LiveGenie

Area Sales Manager EMEA

What's the best strategy to shorten our Sales cycle?

Sales Hackers, what do you recommend to shorten a sales cycle?

We are an HRMS Saas and we are suffering from 30% unattended demo meetings, any ideas how to shorten our Sales cycle and increase our Leads to Demo Ratio?

👑 Sales Strategy

📣 Demos

☑️ Qualification Calls

17 comments

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nomdeguerre

Executive

Account executive

Why is your goal to have a demo? A demo in and of itself shouldn’t be a goal.

The only purpose of a demo out to show that you can eliminate the pain you have uncovered in your discovery. The fact that people noshow your demo tells me that you haven’t done a good job of uncovering a pain that is valuable enough in your discovery call.

You have to do a discovery where you uncover where the customer is now, where they want to be in the future, what is the gap to get there and what is the value of that gap.

Then articulate that to the prospect and explain that in the upcoming demo you will show them how you can help them get to the future state they want. If you do that there is little chance they will noshow the demo.

Want more detail? I would recommend reading Gap Selling by Keenan.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

I can’t upvote your comment enough. The demo is not the goal. The demo is a step along the way of continuing the conversation around the customer’s needs and how the company can solve them. I cringe every time I listen to a BDR push a demo as the outcome during a qual call. It’s not.

nomdeguerre

Executive

Account executive

I agree with you. However, you can’t really blame the BDRs as they are typically measured on number of meeting/demos booked.

What really gets me is when the AEs are focused on having demos. Or worse the ones that tells you with pride in their voice that they sent out 3 proposals last week.

I’m like dude nobody buys because you sent them a proposal or sat through your boring demo.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

Truth.

It pays to be patient and helpful to the BDRs. AEs who don't get it...maybe never will.

jefe

Arsonist

🍁

@nomdeguerreis dropping some serious wisdom today.

@Shabaread this, then read it again, then one more time.

nomdeguerre

Executive

Account executive

🙏

jefe

Arsonist

🍁

nomdeguerre

Executive

Account executive

LOL 😂

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

You’ve got to be talking to people who need what you are selling. If they don’t, they’re going to get off the call after agreeing to the demo, rethink it, and blow off the meeting. Your team needs to be sure they are talking to the right people, understanding the problem they are needing to solve, and getting across the message that the next meeting/demo will be to showcase how the solution is going to fix the problem/provide value.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

QUALIFICATION

LiveGenie

Fire Starter

Area Sales Manager EMEA

Thank you guys @nomdeguerre @Sunbunny31 @jefe @CuriousFox @Pachacuti @DevSomeBiz @antiASKHOLE @Kosta_Konfuciusfor your insights, I totally understand that demo ratios are not the right metrics to focus on, however, it is still something that we need to do in order to show our leads how we can potentially solve their problems.
I've actually thought about the problem and come up with a solution www.livegenie.co so I'm currently building this product to save my own problem and potentially other Sales manager's problems.

Do you think making demos with our visitors straight on our website could be beneficial?

I ll be also building a feature for live group chat, so we can make live webinars on the website and engage with visitors on the spot, do you think it might reduce our sales cycle and increase our revenue?
I also thought about increasing my team's productivity with AI Transcription of sales reports.

Do you think these 3 features could help me solve my problem? Do you have other feature recommendations?

Your feedback will be highly appreciated 🙏

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

To that point, our company does have short, prerecorded demo segments on our website, so that customers can get a look at the solution and see it in action a little bit. Often that's more than enough to satisfy the curious who just want to see it and get a sense, and if that's all they want, they are not bothering our MM team for a demo. If they're enterprise, they may look, but odds are high they'll request contact and enter into our more formal process.

Pachacuti

Politicker

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

I’d say the prospect isn’t articulating the value to themselves or within their organization clearly enough. You might be forcing the demo before they see enough value to themselves.

People buy because it makes them look /feel good or it saves them time/money. If you aren’t hitting those basics with them, they won’t buy.

DevSomeBiz

Valued Contributor

Senior B2B Sales Guy.

What is your lead-to-close ratio? Demos are not a reliable leading indicator.

antiASKHOLE

Tycoon

Bravado's Resident Asshole

Build more value and "why you" always ask for the close and don't just throw up a "So when can I follow up"

Kosta_Konfucius

Politicker

Sales Rep

How do you define lead in this situation, what’s the goal % in your org

MSPSales

Politicker

Partner Development Manager

Skip demo or even preform a high level demo during your initial disco

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LiveGenie

What's the best strategy to shorten our Sales cycle?

17 comments

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