9 Ways You Lengthen Your Sales Cycles A never-ending goal of companies is, “How can we shorten sales cycles?” There are no silver bullets. But there are some patterns around what lengthens cycles and how to shorten them. While I could come up with a million-and-one issues that delay cycles, here are the eight main ones to look into first. 1) Wrong Prospects, Poor Messaging (Square Peg / Round Hole) It takes longer than you want to nail your market and messaging. Companies sell to the wrong people and companies ALL THE TIME. Or they sell to the right people with language that sounds good and fancy to investors, but means nothing to prospects (“We are the leading social graph platform integration appliance blah blah blah….”) It’s human nature—you want more customers, and you get desperate anytime anyone gives you a sign of interest. (I’ll refrain from making the soobvious dating analogy here.) “Pick a niche, get rich.” If your marketing and sales efforts aren’t focused on your Ideal Customers, you will spend way too much time and energy on prospects who don’t really need what you have to offer (or they don’t understand yet why they need it). 2) No Sales Process Do you have a sales process? If you don’t—get one. ANYTHING is better than no process. A consistent process that isn’t working well is better than no process, because you can improve consistent systems—you can’t improve random systems. 3) You Have A Fantastic But Unused Sales Process You have a great sales process but still struggle. Do your reps actually follow the process? Is it simple? (Complexity reduces adoption). How is it supposed to work in the trenches? Have you customized the process to your specific