What are your Sales Cycle Times?

March 22, 2018

I've been doing face-to-face sales for my SaaS (have not built a self-serve option yet!) and have been finding the sales cycle a lot longer than expected. What are your sales cycle times?

In my case:

building a CRM type application for venues
charging ~$100 monthly
so far conversions seem to take months; 2-3 weeks to get the first meeting, another 2-3 to demo, more weeks to approve through the boss/HQ

Nick

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Congrats on taking such a proactive approach.

Probably the biggest factor in your sales cycle duration will be the size of the client's company and the number of decision makers involved.

Here are a few tips/things to try out:
- Play around with which decision maker at the company you contact first. Is it quicker to start at the CEO and work down, or with the event manager and work up for approval?
- Set up a shared timeline. Communicate this very clearly (get their approval/agreement) and reiterate the shared goals at every step (plus who is responsible for what on their end as well). This could shorten each step considerably.
- Be more proactive about finding out who needs to be on the call to make a decision. Just ask straight up in the first call and try and get that decision maker into a call at the earliest possible opportunity.
- Live with the fact (maybe) that your industry/product just has a slow and intensive sales cycle. Adjust your prices upwards accordingly.
Good luck!
Louis Nicholls

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9 years ago
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  I'm super late - but wanted to drop a note to say thanks. This is solid advice!
  
  Nick
  
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  8 years ago
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    Ha - no problem...
    
    Hope you get everything you needed sorted out!
    
    Louis Nicholls
    
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    8 years ago
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