Sales Cycles – From Lead to Customer in Time

Sales Cycles:  Written by Chris R. Keller,  Profitworks Small Business Services, Tuesday, 30 November 2010

Generating new business can often be a challenge and a long process. Depending on your industry and what you are selling will have a factor on your sales cycle and how long it will take to generate a lead and then turn that lead into a new customer. Below are some general averages on the amount of time required to generate new customers across all industries.

This will give you a sense for if you have an efficient sales cycle or not.

Average Amount Of Prospects That Are Closed In The Following Time Frames (All Industries)

0-6 months = 23-37%

7-12 months = 15-18%

12-18 months = 25-33%

18+ months = 19-25%

This means if you are generating over 60% of your new customers in less then 12 months of prospecting and nurturing you are doing a good job.

Another factor to consider is are you focusing your efforts on generating new leads or nurturing existing leads. In most business to business companies your sales pipeline will look something like this

Leads that are sales ready = 0-20%

Leads that require further nurturing = 10-60%

Leads that are going to be or should be disqualified = 10-20%

Given a large portion of your leads are most likely in the nurture stage and that 3 out 4 new sales usually come from the nurture stage make sure you are putting enough focus on this part of your sales cycle. Keep these states in mind when developing your lead generation, sales and marketing plans and it may be able to increase your success rate. If nothing else it will give you a good benchmark to compare yourself against.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisrkeller

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