Marketing Sherpa recently published research showing shorter lead times for B2B sales cycles from 2010 to 2011. One reason for this may be that B2B marketers are offering more promotions during a weak economy to encourage sales. However, you don’t need to reduce your margins to shorten your sales cycle and close more sales. You can accomplish that by optimizing your sales funnel.

There is a close relationship between the average deal size and the length of the B2B sales cycle. Smaller deal sizes lead to shorter sales cycles, while larger deals have longer cycles. Marketing Sherpa’s research shows that average B2B lead time length has decreased year over year as indicated in the chart below.

While it makes sense intuitively that the larger the size of the deal, the longer the sales cycle, the reverse can also true. Look at the Marketing Sherpa chart below, where you can see the average lead time length actually declined from 2010 to 2011 for B2B deals over $10,000, resulting in a shorter B2B sales cycle for larger deals.

While some B2B organizations like to use promotions when business is bad to speed up deals currently in the pipeline, these promotions can cost money. However, there ways to shorten your sales cycle without spending money by optimizing your sales funnel.

Sales Funnel Optimization: B2B firms can address the challenge of a long, complex sales cycle without lowering prices by optimizing their sales funnel strategy. By qualifying, scoring and nurturing your leads, you can increase your sales team’s efficiency, which leads to higher closings and increased revenue.

The end of your sales funnel is the final step toward accomplishing your sales goals. To optimize the sales funnel, B2B firms must analyze navigation through their sales funnel and make modifications to assist visitors moving through each step to the end. Take a close look at your sales funnel. It’s easy to define the end, but what lies between entering and leaving?

Funnel Entry: Did you know the web page where your visitors enter your site may not be their first contact with you? The number of touch points where your company comes in contact with potential buyers can be huge. There are so many ways to market your business; hence, any one of your many initiatives could be responsible for a website visit. The first touch point might be an email, an ad, a social media discussion, a link from search results, a website address on TV, etc. These are all possible first steps into your B2B sales funnel.

The steps that lie in between entering and exiting your funnel must contribute to a successful conversion. Therefore, you need to review this path from beginning to end. People are inundated with an enormous amount of information daily, and all this can distract your prospects from accomplishing their objective.

Optimizing the Sales Funnel: A sales funnel can consist of a series of web pages that lead your website visitors through your sales and checkout process. It is very easy to inadvertently have road blocks in your conversion funnel. Some common road blocks include:

• Each additional click provides the opportunity for a visitor to exit the funnel
• Requesting too much personal information
• Failing to provide the required information or process when necessary
• Failing to have a strong call to action
• Up-sells that interrupt the current purchase process

As you identify the road blocks, you’ll discover the cracks in the sales funnel and make improvements. When reviewing your funnel, determine for each page:

• What information and process is required?
• What minimum personal information is required?
• Is the purpose of the page immediately obvious?
• Can customers identify where they are in the conversion process?
• Is this page necessary?
• Is the call to action visible above the fold?
• Does your call to action promote urgency?

Making Funnel Changes: Analyze your sales funnel to discover any elements that need improvement. Once you revise the funnel, test to maximize its performance. Test one page element at a time, measure the results and retest. If you’re not achieving enough traffic volume to test your funnel, you can conduct a little pay-per-click campaign to get the traffic needed for testing.