Many of us are feeling pressure now more than ever. We need to win new deals, extensions, and renewals. At the same time, things are more complicated than ever before - there are more stakeholders involved from the customer side, we face internal hurdles, economic uncertainty looms, etc. This leads to buying cycles getting longer and longer.


Our suggestion - slow down to speed up.


Here are three elements of the IMPAX Process we can leverage that might seem to add more time to the cycle but can actually reduce it.


Conduct research meetings. Some people might think that having research meetings ultimately takes more time than skipping them, and would rather jump right into sales calls. However, these research meetings can give us critical insight to help us qualify the opportunity earlier and make our proposals more compelling should we decide to move ahead. They can also lead to the development of more coach relationships that, in turn, lead to greater influence on the decision.
Identify and get to the decision maker early in the cycle to deliver a business fit presentation. In most selling situations, access to the decision maker comes near the end of the process. This means we have already invested a lot of time and effort before we ever get face-to-face with the real decision maker. If we can get to the decision maker early in the cycle and propose a strong potential fit (and they agree), then everything we do following this meeting is more qualified. If they don't agree with us about the potential fit, then we have qualified the opportunity at the right level earlier-on and can allocate our time more effectively elsewhere.
Rehearse our presentations. People who are busy will often skip this critical step. Yet rehearsing our presentations improves our delivery, increases our confidence, and helps us maximize our impact on the audience. All these things are important in advancing the process efficiently.


These three steps, while perhaps appearing to take more time initially, actually end up helping us to shorten cycles and improve our hit rate.