Making Sales Easier

Researching into drags on a rep’s day I came across an interesting article on management consultant behemoth Accenture’s website.  Here’s one of their graphics. 

So selling cycles are getting longer, with only around one in fourteen companies expecting sales cycles of less than one month, a dramatic halving of such thoughts from last year.

And less first calls are progressing.  2006 had 55% of them going on to presentations, now it’s down to 49%.  Similar woes afflict the number of calls a deal takes, alarming considering an extra call’s impact on profitability, with 48% of deals now taking more than six calls, whereas last year it was only 35%.  That’s a big jump.

Sounds pretty grim.  If Accenture consider these metrics important, then the trick to stay ahead of the game is to focus on guaranteeing qualified ‘presentations’ and working out how to shape the buying cycle so that a call can be eliminated.