Methods for Small Businesses to Close Deals Faster

Posted in Business on April 1st, 2021

Waiting to close a deal sometimes feels like forever. Since an infinite number of things can go wrong, it’s essential to close the deal as fast as possible. Getting to the finish line is not easy and demands skill and stamina from your sales reps.

Lucky for you, in this blog post, we’re bringing you 4 proven methods to close deals ASAP.

Improve Your Lead Pipeline

The pressure is on small businesses to keep improving their lead pipeline, so their sales reps are going after the most qualified leads. A high-performing lead pipeline will deliver more qualified leads that take less time to close. The more qualified your leads are, the better they’ll understand your services and why they should hire you.

Your sales reps won’t have to go through hell or high water to close deals, and they can secure sales faster than before. With a better lead pipeline, your reps will waste less time on low-quality leads. This will allow them to focus on the prospects that matter the most instead of chasing prospects with little to no interest in your product or service.

Working with quality leads is simply the best way to utilize your sales reps’ time. It makes sense, doesn’t it? We’ve all worked with qualified leads that needed little convincing, contrary to bad leads that required weeks of extensive back-and-forth emailing.

If you’re stuck with low-quality leads, try these tips for improving your pipeline:

  • Have your reps practice social selling
  • Use content marketing methods to capture qualified leads
  • Track the success of your cold outreach and improve it
  • Host webinars

Improving your lead pipeline is key for your small business to close deals faster.

Build Your Reputation

Having chief authority on a subject drastically cuts down the time it takes to convince a prospect to try your services or products. After all, who would argue with an expert?

High reputation makes it quicker to close deals. When you have a track record of knowledge and expertise, you need less time to explain how your services and products can benefit a prospect’s business.

Your arguments have a reputation behind them, and that makes a world of difference when you’re trying to close a deal. Businesses with high reputation tend to work with more qualified prospects that are eager to hire their services. You can imagine how faster it is to close deals with those businesses than uninterested prospects. That’s why you should regard reputation building as building a shortcut for decreasing client onboarding time.

Reputation building is by no means an easy task. It takes time, resources, and experience, but you have to start somewhere. To get things going, here are some actionable tips to kick things off:

  • Do industry reports and surveys and offer them as free downloads on your company blog
  • Attend high-profile industry events
  • Be active on LinkedIn
  • Find other professionals and peers to collaborate with

You’d be surprised how fast your reps will close deals once you’ve built a reputation that commands attention.

Learn to Sweeten the Pot

Sweetening the pot is probably one of the oldest tricks in the sales book, and for a great reason – it’s a fantastic way to close a deal. Giving something in addition to the original deal works like a charm for onboarding clients, and top-performing businesses know that very well.

Think about it for a second. If a business offered you something extra on top of a deal you already consider very beneficial for your business, you’d be much easier to convince. Likewise, your sales reps should do the same.

When you go the extra mile with your prospects, you start things off on the right foot. By doing so, you build a great relationship with your client from the word go. This helps you avoid rough onboardings that can be typical for new clients.

In case you’re stuck with ideas on how to spice up your deals, we’re here to help.

Here are a few effective ways you can sweeten your pot:

  • Give a special one-off welcome discount
  • Send them free additional items that complement the deal
  • Give a premium service upgrade for free for a limited time

Sweetening the pot is a salesman’s art. It relies on you understanding your clients’ needs and how applying some extra effort will affect them.

Target Decision-Makers

The benefits of learning how to target decision-makers are game-changing for your small business. Targeting decision-makers instead of low-tier representatives will radically cut down the time to close a deal. Your efforts will get you the fastest return if you serve a fantastic deal to the prospects with company decision-making authority to buy your service or product. They don’t have to wait for approval from their superiors and drag the deal. That’s great news for you. Now here’s some more great news.

Knowing how to target decision-makers gives you a winning edge over your competitors. While they’re wasting their resources going after prospects that don’t call the shots, you’re approaching their superiors. Not only are you going ahead of your competition, but you’re using resources better. Your sales department can thrive compared to the competition.

Let’s illustrate that point with some data. According to a report by DemandGen, 39% of buyers claim the role of executives in purchasing decisions has increased, and 37% say the role of operations in same level decisions has grown as well. This means that the number of decision-makers has increased steadily. Knowing how to reach them speeds things up immensely.

Targeting decision-makers and key players is critically important for cutting down the time it takes to close deals.

The Takeaway

Small businesses are under pressure to close deals before things can go south. Sometimes, a great offer by itself isn’t enough to secure sales fast, and you need to step up your game.

In this post, we discussed a handful of methods that can help that happen. Give them a try and see your time to close deals go down.

P.S. Many thanks to Heather Redding for providing this valuable material. Heather is a content manager for rent, hailing from Aurora. She loves to geek out writing about wearables, IoT and other hot tech trends. When she finds the time to detach from her keyboard, she enjoys her Kindle library and a hot coffee. Reach out to her on Twitter.

Author bio

Having achieved success in real estate and investing, Richard Swarbrick now shares his knowledge with his readers

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