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How long is your sales cycle?<\/strong><\/p>\n Long enough to make the sale.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a\u00a0tongue-in-cheek<\/em>\u00a0answer but it is the answer.<\/p>\n The sales cycle for my services business is short\u2026<\/p>\n Discovery > Website > Sales Call > Purchase<\/p>\n This can all happen in 24-48 hours.<\/p>\n My education business has been a bit more complicated\u2026<\/p>\n Discovery > Landing Page\/Website > Lead Magnet > Email Sequence > Sales Page > Purchase<\/p>\n This could last anywhere from two weeks to two years between first discovery and purchase.<\/p>\n A lot of content is delivered, all designed to build trust.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve used webinars, reports, video series, email courses, infographics and blog posts to convince a prospect that my solution is the best for their problem or goal.<\/p>\n How do you figure out what should be in your sales cycle?<\/p>\n That depends on a few variables:<\/p>\n However, there is one variable that drives more action than anything else:<\/p>\n Motivation to change.<\/strong><\/p>\n As marketers for eons have said \u2013<\/p>\n Feed a starving crowd.<\/em><\/p>\n The hungrier your audience the less you have to do to convince them to buy your food.<\/p>\n So, simple advice to follow \u2013 make sure you are selling something people are hungry for!<\/p>\n This doesn\u2019t answer the question of how long your sales cycle should be though.<\/p>\n The answer is \u2018whatever works\u2019.<\/p>\n What actually matters is how you\u00a0test<\/strong>\u00a0to figure out what works.<\/p>\n For my services business I could have built an education funnel as I had in the past for my teaching business.<\/p>\n That would require a lot of work, but I could do it.<\/p>\n In this case though, it wasn\u2019t necessary to start there.<\/p>\n We had a hungry enough audience to test first.<\/p>\n What actually mattered was what segment of the audience we went after and that our first impression content did the selling.<\/p>\n In other words, making sure we found the right people AND presented enough key content on our website to get the sales call.<\/p>\n From there, the sales call was enough.<\/p>\n When I say enough, at least enough to grow beyond $100K\/month in revenue and become a seven figure business.<\/p>\n The status of the person who showed up on the sales call was what made the difference.<\/p>\n If they felt the problem acutely, had money to spend on our solution, and the benefit of solving the problem was clear to them \u2013 that\u2019s an easy sale.<\/p>\n If the wrong person showed up on the call, a lack of budget or urgency, or a misalignment in needs, it would kill the sale no matter what we said.<\/p>\n No amount of \u2018education\u2019 in our sales process would help.<\/p>\n Everything came down to\u00a0discovery<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Could this be the same for your company?<\/p>\n Maybe, but don\u2019t assume it.<\/p>\n To sell my teaching products I had to teach first.<\/p>\n It was super rare for someone to show up ready to buy after just reading a blog post.<\/p>\n I had to give people an experience of my education before they paid money for more.<\/p>\n Hence, a longer and more complex sales cycle.<\/p>\n What you are selling matters.<\/p>\n My advice is to understand your options first.<\/p>\n Understand what types of content people use and what the purpose of the content is when it comes to making a sale.<\/p>\n Understand who your audience is and why they are hungry to pay money for something.<\/p>\n This matters whether you are selling e-commerce products, services, software or education.<\/p>\n From there it\u2019s a refinement process.<\/p>\n Start with a\u00a0minimal viable sales cycle<\/strong>\u00a0and get some prospects to go through it.<\/p>\n Then keep refining.<\/p>\n This has been my \u2018job\u2019 for over 25 years for many different businesses.<\/p>\n It should be fun, because it leads to actually growing a business.<\/p>\n Keep growing!<\/p>\n Yaro<\/p>\n \u200b<\/p>\n P.S.<\/strong>\u00a0No sales cycle works without people first discovering your business.<\/p>\n Once you build a sales funnel, even if it\u2019s just a website to start with, your life will become all about\u00a0how to find new leads<\/strong>.<\/p>\n This is a never ending job, which means at some point you will need help.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re looking for a low-cost ($2,000\/m for full-time hours) marketing assistant, get in touch.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been using assistants to help with content, ad media creation and SEO for years.<\/p>\n I can help guide you in the right direction.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n