Akanksha Singh in HubSpotmarketing automation

4 ways to shorten your sales cycle with marketing automation

Let this blog be all information and no balderdash! In the writeup that follows we will let you in on how to shorten your sales cycle with marketing automation. Prior to that, we will try to understand the stages of a sales cycle and how can it be optimized.

What is the sales cycle?

The stages of a sales cycle are a series of events that take place during the selling of a product or service.

What are the stages of a sales cycle?

The 6 stages of a sales cycle are as follows-

Prospect for leads-

To sell a product you need to find a lead that is sustainable and converts in the long run. Every lead starts as a prospect.

The prospecting stage demands you to seek the answer to the following two questions-

What unique problem does your product solve?
What connects the audience to your product?

Identifying leads in the prospecting stage can land you in a win-win situation.

Tracking the website traffic can be very helpful in the process of prospecting for leads.

Contact potential customers-

After identifying prospects, you need to initiate contact with potential customers. While initiating contact with the potential customers you need to take care of the following:

Research well about the customer.
Contact on the platform, your customer is most familiar with (For eg. social media)
Listen to the customer’s problem with the highest concern.
Suggest solutions with regard to the problems addressed, without deviation.

In the process of contacting potential customers, you may come across people who were once identified as potential leads but revert no longer. In such cases, you need to have a pattern to track the customers and follow them up via. mails, humble phone calls, etc.

Communicate without being clingy.

Qualify the customers-

In this process, you can include a member of the sales team to deal with potential leads. This process demands the marketing team of your company works together with the sales team.

In this process, you need to acquaint your customers with the solutions you are offering them and every aspect of the solutions.

This process can be defined in a single line-

Marketing team + Sales team = Qualification of customers

You need to ensure the following:

Does the prospect need your product?
Are your services in the budget of the lead?
What is the frequency in which a lead may require your product?

Based on the analysis of the above aspects you can categorize a lead as a qualified or a disqualified lead.

Present your product-

After bringing in your sales team into the picture, you need to pitch your product in the best way possible. The pitching should be aimed at letting the customer feel that the product has been specially designed for him.

Presenting the product is an art that needs to be mastered by every employee working in your firm.

4 outstanding ways to present your products to potential customers are:

Know well about your products and highlight the essentials while pitching
Brand your product
Have an online presence of your product
Enhance credibility by fetching frequent client reviews and feedbacks

Overcome customer objections-

In this process of the sales cycle, you need to patiently address the concerns of the leads. They may come up with objections related to price, product features, service features, etc. You can even question a lead’s objection if you find it to be irrelevant to have a complete insight into the lead’s psychology. This may help you in modifying your pitching scheme and come up with a better one.

Let’s just jump upon the points to remember about this particular stage in a sales cycle-

This stage can be best communicated and handled by a salesperson
The success of this stage depends on the success of the preceding stages
The way this stage is handled will depend upon the product being pitched and can range from being highly enthusiastic to less enthusiastic

In this stage, the communication to be done with the lead should be an outcome of the observation of the lead’s attitude or mode.

Generate referrals-

This process in a sales cycle can either be executed immediately after a sale is closed or later in the course of growth of your business with the client. In this process, you are supposed to ask the newly acquired customers to refer your product to their friends or to other business partners.

This stage largely depends upon the impression that you create upon your newly acquired customer and upon the tone of voice you select to ask for the referral. It is often wise to associate the referrals with future discounts, that the newly acquired customer giving the referral may get.

THE PICTORIAL VIEW-

This is to keep in mind always that every sales cycle is different and the duration may vary from a few minutes to a few days.

The basic need of the hour for every entrepreneur is a shortened sales cycle to make processes easily manageable.

Amongst many factors, marketing automation can help you considerably shorten your sales cycle.

As evident from the above picture, amongst the benefits of marketing automation, funnel management also holds an important place. Hence, marketing automation can be sworn by shortening the sales cycle.

The question which is to be addressed is how to incorporate marketing automation in your system in a way that helps you with closing a sale real quick.

Let us bring the 4 easiest ways to know how to Shorten your Sales Cycle with Marketing Automation on the table.

1) Marketing Automation helps you to execute lead scoring-

Being a business-holder, you just cannot stay puzzled about as to which lead to address first. Right? Even the top Real State Software Developers, undergo detailed research to figure out the source of a lead for their clients.

Lead scoring can be best understood as a process to determine the worthiness of a lead. This is determined by the sales and management departments and is decided upon by the following factors:

Duration within which a lead responds
Source of lead generation
The response of a lead during each stage of the sales cycle

Marketing Automation easily segments leads and even customers based on Recency, Frequency, and Monetary ( RFM) parameters. Thus, helps the sales and management team to effectively channelize their strategy in accordance with the priority set after examining the lead score for each lead.

[SOURCE: www.getvoipmodel.com]

2) Marketing Automation simplifies lead to traction and follow-up-

Marketing Automation helps to send regular follow-up emails to the leads in order to avoid any crack in communication. Customer Relationship Management software like HubSpot helps you to track leads by:

Lead scoring
Scheduling emails
Updating with relevant marketing strategies
Easy execution procedures for the planned marketing strategies

[Source: www.slideshare.net]

3) Marketing Automation helps in achieving the best Customer Relationship Management-

Customer Relationship Management(CRM) is something upon which your business largely depends. Marketing Automation tools like HubSpot help you achieve a relationship with your customers which sustains in the long run.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) largely includes:

Lead generation
Nurturing of leads
Acquisition of leads
Customer segmentation
Customer re-engagement

CRM tools make the process of lead generation, lead nurturing, contact management, lead acquisition, customer segmentation, and customer re-engagement systematic and efficient. And, they also help in the planning and proper execution of the marketing campaigns.

[ SOURCE: www.entrepreneuryork.com]

Moreover, Marketing Automation makes the process of Customer Relationship Management more personalized.

4) Marketing Automation helps to get a quicker response from leads-

Since marketing automation speeds the task of lead follow-up, it also helps to get a quicker response.

Going by a report from Harvard Business Review, companies that respond in the range of duration from 1 hour to a day convert better. Also, marketing automation helps to acknowledge every lead and prevents any promising prospects from going stale. Through Marketing Automation tools, one can also get notified of the unacknowledged leads which makes the Customer Relationship Management better through synchronized customer interactions.

This is how Marketing Automation can shorten your sales cycle.

A quick glimpse of our HubSpot Magento Integration:

Using HubSpot Magento Integration extension by CedCommerce, the sellers can create customized content for their customers and also sync comprehensive product and details from their store to HubSpot. Result? you can manage your business even better.

Recently, The HubSpot Magento Integration by CedCommerce was reviewed by FinacesOnline.com & was distinguished with its Premium Usability and Rising Star awards.

Click to explore the entire review.

Features of HubSpot Magento Integration App:

Abandoned Cart Recovery:

HubSpot E-Commerce Integration enables you to send emails to the customers from your HubSpot panel in the case of the Abandoned Cart. After a specific time, communicate with the shoppers through an email to persuade them to take action.

RFM Segmentation:

Segmentize your customers on the basis of RFM(Recency, Frequency, and Monetary). Determine how recently a customer purchases, how frequent the purchase is, and how much a consumer is spending, and depending on it, focus on those who are most interested in your business.

Workflow for Automation:

On the basis of RFM segmentation, customer details, and other information, you can use workflows. It will automatically create ready-to-use workflows like Customer Nurturing workflow, Order Related workflow, ROI Calculation and Order Recency workflow, and so on.

Smart List:

On the basis of customers’ activity and the order activity, you may distinguish your target audiences with our HubSpot E-Commerce Integration.

ROI Tracking:

You may keep a track on your campaigns easily, track how much revenue your campaigns are generating, what is the ROI(Return on Investment), and what is the conversion rate.

Custom Contact Fields:

You can synchronize HubSpot contact properties with that of Magento fields which helps you know more about your customers.

Conclusion-

Marketing Automation is very helpful in shortening your sales cycle. One must know how to efficiently incorporate the automation tools and also the integration apps which help in making the marketing automation tool personalized.

Marketing Automation tools and integration apps that are a good fit for your business are a must-have. One can carry out the following stages of a sales cycle in an effective manner and in less time with their help-

1. - Prospect for leads
  - Contact potential customers
  - Qualify your customer
  - Present your product
  - Overcome customer objection
  - Close the sale
  - Get referrals