Simplifying the Sales Cycle

Published on July 18th, 2022

Compare the following two scenarios when selling a product or service.

  1. Bad sales cycle: 20 steps to an ROI in 2 months, and it took 2 hours to explain.
  2. Better sales cycle: 2 steps to an ROI in 2 days, and it took 2 minutes to explain.

If a product is so complicated that it takes a 2-hour infomercial to explain the benefits, you have already filtered out many customers because few are willing to commit that much time.

If a product is so complicated that it takes 20-steps to get value out of it, you have filtered out more customers because people are inherently lazy or resist hard work.

If a product takes two months of diligent application before they see a result, you have filtered out more customers because people are not patient and want to see results faster.

How do you make a bad sales cycle better? Try to find a way that you can explain just one feature in a few minutes in such a way that they could get a benefit in a few days.

Bingo

Easy to say, yet hard to do for some products or services. I’ll provide some examples in a follow-up article from companies I’ve worked with over the years (with permission, of course).

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About Rick Manelius

Quick Stats: CXO of Atomic Form. Graduated from MIT in '03 (BS) and '09 (PhD). Life hacker and peak performance enthusiast. This blog is my experiment in creative writing, self-expression, and sharing what I've learned along my journey. For more information, read my full bio here or contact me.