Long sales cycles are frustrating not only because it delays revenue but because they also introduce the risk that you won’t. The longer it takes to bring a prospect from the mouth of the funnel to a closed deal, the greater the likelihood is that you either won’t finalize the relationship or that it will come in at a much lower amount than you expected.

And for the marketing department: removing these risks is your responsibility.

Not every prospect that you or your sales team identifies will be ready to buy right away. According to MarketingSherpa, only 17 percent of leads close within one month, with a total of 57 percent closing within 90 days. Twenty-one percent of leads can take a year or longer to close.

When you think about the different close rates, which obviously vary with industry and solution, you need to consider what you can do to keep a prospect engaged along the way. It may be a multi-step marketing campaign, targeted white paper offers or simply value-added sales calls (“consultations”) that you can use to help advance a prospect through the sales cycle. What you do in the third month of a six-month sales cycle can protect not just the odds of closure but also the expected deal size.

We use a carefully planned lead cultivation process to address this. Give us a shout if you want to learn more about it.

[Source: MarketingSherpa]