“Why won’t they call us back Chala? I thought we had an amazing sales meeting!” is the complaint I hear from clients on occasion. I always have a gut feeling from years of buying and selling services to corporations that the sale is dead but now there’s new research to prove my gut right. Here’s why:

Time Kills Deals

I’ve often known that time kills deals. In fact, I wrote a whole blog about it years ago. Research suggests that in fact, lost deals take 38% longer to finalize. It takes 151 days to win a deal, compared to 208 days to know that you’ve lost one.

Bigger The Fish, Longer The Time To Reel In

Of course, you have to take into consideration that the size of the deal also affects timelines. For example, a Million Dollar deal takes 220 days to close on average whereas a $100K deal takes about 2 months less. Knowing the timelines, you can plot strategic re-engagement points in the relationship.

Email Me Please

Understandably, done deals see a lot more email exchanges than dead ones. Specifically 29% more. In fact, research found that the winning sales teams sent 45% more emails to prospects than losing ones of over $25K value. If that doesn’t say something about the value of follow-up, I don’t know what does!

More Meetings, More Money

The average number of meetings to close a sale of any size is 10, while losing deals only had 7 meetings during its lifetime. This could presumably be because 1. you didn’t do the proper follow up with the prospect or 2. the prospect wasn’t interested enough to want that many meetings with you. Either way, try to have more meetings to deliver more value. Period. Nobody has time to waste meeting with vendors unless they see something in it for them.

Get More Right People In The Room

The presence of each additional stakeholder, ie. decision maker or influencer of purchase increases the likelihood of purchase by 4.5%! On the other hand, a room full of the wrong people, such as lower level employees or people with no budget or authority will not help you. So, ask for the right people to be in the room and do your research to close more sales.

If you follow these rules and look at your sales processes in light of this new information, your sales will close and close much quicker.

Want to reposition your messaging to grow your leads? Follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook, watch my Podcast on YouTube or connect with me on LinkedIn –and let’s talk.