7 Ways to Speed Up Your Sales Cycle with Strategic Content

Are you in a sales juggle? Are you trying to hit the ground running on day one and then sliding into sloth mode by day 10? Or, you’ve been at it for years and are now wondering why you can’t even crack a 1% conversion rate. Maybe your goal is to shorten the sales cycle or make things simpler for yourself. Whatever your goal is, keep reading for ways to improve your strategic content marketing efforts quickly.

What is a Sales Cycle?

A sales cycle is the process by which a business sells its products or services. Prospecting begins the sales cycle, and closing the transaction concludes it. These phases assist the salesperson in developing a connection with the prospect and convincing them to make a purchase. You can use a sales cycle to repeat your success or figure out how to improve.

From first contact to contract signing, here are the seven phases to completing a sale with a prospective client:

1. Get leads – Commonly referred to as a lead generation. Here, you’ll determine who your target audience is. Try your utmost to grab the attention of and engage your audience. Sometimes this is done via cold calls, cold emails, or top-of-funnel offers.
2. Link up with leads – Connect with your audience. You will have a better opportunity of grabbing your prospective client’s attention if you provide helpful information about how you can solve their problem, rather than sounding like a sleazy salesperson pushing an offer.
3. Qualify leads – Evaluate whether or not your leads are interested in purchasing your products or services and whether they might be your ideal clients.
4. Presentation – Make sure to highlight the fact that your offer is the answer to your client’s problems.
5. Handling objections – In this stage, you’ll have the opportunity to pay attention and respond to your prospect’s concerns.
6. Closing the deal – If everything goes as planned, it’s time to complete the sale.
7. Follow-up clients – After finalizing all the phases mentioned above, your work isn’t done because the ultimate purpose of following up after a transaction is to generate further sales and take care of your current customers. Reach out to past clients frequently to maintain brand awareness and foster future relationships.

The sales cycle is one of the most vital stages in any sales process. It’s like going from a first date to a marriage proposal – you won’t progress with prospects if you skip this essential phase. Why do I say that? Because a successful sales cycle depends on strategic and engaging content!

Since time is money for business owners, you feel pressure to generate as many sales leads in the shortest amount of time, and your content plays a huge role. Why? Well, if your content is not strong enough, it won’t matter how many leads you manage to get in or how high-quality they are.

The sales cycle is one of the most misunderstood topics in sales. Everyone talks about it, but few people understand what it is. That’s why I want to help you refocus your sales efforts on the main objectives, create a stronger connection with your prospects using content marketing, and make things easier for yourself by building a relationship with the buyer.

Where does your content fit now that we know the sales cycle phases? The answer is simple!  In almost every one of those phases, from attracting the right prospects to converting them into sales-ready leads and influencing their choice.

Now let’s look at these clever ways to speed up your sales cycle with strategic content.

Create Targeted Content

One way you can use your content to speed up the sales cycle is by creating targeted healthcare content that speaks directly to your ideal customer. It could be blog posts, e-books, or even social media posts that address their specific pain points. By doing this, you’ll be able to build trust and credibility with potential customers, which more likely drive them to do business with you.

Post Your Content Where Your Target Audience Is

Posting your content where your target audience is online is a great way to reach new customers who are interested in the same topics as you are. It will make it much easier for them to find you and potentially become your client. You should focus on one or two social media platforms so your content can reach the right audience interested in what you have to sell. Understanding this allows you to build relationships and better communicate with them. 

Nurture Your Audience

Create content that provides the audience with information. Building a relationship with your audience by educating them about the details of your business will help.

Remember that you shouldn’t come off as a pushy salesperson trying to persuade people to purchase his products or services. Your engagement will be much better with a friendlier approach saving you a ton of time by allowing you to determine whether the prospects you draw are qualified to become your clients or not.

For example, you can create email drip campaigns that provide valuable information to leads over time. It can keep them engaged with your brand and eventually lead them to make a purchase.

Use Tools Like Facebook Insights or Google Analytics

Knowing which content is helping is your key. This help shows you what pages are gaining traction on social media platforms and if you’re getting clicks.

To find out where your target audience spends their time online, use Google Trends or Keyword Planner. These tools will let you see which keywords are trending in your area, certain regions around the country, or the world, and target those terms with your content. 

Your Tone Should Be Persuasive But Not Pushy

As a marketer, you need to be persuasive when making content. While it’s important to be yourself and share your personality, don’t forget that you need to have an impact on the people who are reading your content.

Did you know that before a person selects where to purchase from, 82% of these prospective clients would typically look at at least five pieces of content? 

You can’t just show up with a bunch of data and expect someone to fall in love with your product or service. Instead, use storytelling to make them care about what you do — and how great it could be for them. 

Align Your Content

Creating a cohesive content strategy that covers a customer or prospect’s overall journey, from research to purchase, is how to align marketing and sales efforts (or at least provide a solid start). Use the same message, style, tone, and voice throughout all areas of your business to build a solid and consistent brand.

Each Stage of the Sales Cycle Should Have Its Own Content

In the traditional sales cycle, you start with an email blast and follow up with a phone call to your target audience. That’s how you get prospects to engage with your brand and hopefully become buyers.

But this old-school approach doesn’t work anymore. Today, businesses are using content marketing as part of their sales strategy, which results in a more than 6x increase in their conversion rate.

To do so, each stage of the sales cycle needs its content – from education about your products and services to how-to guides for customers who need help using them.

Now take your business to the next level! Or grab this opportunity to focus on being a healthcare business owner. Let’s create strategic content and all the nitty-gritty parts of your content marketing campaign.