How To Shorten Your B2B Sales Cycle: Key Lab Takeaways

How To Shorten Your B2B Sales Cycle: Key Lab Takeaways

Ross Blog (2)  Ross Palley

We invited three B2B tech startups in the Venture Lane community to participate in our Funnel Friction Lab. Participants worked directly with a Mentor Committee of seasoned sales leaders in Boston tech to triage greatest points of friction in their sales funnels.

On the Committee, we had Carl Oliveri (Chief Revenue Officer @ Robin), David Morse (Chief Revenue Officer & Chief Customer Officer @ TrueMotion), and Ethan Schechter (Vice President of Sales @ Snyk). Check out their key takeaways below!

How to structure your funnel for success…

  • The earlier stage you are, the fewer funnel stages you should have. Otherwise, the low volume of leads through your funnel won't give you dependable conversion rates from stage to stage.

  • Add sub-stages as you scale the team. As you add BDRs to the team, task them with 2-3 criteria (sub-stages) that a prospect needs to fulfill in order to move from one stage to the next.

  • Close out lost opportunities. Move all no's into an 'opportunities lost' bucket, so you can identify patterns in this group and modify your qualification criteria accordingly. 

How to prioritize your most qualified leads…

  • Introduce light lead scoring. In the immediate term, you'll spend more time on the most likely conversions. As your team scales, SDR/BDRs will have clear criteria for moving leads through the funnel (as opposed to moving leads to juice their own performance numbers).
  • Disqualify leads as fast as possible. If you are learning in later stages of your sales process that a prospect was never going to buy, move the criteria you needed for disqualifying that lead to the top of your funnel

  • Throw a body at it as your team scales. Hire a junior to mid level contributor to score leads at the top of your funnel and remove leads that will never convert.

How to accelerate your sales cycle…

  • Social proof is king. Land some big customer logos and use them everywhere - prioritize them on your website, publish case studies, and mention them to prospects at the start of your sales process.

  • Use tickers to drive urgency. If your product offers revenue generation or cost savings, incorporate a running ticker of dollars lost by not using your product as you continue to engage with prospects over time.
  • Experiment with pricing. You can change up your pricing strategy without reducing overall deal size. If prospects buy into your ROI figures but aren't comfortable or familiar with your payment terms, don't hesitate to change those terms.

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