Dan Martell - 5 Strategic Steps To Shorten The Sales Cycle for Enterprise Clients

00:00:00.000 Hi there, Dan Martell here,

00:00:01.180 serial entrepreneur, investor, and creator of SaaS Academy.

00:00:02.980 In this episode, I'm gonna share with you

00:00:04.580 the five strategies to shorten your enterprise sales cycle

00:00:09.200 so that you can get rid of the companies

00:00:12.520 that are just trying to waste your time

00:00:13.820 and find the ready-to-buy buyers

00:00:16.480 and do it in a way where you can actually get a deal done

00:00:19.100 in the next two to three months, not 16 months.

00:00:21.760 And be sure to stay to the end

00:00:22.940 where I'm gonna actually share with you my stage sheets.

00:00:25.600 This is the worksheet that I use with my coaching clients

00:00:28.280 to identify the seven specific stages

00:00:31.120 that every sales process should follow,

00:00:33.400 the percent win rates by stage to stage,

00:00:35.500 and even ways that you can audit your own sales process

00:00:39.020 to increase your velocity.

00:00:40.700 Let's kick into it.

00:00:54.200 I love selling.

00:00:55.680 I love it, I love it, I love it.

00:00:57.240 and the reason why is because I believe that nothing happens in business till somebody buys

00:01:01.740 and the process of communicating value and benefits is one of the most important skills

00:01:07.460 that you can learn selling and leadership to me those two those are the like start by learning

00:01:13.300 to sell and then develop your leadership skills but in regards to selling if you don't do this

00:01:18.660 right and I learned this building my company Spheric Technologies you can literally get ahead

00:01:24.240 of yourself. You're talking to a customer, they're excited. You're like, yeah, you start hiring people,

00:01:28.980 you get anticipating the deal. And guess what? You find out after the fact, you weren't talking

00:01:33.500 to the right person. You weren't even talking to somebody who had authority. They couldn't write a

00:01:37.000 check. And the truth is, is that inside their company, when they buy software like yours or

00:01:41.560 deploy it to the company, there are so many different other decision makers involved in

00:01:47.060 that process that had you known that on the onset, you would have actually, you know, adjusted your

00:01:52.780 excitement. Failing to do this will cost you revenue. It'll cost you opportunity. It'll cost

00:01:58.480 you to have a false sense of pipeline. That's just not true. And we need to fix it. So here are five

00:02:03.820 specific strategies that I use that I coach my clients on to ensure that we increase the sales

00:02:09.260 velocity specifically around enterprise sales. Number one, audit 3VC. Now I first heard this

00:02:15.780 term from my buddy, Jason. He runs an incredible agency helping companies increase the revenue

00:02:20.020 called GoNimbly and 3VC is a simple formula, okay?

00:02:24.040 The first V is volume.

00:02:26.080 How much deal are you adding to your pipeline?

00:02:29.400 How many like just literally deal volume

00:02:32.340 are you adding opportunities to your pipeline?

00:02:34.300 The second one is value.

00:02:36.200 How much are those deals worth to you?

00:02:39.000 You got a lot of little ones,

00:02:39.960 you got a lot of medium ones,

00:02:40.880 but we need essentially focus on the value.

00:02:43.180 The third is velocity.

00:02:44.980 How fast are you working your deals, okay?

00:02:47.500 How fast are you working those deals?

00:02:49.040 And then the C is for conversion.

00:02:51.180 What is the steps involved to closing a deal?

00:02:53.680 And what are the percents across each one of those stages

00:02:56.720 to increase your velocity?

00:02:59.460 That is the three VC.

00:03:00.940 Most people that say, oh, I have long sales cycles.

00:03:03.820 People are buying.

00:03:04.880 I don't know how to increase the velocity.

00:03:06.860 They don't know these numbers.

00:03:07.860 They literally don't know the volume, the value,

00:03:10.620 the velocity, or the conversion numbers in their pipeline.

00:03:14.000 Because if you're doing mid-market enterprise sales

00:03:16.160 and you're just a small startup,

00:03:17.620 it's a good chance you probably don't even write

00:03:19.020 any of this stuff down.

00:03:19.940 There's a good chance that you've never audited it.

00:03:22.440 You just, you kind of go on, I call this elephant hunting.

00:03:25.160 A lot of founders get stuck in this mode of like,

00:03:28.140 big opportunity, all energy,

00:03:30.080 this is gonna transform our business to,

00:03:32.980 ah, man, that was a lot smaller than I thought.

00:03:35.320 So number one strategy to increase your sales velocity

00:03:38.220 and your pipeline and your speed to close

00:03:40.820 is audit your three VC.

00:03:42.600 Number two, clarify your market.

00:03:44.960 So Clarify Market to me is know who you're selling to.

00:03:49.140 Okay, if you sell software

00:03:50.860 that improves collaboration in a big company,

00:03:53.840 you need to understand what customer type,

00:03:57.580 what audience, your ICP, your ideal customer profile,

00:04:00.920 or your core customer, whatever you wanna call it,

00:04:03.540 but who's the perfect buyer?

00:04:05.100 You have a DNA as a company, your product has a DNA,

00:04:08.880 it has certain features that make it unique.

00:04:11.840 What customers out there in the market

00:04:14.200 would be ideal for it.

00:04:16.420 Because if you can't answer that,

00:04:18.180 if you can't clarify your target market and be specific,

00:04:22.780 sometimes I call this uncomfortably narrow.

00:04:24.920 If you can't do that,

00:04:26.220 then you're literally gonna be selling stuff to people.

00:04:29.080 And this is the worst part.

00:04:30.280 When you're selling enterprise software,

00:04:31.980 you know, somebody will come to you,

00:04:33.100 they'll ask you a bunch of questions,

00:04:34.100 you'll do three or four or five meetings.

00:04:35.880 And then at the end,

00:04:36.900 when they start getting serious about it,

00:04:38.520 guess what happens?

00:04:39.640 They open it up for a competition.

00:04:41.300 They start asking themselves,

00:04:42.380 I wonder what G2 crowd has to say about this.

00:04:44.140 So I wonder what Capterra has to say about this.

00:04:45.840 I wonder what my peers in the industry

00:04:47.200 have to say about this.

00:04:48.160 And all of a sudden you thought you were doing a deal

00:04:50.380 with the company and at the last minute

00:04:52.680 they bring in a competitive process

00:04:54.120 and you're gonna lose out

00:04:55.240 because maybe somebody else's product

00:04:57.060 is better positioned for that kind of company,

00:05:00.460 that industry, that market.

00:05:02.420 And for me, I think of one of my great clients,

00:05:05.480 Reg at Stormboard.

00:05:06.400 Reg has a product for online collaboration

00:05:08.980 and one of the things he discovered

00:05:11.420 that changed the game for it,

00:05:12.900 literally got win rates to 30, 40, 50%

00:05:15.800 was understanding for Stormboard,

00:05:18.440 his perfect fit customer was a mid-market

00:05:21.540 to enterprise company that was using agile development

00:05:24.900 with a distributed team.

00:05:26.320 If those three things were true,

00:05:28.320 then he had the best product in the market for them.

00:05:30.740 And all of a sudden now, all the marketing got better,

00:05:33.940 the campaigns got better, the sales process got better

00:05:36.920 because why?

00:05:37.640 You can customize your deck.

00:05:39.560 You can talk about agile development

00:05:42.160 and how to use their product to streamline the process.

00:05:45.880 It doesn't mean that you don't create

00:05:47.140 a broader horizontal collaboration software.

00:05:49.580 It means from a positioning point of view,

00:05:51.740 especially for enterprise sales,

00:05:53.500 that your campaigns are targeted towards that.

00:05:56.560 So there's a difference what you put on the website,

00:05:58.880 your marketing site,

00:05:59.680 and what you use for your marketing campaigns,

00:06:02.140 for your outbound, for your sales process.

00:06:04.720 And that's what's being missed sometimes.

00:06:06.100 So be sure to verify your market.

00:06:08.420 Number three, map the process.

00:06:11.400 This is really simple.

00:06:12.880 Go to a whiteboard.

00:06:14.880 Write down all the different stages, okay?

00:06:17.840 Steps that's involved in your current process.

00:06:20.920 Everything from a request comes in from your website

00:06:24.000 or an outbound replies to you

00:06:26.160 and shows some level of interest.

00:06:27.740 That might be step one.

00:06:29.080 And go through, what happens after that?

00:06:31.280 Do we get on a discovery call?

00:06:32.780 Then what do we do?

00:06:33.540 Do we talk about doing a product demo?

00:06:35.100 Then what do we do?

00:06:35.760 Do we do a POC?

00:06:37.360 What do we do after that?

00:06:38.240 Do we do a proposal?

00:06:39.080 Do we do whatever, whatever?

00:06:41.120 Like map it out as it is today

00:06:43.920 because until you can take it from your mind,

00:06:46.720 put it out in front of you,

00:06:48.700 look at it with your team members and say,

00:06:51.660 okay, this is the nine to 15 steps

00:06:54.300 that's going on right now.

00:06:55.780 How do we compress steps?

00:06:57.500 How do we reduce the friction

00:06:59.060 to go from step one to step two?

00:07:00.740 We've got a proposal.

00:07:01.920 Who writes the proposal?

00:07:03.060 Is there a template?

00:07:04.300 Is there a structure?

00:07:05.880 If there isn't, can we create one?

00:07:07.660 How does the discovery call go?

00:07:10.040 Do is every discovery,

00:07:10.940 what is the purpose of our discovery call?

00:07:12.800 Is it serving the need of the sales process?

00:07:15.580 No, what questions should we change?

00:07:17.120 What should we stop asking?

00:07:18.520 And on and on and on and on.

00:07:21.080 If you don't map the process

00:07:22.760 and you're trying to increase the sales cycle

00:07:24.900 and the speed, you are really,

00:07:27.180 it's like you're trying to push on a wet noodle, okay?

00:07:29.660 You're trying to move a wet noodle forward

00:07:31.320 and it's not doing anything

00:07:33.040 because to me, the process is where the opportunity lies.

00:07:36.700 It's where each stage has friction,

00:07:40.580 has outcomes desired, has principles.

00:07:43.920 Like what are we doing at the proposal stage?

00:07:46.000 Should we just send the proposal to the customer?

00:07:48.200 No, you should schedule a call

00:07:50.200 to review the proposal with the customer.

00:07:52.100 Little things like that.

00:07:53.160 You may not have this experience, that's fine.

00:07:54.980 Map it out, bring somebody in.

00:07:56.660 Get a mentor, ask your team, trust me.

00:07:59.360 Go play secret shopper amongst top competitors.

00:08:01.900 See how they do it.

00:08:03.180 Be inspired.

00:08:04.180 I call this R&D, you know, rob and duplicate.

00:08:06.700 Figure out what's working in the market

00:08:08.340 and adopt it if you don't know any better,

00:08:10.120 but mapping out the process is key.

00:08:13.060 Number four, install automation.

00:08:15.240 Now I love this.

00:08:17.120 Automation to me,

00:08:18.080 the way I think about marketing and sales is,

00:08:20.700 we need to take care of the market till they're ready to buy.

00:08:24.080 We need to use automation

00:08:26.200 so that we can support the process

00:08:28.020 so that every interaction with the customer is consistent.

00:08:32.060 It's sharing the same message.

00:08:34.100 It's positioning the products.

00:08:35.500 Some people are like, oh, I run a complicated sales process.

00:08:38.820 I don't care.

00:08:39.620 You can absolutely automate certain stages.

00:08:42.640 For me, if you just think the three simple stages,

00:08:44.760 is there the get them, so if somebody fills out a form,

00:08:48.220 how do I get them to book a demo or book?

00:08:50.580 Yeah, in your world, it's probably a demo.

00:08:52.040 So how do I get them to book a demo?

00:08:53.280 How do I get them to show up for a demo?

00:08:55.380 And then after they show up for a demo,

00:08:56.920 how do I follow up to move things to the next stage?

00:08:59.420 If you just broke down those three stages,

00:09:01.920 got an email, need to get them on a demo,

00:09:03.960 got a demo, get them to show up,

00:09:05.500 They showed up, but I need them to take the next stage.

00:09:08.140 And you just write two or three emails at each one

00:09:10.540 and even text messages.

00:09:12.640 I mean, the level of automation, SwissCase,

00:09:14.660 that you can do today with like a Zapier, Zap,

00:09:18.040 or some off the shelf $15 a month subscription software,

00:09:22.400 it is like, it's mind blowing

00:09:24.980 how cool and automated you can do that.

00:09:27.400 Not to take the personality out of it.

00:09:29.780 You can personalize every one of these things.

00:09:32.160 Also ask yourself in all these messages,

00:09:33.900 the automation. Are you promoting the value? I see a lot of people that have like demo request

00:09:39.480 form and it's all about like, get on a demo with one of our sales reps. I don't want to be sold

00:09:44.080 and I don't need a demo. But if you said, Hey, get on a strategy session and we're going to do a

00:09:49.060 customized presentation of our product with a product specialist. I'm more interested. Why?

00:09:54.420 Because I just changed the whole positioning to be valuable for the person, valuable for them,

00:09:59.380 not about me, make it about them.

00:10:01.240 Just think about this.

00:10:02.080 If you're doing SMS notifications,

00:10:04.640 I just want you to know,

00:10:05.560 I'm dropping some serious value in this episode.

00:10:08.600 So I want you to take notes.

00:10:09.940 If you're doing SMS notifications,

00:10:12.520 are they selling the benefit of showing up for the demo?

00:10:16.460 Okay.

00:10:17.580 If you're just saying,

00:10:18.520 hey, confirming our call is tomorrow at 1 p.m.,

00:10:21.920 man, you're dropping the ball.

00:10:22.980 What are the value drivers?

00:10:23.920 Why should they show up for the call?

00:10:25.180 Are you gonna teach them about the industry?

00:10:26.780 Are you gonna give them an access to an exclusive resource?

00:10:29.040 Are you going to audit their situation

00:10:30.920 and give them three key things they're gonna learn

00:10:32.660 to take away to improve their situation?

00:10:35.180 Like there's so much low hanging fruit around automation.

00:10:39.540 I mean, even just follow up, okay?

00:10:41.360 So like following up, you know,

00:10:43.520 if somebody doesn't go to the next stage,

00:10:45.920 building that sequence out

00:10:47.400 and literally until they hit unsubscribe

00:10:49.560 or leave me alone and reply,

00:10:51.660 you literally should follow up and have a cadence

00:10:53.720 where it's like one day, three days, seven days, 10 days.

00:10:56.040 And then every 15 days for eternity,

00:10:58.520 honestly, as long as it's value driven, as long as it's, it's comes from a place of service,

00:11:03.620 then I think it's game on. Installing automation could be a game changer to increasing the

00:11:08.600 velocity of your current sales process. Number five, advance the sale. So there's a few like

00:11:14.520 non-negotiables. Okay. When I work with sales teams, okay, I coach a lot of incredible SaaS

00:11:19.220 founders and sometimes they'll bring me in, they'll hire me to do a training for their sales

00:11:24.760 team. The first one is BAMFAM. Book a meeting from a meeting. It is irresponsible and absolutely a

00:11:31.160 cardinal sin if you're on the call with a potential buyer and they want to review things for you not

00:11:35.720 to schedule that next call in your calendar. You can say, hey, how much time is it going to take

00:11:39.460 you to review it? They say 10 days. Perfect. Let's schedule a time in 10 days from now. 2 p.m. work

00:11:43.640 for you. Yes. Perfect. Here's what we're going to do on that call. And you make it valuable for them.

00:11:48.620 Why? Because they need to want to get back on that call. And hey, by the way, when you get on that

00:11:52.600 call. I'm actually going to do some research. I'm going to tell you who are the five companies in

00:11:55.620 your industry that are crushing it around this problem that you're trying to solve right now.

00:11:59.120 So even if you don't move forward with us, I want to give you that as a gift. So will you show up?

00:12:02.340 Yeah, absolutely. And will you make a commitment to me that if something should come up that you

00:12:06.600 just let me know prior so that I can open up that spot and make it available to somebody else that's

00:12:10.740 looking to get in to my calendar? Can you make that commitment? Yeah, for sure. I can do that.

00:12:14.300 Perfect. They have a verbal commitment. Again, hope you're taking notes. That's the kind of stuff

00:12:19.460 they will absolutely crush it for you.

00:12:22.200 Multi-threading accounts, asking a company,

00:12:25.500 when you've bought software like ours in the past,

00:12:27.880 how did you guys make that decision?

00:12:29.920 Who was involved in that decision?

00:12:31.400 That's called multi-threading

00:12:32.220 because now what you're gonna do

00:12:33.020 is you're gonna have a list of three or five people

00:12:34.580 that were involved in that decision.

00:12:36.000 And you're gonna ask if you could reach out to them

00:12:38.180 to answer or get them prepped on specific things

00:12:41.600 or concerns they might have.

00:12:42.640 If it's a technical leadership,

00:12:44.160 maybe they have certain compliance or security stuff

00:12:46.840 that they're gonna need.

00:12:47.920 And you're just saying,

00:12:48.520 hey, I just want to know what that is.

00:12:49.880 I'm going to reach out and talk to that person.

00:12:51.780 I'm going to figure that out

00:12:52.680 so that as we work on the business case,

00:12:55.180 we can solve some of these things.

00:12:56.720 Multi-threading accounts.

00:12:58.660 There's so much around advancing the sale.

00:13:00.440 Even the idea of selling a POC, a proof of concept.

00:13:03.900 So proof of concept is a simple idea

00:13:05.540 that I don't need to have you deploy my software

00:13:07.640 to everybody in your organization.

00:13:09.240 I just want you to identify what team

00:13:11.700 that if we could make it absolutely rock and work for them,

00:13:15.140 that that would be a great case study and example

00:13:17.740 that you could use it to sell it

00:13:19.140 to the rest of the business, okay?

00:13:20.220 We just need five or 12 people that are perfect, okay?

00:13:23.740 And we're gonna, and it's a paid POC.

00:13:26.320 That's why to me, sales cycles that last 16 months

00:13:29.260 is because you're trying to sell,

00:13:30.400 you're trying to boil the ocean, okay?

00:13:32.360 And it's possible, but then you got into budget constraints

00:13:34.480 and timelines and all that stuff.

00:13:36.100 Literally ask yourself, okay, what can they spend?

00:13:38.120 10 grand, 15 grand, 25 grand?

00:13:40.240 Get a POC sold, get it deployed,

00:13:42.720 ask them who's involved, run the process,

00:13:44.860 manage it with your customer success team.

00:13:46.880 Get the case study, ask them what does success look like?

00:13:50.020 And if we achieve that, then what would be the next day?

00:13:52.480 Well, if we can do that in this quarter,

00:13:54.080 then boom, Q3, we should probably get this approved.

00:13:56.340 Great, let's move that deal forward.

00:13:58.540 That's what I'm talking about.

00:13:59.740 Always advance the sale

00:14:01.640 by figuring out what's the next stage,

00:14:03.620 getting the commitment on the call now

00:14:05.700 so that nobody feels like there's follow-up

00:14:08.300 that's outstanding and we get the commitment earlier on.

00:14:11.540 So quick recap of strategies to shorten your sales cycle.

00:14:14.740 Well, number one, audit your 3VC.

00:14:16.380 Number two, clarify your market.

00:14:18.480 Number three, map the process.

00:14:20.320 Number four, install automation.

00:14:22.420 Number five, my favorite, advance the sale.

00:14:26.280 So as I mentioned at the beginning of this episode,

00:14:27.900 I wanna share with you literally the most powerful

00:14:30.940 like worksheet you can download.

00:14:32.900 Just click the link below to download it.

00:14:34.440 I'm gonna show you the different stages of the sale.

00:14:37.180 I'm gonna show you how to audit your sales process

00:14:40.120 using the 3VC framework and identify the opportunities

00:14:43.620 that you can literally put into your business today

00:14:46.120 to shorten your sales cycle.

00:14:47.900 So click the link below to download your copy.

00:14:49.780 If you like this episode,

00:14:51.080 be sure to hit the subscribe button, like it,

00:14:53.980 share it with somebody that you love.

00:14:56.020 And as per usual, I wanna challenge you

00:14:57.560 to live a bigger life and a bigger business,

00:14:59.620 and I'll see you next Monday.

00:15:02.280 Shorten your sales cycle, fasten, fasten.

00:15:05.580 I'm gonna teach you how to fasten down your seatbelt.

Dan Martell - March 29, 2021

5 Strategic Steps To Shorten The Sales Cycle for Enterprise Clients

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript