Concerned about the time and effort required to close your B2B sales cycle?
There’s no doubt that B2B sales cycles are getting longer and more complex. According to a recent study, 68 percent of B2B customers say the buying cycle has lengthened, with the average time taken to close a deal being 4 to 6 months.
On average, only 47 percent of sales deals are closed across industries, while in the software sector, only 22 percent of deals are closed.
Multiple factors – right from the time and effort involved in finding prospects, and scheduling a demo, to conducting compliance due diligence, impact your sales cycle.
Let’s look at the problem (tedious sales cycle) and the smart solution:
The problem: Tedious sales cycles
A typical sales cycle involves multiple steps:
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– Finding new leads and qualifying them
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– Setting up the first appointment or a demo
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– Discovery work and due diligence
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– Exchanging ideas and proposals
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– Presenting a proposal
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– Closing the sale
SDRs, on average, make 52 cold calls each day while a third of SDRs spend about 20 to 23 percent of their time on discovery meetings.
What’s more, an SDR spends only 35.2 percent of their time actively selling, with the rest of the time spent on prospect research and non-selling activities.
This means that a company spends about $50,000 per sales rep, per year (considering USD $81000 as the average pay for a sales rep in the US) on prospect research alone.
Another factor that contributes to the complexity is the compliance due diligence process which can take anywhere from weeks to months.
Regulatory compliance, however, is vital to protect your business against numerous financial, legal, and reputation-related risks.
Why regulatory compliance is vital
According to an estimate, cybercrime costs are expected to reach USD $10.5 trillion annually by 2025. As the number of cyberattacks increases, so do the regulations designed to protect against them.
The most recent regulation is the proposed IoT cybersecurity law in the EU. If this bill is cleared, noncompliance with cybersecurity requirements can potentially cost IoT manufacturers a whopping €15 million.
How can non-compliance with cybersecurity laws affect your sales cycles and contracts? For starters, it can affect the value of the deal in addition to impacting the sales win and business reputation.
A case in point is the acquisition proposal of Yahoo! Inc. by Verizon Communications. While the original proposed price was USD $4.83 billion, the price was cut down to $350 million after seven months. The reason? Verizon discovered undisclosed data breaches at Yahoo! while conducting cyber due diligence.
The Solution: Automate compliance due diligence
Thanks to the ever-changing regulatory landscape, most companies struggle to keep up with the constant changes.
Automating the process can help speed up the sales cycle and make it more efficient. At Findings.co, we have built a smart tool that automates your compliance due diligence to reduce time, improve accuracy, and improve sales win rates.
An automated risk assessment tool captures the threats and vulnerabilities of potential contractors while including recommendations for risk mitigation.
Built-in response automation ensures a quick turnaround time for responding to security incidents and a quicker containment of incidents. With these features, organizations can improve their overall security posture and accelerate compliance due diligence, setting up a win-win situation for the parties involved in the contract.
