How to Shorten Your Sales Cycle and Avoid Wasting Time

If I asked you to name a credit card company that rhymes with latex…”

Could you guess who I’m talking about?

Yes? Got it?

Good, so now you’ll understand the size of the company I was trying to sell to.

The challenge with big companies is that they have all the time, resources and money in the world, so wasting your company’s time isn’t a big deal.

For a small company, this imbalance of resources can mean death.

So to even the playing field, I developed a technique I call the Commitment Fee™.

It’s simple, if you’re working on a big deal, have the potential client put some money up front in case the deal goes south and doesn’t produce the value (press, new customers, etc) that you expected.

In this case, I negotiated and got them to agree to invest $50K.

I knew I went too low when they instantly replied and agreed.

I should’ve asked for 4x that!

All good, lesson learned.

But over the years I’ve developed many other strategies like this to sell to large companies, and cut the time required to close by half.

Watch this week’s video to learn these strategies, and pay extra close attention to my Virtual Close™ strategy.

It’s a simple way to paint the path to cash… while shortening it at the same time 😉

Selling to big companies requires a different approach than most B2B sales

… the 3 strategies I use involve a mix of the following:

  • Virtual Close
  • Multi-Threaded Conversations
  • The Early Start

What would it mean if you could quickly gauge the actual interest level of the company you’re dealing with so you don’t end up wasting your time on something that’s essentially dead on arrival…

… or what if you could reduce your time to close by more than half so you can get paid faster and reinvest in growth?

Yep. Pretty critical stuff.

Leave a comment below letting me know if you’ve ever had your time wasted by a bigger company, and what you plan to do to make sure it never happens again.

Bonus points if you test out the strategy on your next call and report back the results.

Can’t wait to read your responses.

 

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Dan Martell

Dan Martell is the bestselling author of “Buy Back Your Time” and the #1 executive coach for founders and CEO’s in the world. He was named Forbes Top 10 Business People to Follow on Social Media and is a highly sought-after speaker, including events by Tony Robbins and John Maxwell. He’s a husband and dad of two boys, and when he’s not in family mode, he’s competing in Ironman races and supporting troubled youth.