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What does your sales process / sales cycle look like? And what is your typical length of time to close?

 

Mine generally looks like this:

 

Introduction - Cold Calls, E-mails, LinkedIn etc. You are trying to meet with the DM or speak with someone who can give you information on when their lease is coming due or how old their equipment is.

 

Discovery Appointment - Once you find an opportunity, you are meeting with the DM to identify their needs and build value.

 

Proposal Appointment - Meeting with the DM to present pricing, your solution and/or a demo.

 

Follow-Up - Consecutive follow-ups to close the deal.

 

After giving my proposal, I find I am sometimes following up 2, 3 or even 4 times before the customer makes a decision. Is there another step you would add in to slow down the process and in turn, speed up the close?

 

Thanks!

 

Czech

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I will usually smoke them out with the timeline that I need to close business by.  That will usually bring up what timeline they are on.  Whether it's the customer is willing to wait until the end of the existing lease, they are still gathering proposals, you need to find a way to ask "why" a decision has not been made yet, or what's holding up the process.  I also hate when prospects are purchasing, and will wait for their existing system to drop dead.

 

I stress to everyone that I have a timeline and in turn most of the time that will smoke out where they are in the process.

  • Quarterly emails to all MPS prospects.  I don't prospect for hardware opportunities based on lease expiration dates, because there is little money in that.
  • Email prospects based on trigger events discovered from weekly Google alerts.
  • Schedule intro/discovery meeting.
  • If there is a valid opportunity, I schedule an assessment which typically takes about a month to complete.
  • Analyze existing costs, volumes, fleet configuration, etc.
  • Schedule Consensus meeting to review existing data (volumes, device data, user-based printing data & costs) and proposed strategy excluding pricing.  The goal here is to collaborate with the prospective client to create the ideal proposal & get agreement on the strategy.
  • Review proposal & gain commitment.
  • Pre-implementation meeting with client contacts.
  • Implementation.
  • Quarterly Business reviews

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