wont sign the contract.

Here's one final tip:

Don’t send your Contract of agreement by email. Take the time to have a conversation with your prospect and walk them through your proposal step by step. This way you will remove any concerns they may have and at the end you find your selves both on the same page and feeling amazing to work together.

Your sales process is an ongoing process of continuous improvement, upgrade and adjustments based on your previous experience and collected data. Change your perspective; you will see your revenue will begin to increase.

If you want to look at the entire process of your sales process with you customer, from the movement your prospect visit your website to the moment they sign up with you, you’ll see that in every contact, in every interaction, in every friction, is working against your objective of making our prospect to safe you.

If you are able to identify each one of points and eliminate each concern one after the other, you will be able close higher than average deals in much shorter time. You will reach all your goals and grow your company,