5 Ways to Accelerate Pipeline When Deals Are Taking Longer

Is your pipeline taking longer to close??Some are blaming market uncertainty for this.?The market is evolving, but what if I told you we are seeing some pipeline close rates accelerating??While some changes are happening, some marketers have made some decisions that are paying dividends.?So what’s working in the market right now??Who is doing it “right”?

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When we analyze some of our customers recent successes, they are largely reflective of small changes that are making a big difference.?While some of the same rules will always apply to demand gen success (great content, multiple high quality engagements and things like identifying qualified hand raisers who want to talk to you), this is not about a magic bullet approach.?For this list, I included several areas including lead source, joint messaging, creativity, product positioning and sales follow up.?Here are 5 Ways to Accelerate Pipeline When Deals Are Taking Longer

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1)??????????Pay for Quality:?Make sure you are choosing reputable partners.?Getting a lot of very “high quality” low priced offers??There’s a reason for that.?Fly by night companies without a proven track record can sink a campaign easily with bad data and even worse, sucking time and morale from a sales team.?That small amount you might be saving may cost you far more in ill will and opportunity cost.?Don’t let this happen to you.

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2)??????????Run with Partners:?Partnerships can be very lucrative.?Don’t be afraid to partner up on a campaign.?A partner program from one of our customers just hit the 7 month mark.?Their typical sales cycle takes closer to 12 months.?Yet, $3,300,000 in actual deals have already come through.?How did they do it??By catering combined content efforts and mediums through a “choose your own adventure” experience that generated high quality BANT leads and multi-touch self selected content growing share of voice and targeting the buying team.?The sales cycle is shorter when the entire team already knows about your solutions.

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3)??????????Invest in campaigns that are memorable:?Invest in campaigns where the customer experience is a memorable one and they will more likely be responsive to sales when they follow up.?For example, for one customer, one of our highly qualified quiz programs generated six figures of pipeline in the first 3 weeks of launch.?It was a new campaign for them with us and this new approach invigorated the sales team.?It can be easier to remember engaging in and answering 10 quiz questions than say a one whitepaper download.?Or how about a BANT interactive campaign with a branded Yeti mug arriving via Amazon that a prospect uses every day??Experience is so often overlooked in the B2B space but so effective when done correctly.

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4)??????????Focus on Their Pain, Not Your Solutions:?It’s not about the solution, it’s about the problem it solves.?We all get wrapped up in the functions, the uniqueness, the red shiny thing that can do all things for all people.?Prospects and customers don’t care.?They care about if you can solve their problem.?Focus on the problem, then prescribe the solution.?But that’s tough data to get, isn’t it??That’s usually a sales “discovery” call function.?But it doesn’t have to be.?We recently launched a new program that identifies pain points ahead of time and identifies buying committees before sales even has to pick up the phone.?Now they have this critical data ahead of time and know exactly how to craft their discussion.?This immediately offers sales a much better conversation and direction on the first call and speeds up the sales process.

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5)??????????Cadence Works, Even After 90 Days:?This is a favorite of mine.?Have you ever had leads routed incorrectly or maybe sales was just too bogged down to do more than a quick call and pass??A customer received some very specific, highly qualified lead program with us.?There was some internal turnover in the department and for some reason, the leads either weren’t followed up correctly or not at all.?One month passed.?Two months passed.?Three months passed.?Fortunately, this marketing person had more sense than pride to just let the leads go.?He had the team do a full out new cadence on these leads.?Not only was the program successful, but after 6 months, this program generated $11 million in pipeline (after the leads sat for 90 days)!?Of course we don’t recommend this but the quality was there and so was the value.?This program which was a survey program, included our tele-sales and gift along with a couple of our best practices sessions delivered a powerful value proposition.

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These are just a few of the ways we are seeing customers accelerate their pipelines right now.?Are you making adjustments to your demand gen programs??I would love to hear what your experiences might be like and how they may be changing.?Please IM me if you have any questions or would like to know more about any of our programs or the ones mentioned above.?I am happy to share.?

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Thanks and have a great day!

John