Every considered purchase means a prospect needs time to consider. (Duh!) But what can you do to shorten that sales cycle?

Four practical steps:

#1. Don’t make them read. The technology exists to put your content into kinetic motion to engage “readers” who won’t read.

#2. Don’t just sit there. Auto-respond to warmer prospects who identify themselves in real time by their own actions. Passively sitting on your tush (“we sent it out, nothing to do but wait”) is so very 2006.

#3. Make your pipeline transparent. They’re not a homogenized “list” – segment them, to address differing needs. Use technology to sit on your prospect’s shoulder. See what they’re reading and watching. Watch them interact with your content to self identify as a suspect, prospect, or itching-to-buy hot lead.

#4. Give them fewer choices. This is from the “don’t make me think” school of offers. Focus your message on one choice (a webinar invite, a freemium, consultation, whatever) but not two of them. This is especially true of landing pages, where you have invited a prospect to visit your website, presumably in search of some specific itch to scratch. Make it bluntly, brutally clear that they came to the right place. The function of that landing page, and the reason you don’t use your home page for this, is to evoke an “I came to the right place” response in less than 4.5 seconds. No distractions. No multiple CTAs. No shiny-object distractions. Delete. Simplify. Delete some more.

These four are just sales cycle tactics, of course, and will work brilliantly if the strategy is strong. On the other glove, if you’re not confident you’ve optimized your strategy, call us (in the U.S., 312 836 0050) or reply to this email, and let’s talk about it.