Sales Acceleration 101: Your Guide to a Faster Sales Cycle

Ever feel like you're in a wild race to grab the juiciest sales opportunities before the competition even ties their shoelaces? Well, you're not alone. 

In today's fast-paced business world, where competition is fierce and customer expectations are even fiercer, effective sales acceleration has never been more crucial. 

Sales acceleration is not just a buzzword; it's a strategic approach that empowers sales teams to enhance productivity, shorten sales cycles, and ultimately drive revenue growth.

In this article, we’ll delve into the significance of sales acceleration, explore its impact on sales success, and present four solutions that’ll help you achieve the revenue growth you’ve been dreaming of!

Sales acceleration is the secret sauce to business growth. It's a comprehensive strategy aimed at optimizing your entire sales process to help your sales teams close deals swiftly. 
In short: sales acceleration helps your business make money faster.

It aims to reduce the time and effort it takes to move potential customers through the sales funnel to turn your sales team into a deal-closing machine.

As a business, there are so many levers to pull to accelerate your sales process. These levers include:

• Technology: Implementing tools that can speed up or automate activities such as prospecting, communicating, and data analysis.
• Processes: There’s always room for improvement across the sales process. Look for any inefficiencies or redundancies that can be improved across your sales funnel.
• People: Do you have the right people in place? Do you need more people to accelerate your sales process? These are questions that we can answer and think through to continuously find new ways for sales acceleration.

The 4 benefits of sales acceleration 

1. Faster sales cycle

Sales acceleration is all about streamlining the sales process, enabling sales teams to navigate through the funnel at a quicker pace. By finding and getting rid of roadblocks and bottlenecks in the sales cycle, businesses can cut down the time it takes to turn leads into happy customers.

2. Increased sales productivity

With the right tools and sales acceleration strategies in place, sales reps can focus their efforts on high-value activities, such as engaging with potential customers and nurturing those relationships. This boost in productivity doesn't just mean more sales; it also means a more motivated and satisfied sales team.

3. Optimized sales pipeline

Sales acceleration is the missing piece that can turn your sales pipeline into a well-oiled machine. With smart management and organization, sales managers can ensure leads move seamlessly through each stage of the sales funnel. Less friction, more conversions—it's like music to every sales manager's ears!

4. Better targeting of ideal customer profiles (ICPs)

Effective sales acceleration means understanding your customers inside and out. After all, when you have a strong understanding of your ICPs, you’ll be better equipped to plan marketing strategies that fill your pipeline with the right people. Having deep knowledge of your ICPs also means that you’ll equip your sales team with the knowledge to speak directly to ICP goals, challenges, and desires, which in turn will help you close more sales.

Now that you know the basics of sales acceleration and what it can do for your sales teams, let's move on to the how: the exact tools and concrete methods you need. 

According to a HubSpot survey, sales representatives spend just one-third of their day actually talking to prospects. The majority is spent on other activities such as writing emails, scheduling meetings, prospecting leads, and entering data. 

The kicker? All four of these sales activities can be automated using the right tools and strategies, leaving your team free to do what they do best: sell. 

5 Sales acceleration blockers and their solutions

1. Scheduling meetings

Sales reps often do their best work face-to-face with a potential customer, but to get to that face-to-face moment, they first have to schedule the meeting. This may sound simple, but it can take up a lot of valuable time, especially if different time zones, busy schedules, and back-and-forth emails are involved. This can be a major barrier for sales teams' speed to lead.

✔️ Solution: Scheduling software 

Scheduling tools, like YouCanBookMe, automate the entire process of scheduling meetings for you, creating a frictionless journey that ensures potential customers can instantly book a meeting. 

How does it work?

YouCanBookMe integrates with your calendar and only displays times you’re available. All you have to do is provide your lead with a link to your booking page, and they can book a meeting in seconds.

Bonus perks: Time zones are calculated automatically and all confirmations, reminders, and follow-up emails are automated meaning your sales team doesn’t have to worry about anything but showing up to the actual meeting. 

2. Writing emails

You want a quicker sales cycle, but your sales reps are losing a lot of valuable time writing emails. Outreach emails. Demo emails. Follow-up emails. You name it, they have to write it.

While personalization is still incredibly important, templates can give sales reps a foundation to build off of so they’re not starting from scratch with every single email.

✔️ Solution: Templates and email automation software 

👉 First, you need templates. If your sales team is writing the same emails time and time again, without reusing content, they’re wasting time that could be better spent on more valuable activities. 

Our advice: Create an internal database for all your email templates where sales teams can share their best emails/templates for others to use. If you’re starting from scratch and need some inspiration, the internet is overflowing with templates ripe for the taking. 

Want to go one step further? Grab these templates for sales meeting confirmation, reminder, and follow-up emails.

👉 Second, you need email automation software. Email automation software sends emails for you (at the right time to the right people) so you can focus on other important tasks. Take all those awesome templates you just wrote and input them into a tool that’ll do the heavy lifting for you!

Examples of email automation software include Salesloft, Hubspot, ConvertKit, and Drip.

3. Prospecting leads

If your sales reps aren’t prospecting leads correctly, the rest of your sales cycle is going to fall flat. Not only does manual prospecting take up a lot of time, but it also leaves room for error, causing your sales rep to reach out to customers who might not be receptive to your product or services. 

✔️ Solution: Sales prospecting software

Every sales funnel starts with prospecting. After all, without leads, you don’t have anyone to move through it! However, you can’t spend all of your time looking for potential customers and their contact info—there’s so much other work to be done.

To get lead data quickly and feed it directly into the other tools you’re using, we recommend investing in sales prospecting software. These are tools that will help you identify high-quality prospects, qualify and prioritize them, find accurate contact data, and even start engaging with them.

Examples of sales prospecting software include Hubspot Sales Lead Software, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Apollo, and Usergems. 

4. Entering data

There's nothing that feels more unproductive than manual data entry. That’s what makes it a great area for potentially accelerating your sales processes. With so many redundancies that come with manual data entry, it’s a no-brainer to lean on technology to take on the burden of this type of work.

✔️ Solution: Customer relationship management (CRM) tools

CRMs offer a variety of features that save sales reps time by making data entry automatic, quick, and pain-free. 

But a CRM can do so much more than that! Not only does it store and record customer information for you, but it also provides analytics and instant reports. On top of that, CRMs feed your data into other tools, connecting your sales data with marketing, finance, management, and other teams.

5. Uncovering sales acceleration opportunities

Sometimes we can have all of the data and tech in place and still feel stuck. Maybe you're missing the frameworks or first-hand knowledge on how to make sense of the data you have at hand. In some cases, all it takes it is a fresh (and qualified) pair of eyes to help unblock us.

✔️ Solution: Work with an expert to  your data

In addition to leveraging internal resources for sales acceleration, partnering with a financial business coach can bring an external perspective to refine your sales strategies even further. A financial business coach specializes in identifying areas within your sales process that can benefit from financial insights and strategic planning, ensuring that every aspect of your sales funnel is optimized for maximum efficiency and profitability. Their expertise not only accelerates sales but also contributes to a sustainable growth plan tailored to your business’s unique financial goals.

Sales acceleration: The secret to scaling revenue fast 

Unlocking business growth with sales acceleration isn't rocket science, but it’ll take some time and good old-fashioned effort. The first step is taking a long, hard look at your sales process to pinpoint what needs refining and what levers you can pull to make it happen. 

Whether it’s improving outdated processes, adding people, or implementing the right tools, we can guarantee there are aspects of your funnel that you can revamp, or make small tweaks, to boost your revenue. 

Remember, sales acceleration isn't a one-and-done deal; it's a commitment to constant improvement, but the benefits are worth it. Start today and you’ll soon be rewarded with a faster sales cycle, a motivated sales team, and loyal customers. Good luck and happy accelerating!

FAQs about sales acceleration

What is sales acceleration, and how does it benefit sales teams and organizations?

Sales acceleration is a strategic approach to expedite the entire sales process, from lead generation to closing deals. By streamlining the sales cycles, organizations can significantly reduce the time it takes to convert potential customers into loyal clients, resulting in increased sales productivity and success.

How do sales acceleration tools enhance the efficiency of sales teams?

Sales acceleration technology, including dedicated software tools, optimizes various aspects of the sales process. By automating tedious tasks such as scheduling sales meetings, sending emails, prospecting leads, and entering data, these tools empower sales reps to prioritize efforts, focus on high-value activities, and ultimately boost overall sales velocity.

How does sales acceleration contribute to nurturing relationships with potential customers and fostering customer loyalty?

Sales acceleration strategies prioritize meaningful interactions by enabling sales teams to focus on engaging potential customers and addressing their needs promptly. By nurturing these relationships, organizations create a positive customer experience, leading to greater loyalty and long-term retention.