Sales Cycle: Creating a System That Closes 5X More Deals

Last updated on August 7th, 2023

Today, you’ll learn the details about having a well-structured sales cycle. We’ll cover why it’s pivotal to closing more deals, what stages you should have on the cycle, and the right tools to help you be successful. 

Whether you’re in B2B or B2C, your business generates revenue through sales. 

The truth is every company that sells has a sales cycle. However, everything comes down to how effective your cycle is. 

If you’re not closing the number of deals you’re projecting or would like; Then there is an issue in your sales cycle you don’t know about. 

Let’s help you uncover any sales blockages you may be experiencing and go over the crucial aspects of a sales cycle.

Let’s begin. 

• What Is A Sales Cycle?
• Is It Critical To Have A Sales Cycle In Place?
• What Are The Stages Of A Sales Cycle?
• How To Manage & Improve Your Sales Cycle Without Breaking A Sweat
• Want To Take Your Sales Cycle To The Next Level?

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What Is A Sales Cycle?

A sales cycle is a series of steps and processes a company does to sell a customer a product or service. 

Each step in the sales cycle has a distinct role in the grand scheme of selling the product or service. 

It’s like making brownies.

Once you put all the ingredients of a brownie together, you wouldn’t pop the browny mix into an oven without stirring it, would you? If so, you won’t get the result you’re hoping for.

This is the same idea as the sales cycle—some steps must come before others. 

Not all businesses are the same, so naturally, not all sales cycles are the same. 

For many B2B companies, your sales cycle will probably look similar to this:

A B2B sales cycle may differ from a B2C one; in fact, B2B sales cycles are typically longer on average compared to B2C. 

If you factor in eCommerce brands, their sales cycles may look different depending on the niche and market. 

It’s good to know the length of your average sales cycle (LASC), so here’s how you calculate it:

To calculate your LASC, you add up the total number of days it took to close every sale, then divide that sum by the total number of deals.

Here’s an example: 

Deal #1: took 20 days

Deal #2: took 35 days

Deal #3: took 30 days

20+35+30 = 85 days total

85/3 = 28.3 days

So the length of the average sales of this organization would be about 28 days. 

Now that we know a little more about sales cycles let’s breakdown why it’s essential, to begin with. 

Is It Critical To Have A Sales Cycle In Place?

The answer to the question is….absolute YES!

Here’s why: 

Having a good sales cycle allows your company to see how effective each step of your sales process is. 

It allows you to make a good analysis on what to change and what to keep the same. 

Maybe you’re getting lots of leads and conversations, but they’re dropping off during your sales calls. From there, you would work on improving your sales conversion rate. 

Another insight your sales cycle can give you is how long it takes you to close a customer. 

If you notice that your company is taking longer to close a client than your industry average, that could spell trouble. 

This is because the longer it’s taking your team to close customers, the more likely they are to fall off your funnel and not buy. 

Which means revenue takes a hit. 

And it also means you won’t have the opportunity to bring value to your marketplace. 

 Here are some additional key reasons to have a good sales cycle: 

• Saves You Time – No guesswork after you analyze what needs improvement 
• Organizes Your sales team making them do important tasks
• Company Value Is Measured – Your sales numbers can indicate your company’s product value according to the marketplace.

What Are The Stages Of A Sales Cycle?

It’s now time to explain the seven crucial steps to a successful sales cycle. 

Let’s start with the lead.

Stage #1: Prospecting & Outreach

This is where it all begins. 

Prospecting, much of the time, is done through outbound marketing.

And in this process, you’re bringing leads into your sales cycle by “going to your customer.” 

This can be done through cold email, social media outreach (LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram), and cold calling. These are all forms of outreach. 

There’s also inbound marketing, things like SEO or ads that attract leads to your landing page, opt-in form, or lead magnet.

Whether it’s organic or paid, your goal here is to get a meeting with your prospect.

A crucial step to this is the follow-up. People lead busy lives, so oftentimes, they won’t see your message the first time. 

Or they just don’t feel like replying. 

This is why you follow-up, to re-engage them into a conversation. 

70% of salespeople stop at one email. Yet if you send more emails, you’ve got a 25% chance to hear back.

That tells you that you’re already ahead of 70% of your competitors — if you just follow up. 

Remember that your end goal isn’t just a conversation, though. The conversation is the vehicle to a meeting.

The prospect will only get on this call if they see value in what you’re potentially offering, so it’s essential to give them some enticing information but not too much. 

Too much information will lead to information overload and confusion. Confused people don’t buy, so leave the details to our next stage: 

Stage #2: Qualifying Your Prospect

Awesome, you’re now telling your prospect a little about your company and service. 

To avoid overwhelming your prospect on the first meeting, have an elevator pitch ready.

That elevator pitch should look something like this:

We are A company, and we help businesses in your industry achieve B by doing C. We recently helped a similar company to you achieve X results in X months.

But before you go off explaining too much, you need to ask questions.

This is the discovery phase.

Questions are the bread and butter of qualifying because the answers to your questions tell you whether a prospect is a good fit or not. 

Here’s an example:

Let’s say you’re a real estate agent, and a customer is looking to buy a home. If you ask about their credit history and they tell you a number lower than required, they are not a good fit for the home. 

It will save you lots of time to tell them they aren’t qualified for the home right then and there and maybe show them a different one. 

Many companies fall into the trap of working with unqualified prospects, leading to both parties not benefiting from the business relationship. 

It’s true…

At least 50% of your prospects are not a good fit for what you sell.

So always qualify!

Let’s break down two more elements of good qualifying.

• Getting control of the sale by being an expert. This was coined by Jordan Belfort, who created the straight line sales system. Tonality, body language, and industry knowledge all play a role in the prospect of seeing you as an expert.

You want to get control of the first call because it sets a precedent for the second and possible third call if there is one. 

Be sure to maintain a confident tonality, strong body language, and know your product and your customer’s industry like the back of your hand. 

• Next is Identifying their pain. To craft a good proposal for your prospect, you need to understand why they’re on your call in the first place. 

They aren’t just on there to talk about the weather or the Buccaneers football game; they’re speaking to you because they see you as a possible solution to their pain point. 

You can incorporate a question that brings up their pain point in this stage. You can ask:

• “So why did you schedule this call with me today?”
• “What blockages are you experiencing in your business?”
• “What have you tried thus far to solve this problem?” 

Once they seem like a great fit, it’s time to move onto the sales presentation.

Pro tip: Don’t be afraid to end the engagement if the prospect isn’t a good fit for your company. Because as a sales professional, you want to provide value — and sometimes that’s by being honest.

Stage #3: Sales Presentation

Depending on your sales cycle, the sales presentation might be during the initial call or a follow-up call. 

Some people with more sales experience might be able to close on the first call. But unless you’ve had plenty of experience, it’s usually best to take your time with 2 calls.

Whether you’re a consultant, SaaS company, marketing agency — it’s great to test out the two ways of closing – one call or two call closes, to figure out which works best for you and your leads. 

You’ll know which method is better based on comparing the conversion rates and analyzing the winner. 

At the end of the day, you must have an understanding of these two core things to have a winning sales presentation:

• Knowing their pain 
• Knowing where they want to be 

Once you know these two things (from your qualification questions), it’s time to present your offer to your potential client.

Explain the features and benefits of your product or service but don’t stop there. 

Make it relevant to your prospect by tieing the benefits to their problem. 

So say you’re a fitness coach, and your prospect is trying to lose fat on their lower stomach. 

You would say, “My 6-week training covers five cardio workouts that will help burn fat, including the lower stomach area you’re looking to fix.”

Instead of:

“My 6-week training covers five cardio workouts that help burn fat.”

The first statement will naturally have your prospect picture their problem going away. From there, your prospect will associate the solution to their problem with your product or service. 

Let’s now mention somethings to avoid:

• Long-winded stories about your company 
• Doing most of the talking and not stopping to ask them questions 
• Making Your presentation one-sided and not conversational
• Weak tonality, body language, and knowledge (You won’t be viewed as an expert) 
• Going too fast or too slow during your presentation

Avoid these things as much as possible!

Let’s now cover one of the big parts of a sale:

Stage #4: Managing Objections

Sales is persuasion.

Whenever you’re trying to persuade someone, it’s natural for there to be questions and even objections. 

In fact, you should expect it and prepare answers to the common objections in your industry. 

Here are common objections you might come across: 

• Price objections 
• Trust objections (lack of belief in the company salesperson or product)
• ROI objection 
• A Lack of Need 
• Brush-offs

Remember that people naturally resist change. To overcome these objections, you need to meet the customer where they’re at. 

Let’s discuss how to overcome each of these common objections:

• Overcoming Price Objections: Break down the numbers and show them the ROI they’ll gain, add a good guarantee for them if things don’t go as planned. Loopback to your presentation to show the value. 
• Overcoming Trust Objections – (If possible) Talk about a previous client that had the same qualms about working with you but got a great result. Show other testimonials, your product/industry knowledge, and give free value. 
• Overcoming ROI Objections: Show results of previous clients. If you don’t have previous clients, do a free trial if you can, add an incredible guarantee. 
• Overcoming Lack of Need Objections: Bring up the problem they’re currently having and have your prospect think about what will happen if the problem continues.
• Overcoming brush-offs: This is when a prospect quickly disregards a pitch. It’s good to ask a qualifying question to get to the real objection because this is often a smokescreen. 

Objections can come at any time during the sales cycle. Also, not all objections are what they seem. 

A pricing objection may actually be a “lack of trust” objection below the surface. It’s important to ask follow-up questions to get to the real objection they’re having (like in the brush-offs objection example.)

You might be surprised how often this occurs. 

Sales mastermind Jordan Belfort states that managing objections is all about increasing their certainty in you, your product, and your company AKA overcoming their action-pain threshold.

Have your team practice objection handling during role-play meetings because it will pay off dividends in just a short amount of time.

Stage #5: Follow-up/Nurturing 

60%  say “no” four times before saying yes, but 48% of salespeople never even make a single follow-up attempt.

As stated in the “qualifying section,” following up is very important to a successful sales cycle. The follow-up can occur anywhere in the sales cycle, but in this instance, we’ll talk about the follow-up after your sales presentation. 

Maybe your prospect didn’t buy your product or service. 

It’s now time to re-engage them using these great follow-up methods: 

• Email marketing
• Text message marketing 
• Follow-up calls

This will reignite the conversation, potentially leading to closing the sale, which is our next stage. 

Keep following up until you disqualify the prospect.

Stage #6: Closing The Sale

Closing is where you make money. 

You’ve managed their objections, followed-up with them, and maybe you even threw in a juicy discount. 

It’s now time to ask for the sale verbally! 

You can say:

“So, Anders, are you ready to begin our partnership today and bring more revenue to Anders INC.?”

It doesn’t have to be fancy or over the top. 

From there, you’ll send the client an agreement (If applicable) and invoice. Once everything is taken care of, it’s time for the best service delivery they could’ve ever imagined. 

Stage #7: Referrals

After your client has worked with you for a month or two, they’ll have a certain opinion about your product or service. 

Ask your customers to refer your business to their friends and family! You can do this via email, newsletters, text messages, or phone calls (just like before.)

You can even throw in a good incentive for them if they refer your business.

B2B companies with referrals have a 70%  higher conversion rate, and they report a 69% faster close time on sales. 

Referrals help organically attract new customers who could be putting money into your business for months or years to come.

Sales Cycle: Creating A System That Closes 5X More Deals

You now have a firm grasp of how important the sales cycle really is. 

This system brings a ton of logic to your sales process. But like any system, it needs to be managed and improved. 

You don’t see Sony releasing the same PlayStation console for too long. They have a way of improving the PlayStation for each console generation. 

Sony even manages and improves a single PlayStation’s software through periodic updates throughout the year. 

These updates are to ensure a great user experience. As a result, they’ve amassed a very loyal fanbase throughout decades.

You can apply this example to your sales cycle and even business as a whole. 

Here are ways to manage and improve your sales cycle:

Start with a good sales CRM that allows you to see your sales cycle from a big picture standpoint. Again, this is almost a must just from an organizational perspective. 

The CRM allows you to track your conversion rate at each stage of your sales cycle and compare which stage is your strongest and your weakest. 

Comparing conversion rates allows you to make the right decisions for your team to execute. 

Another way to improve your sales cycle would be to compare the length of your average sales cycle (LASC) (The example we calculated earlier), with that of your industry average. If your LASC is shorter, then great, you’re converting people faster and are less likely to have drop offs. 

If your LASC is longer, you would need to work on closing deals faster to avoid prospect drop offs. 

Look into all your metrics and understand how they’re affecting each other.

All of this ties into sales reporting, which is a massive cornerstone of a successful sales team. 

Managing your sales team deals with reporting on your numbers so that everyone is on the same page. This allows sales leaders to know what’s working and then forecast their efforts for the future. 

Want To Take Your Sales Cycle To The Next Level?

The Sales Cycle is a multi-step system that allows your company to increase revenue over time. 

With tracking and analysis of your numbers, you can find yourself scaling easier because everything is systemized. 

If you want to truly sharpen your sales cycle, you need the right tools to do so. 

Not all CRMs are the same — that’s why you need the right CRM to manage and improve your sales cycle. 

You can do that with VipeCloud’s premier Sales CRM that thousands of business owners are using as we speak.

Get it today with a 15-day FREE trial by clicking here.

Sales Cycle FAQ