How To Use the Sales Cycle To Improve Your Sales Performance

What is a sales cycle?

At a basic level, a sales cycle is simply the process that salespeople use to move leads through the sales funnel and into paying customers.

This process typically involves several different stages, each of which serves a specific purpose in the sales process.

Each sales cycle stage is designed to help salespeople move leads through the sales funnel, ultimately resulting in sales conversions.

Every sales cycle will look different depending on the specific products or services that you’re selling. That said, there are some key sales cycle stages and steps that are common to most sales cycles.

These are:

• Prospecting
• Qualifying
• Presenting
• Convincing/Persuading
• Closing
• Following up and developing relationships

LaGrowthMachine is a tool that allows you to do all of that very easily. You just need to import some data about your sales leads.

Once you have your list of leads, you can then enrich their information using our tool’s data enrichment program. This will give you valuable insights into their background, interests, and even contact details.

Maybe you started prospecting, qualifying leads, presenting your sales pitch, or even closing deals. You can use LaGrowthMachine for everything throughout your own sales cycle, making it more efficient.

Why is the sales cycle important to your business?

There are a number of reasons why sales professionals should understand and pay attention to their sales cycles.

For one thing, sales cycles help salespeople stay organized and focused. Without a sales process in place, the sales team can easily get confused and end up wasting valuable time.

By using a sales cycle, salespeople can streamline their efforts and focus their time and energy on the sales activities that lead to sales conversions.

In addition, having a well-defined sales cycle can give salespeople:

• A more structured sales process: Avoid common sales mistakes such as jumping from one sales activity to another or focusing too much on your sales pitch and not enough on customer needs.
• A clear sales roadmap: When salespeople know what sales activities they need to do, and when they need to do them in order to close sales, they can focus on the most important sales tasks at any given time.
• More time saved: To that last point, sales teams can spend less time on sales activities that don’t move sales forward and more time doing the sales activities that do.
• A consistent sales process: Lastly, when following a sales cycle, you are far more likely to close sales consistently and predictably. This is an important benefit, as sales cycles can help your sales rep make sales a core part of their inbound sales processes and avoid the sales fluctuations that can impact sales success.

With LaGrowthMachine, you’ll be able to simply have a 360° view of your whole sales process.

You’ll be able to see, in each stage of the cycle, what’s working, what isn’t, and which leads are most likely to convert.

That way, you can improve your sales performance management and better understand what sales activities are most effective in moving leads through the sales funnel.

Ultimately, by implementing and following a sales cycle, sales reps can boost their sales performance and close more of the sales they are working on. So if you’re looking to take your sales efforts to the next level, it’s definitely worth considering using a sales cycle in your process.

How to use the sales cycle to increase your close rate?

One of the key benefits of sales cycles is that they provide sales reps with a clear roadmap for moving sales forward.

To use the sales cycle to improve your overall performance, there are a lot of different steps you will need to take, most of them being related to how you set up your process.

Simply put, when talking about close rates, it’s all about the sales channels you use. So in order to increase your sales, you will need to spend some time analyzing the sales activities that are most effective in connecting with potential clients.

Here again, LaGrowthMachine comes in clutch! In fact, it allows you to follow up with your leads consistently, across multiple channels, and in a timely manner. This enables you to have up to 3.5 times more leads generated, compared to using one sales channel at a time.

That said, let’s explore how you can use the sales cycle to increase your overall sales performance.

1. Define your sales cycle properly:

A sales cycle doesn’t work if you don’t have a clear sales process in place. To get started, you’ll need to first define and document your sales process so that sales reps can clearly understand what they should be doing at each stage of the sales funnel.

2. Set specific sales goals:

Once your sales process is defined and you’re ready to engage in your sales cycle management, the next step is to set clear sales goals for yourself or your sales team. This means breaking sales down into key sales activities and determining what sales targets need to be achieved in order for sales reps to hit their sales goals.

3. Prioritize sales activities:

A sales cycle can also be used to prioritize sales activities and focus on the sales techniques and sales tools that will have the most impact.

This can go from lead qualification to sales forecasting, and sales reps should continuously monitor how sales activities are contributing to sales performance.

4. Track your sales activities:

Another critical step for improving your sales performance is to track the results of your sales activities, including how many leads you are generating and closing, as well as which sales activities are most effective at moving sales forward.

This is especially true if you’re using a CRM platform to keep track of sales activities and sales progress, as you’ll be able to more easily see sales trends and make adjustments to your sales process accordingly.

Luckily, LaGrowthMachine has native integrations with HubSpot’s and Pipedrive’s platforms, allowing your teams to easily track and coordinate their marketing and sales activities.

Maybe you’ve invested in another CRM system, if that’s the case, you don’t have to worry! We provide you with a Zapier integration that lets you easily sync your CRM activities with your campaigns and sales funnel.

5. Measure sales results:

This goes hand-in-hand with the previous point because you can’t track something without measuring it.

With a sales cycle in place, sales reps should be tracking sales results on an ongoing basis and making any necessary adjustments to their process or sales techniques as needed.

This can help them avoid wasting time on sales activities that don’t move sales forward and instead focus more of their energy on sales activities that do.

6. Test and iterate:

Finally, in order to continuously improve, it’s important to test and iterate with your sales process and sales activities.

This means consistently adjusting sales activities to see what sales strategies are working best, as well as which sales leads are most likely to close.

For instance, using our tool, you can create two different campaigns with the same sales funnel, but with a different sales message. This allows you to track sales performance and see which sales technique is more effective at moving sales forward.

All in all, with a sales cycle in place, sales reps can focus on the sales techniques and sales tools that will have the biggest impact on sales performance.

Conclusion

By understanding the importance of the sales cycle, you can put yourself in a better position to increase your sales performance. Whether you’re using sales tools, focusing on sales activities, or tracking your sales results, a sales cycle can help you prioritize what’s most important and make sales more efficient. So why wait? Start implementing a sales cycle today and start boosting your sales performance!