As global markets remain in flux, every industry is faced with longer buying cycles — the average for manufacturers now sits at about 100 days.
Manufacturers that wait idly while their opportunities stagnate are doomed to see them fall through. The longer a deal sits on the table, the more likely it is to fail.
But manufacturers that are proactive throughout the buying cycle have the opportunity to shorten their length — or at least remain acutely aware of where they stand with a buyer as they perform their due diligence.
There are two major strategies for manufacturers to sidestep a long buying cycle:
- Identify potential accounts and buyers as early as possible
And
- Influence as many key stakeholders as possible throughout the entire buying process — not just at the end
Manufacturers looking to shorten their average buying cycles — or increase their win rate even as deal time lengthens — should consider 6sense’s Revenue AI for Sales.
Let’s look at how this platform can transform your buying cycles and drive more revenue.
How Manufacturers Can Spot Potential Deals Earlier
Your best chance at winning business is identifying an opportunity as soon as a buyer shows interest.
The more time you have to influence a buyer and demonstrate your product or service’s value, the more likely you are to convince them that you are the right vendor.
6sense’s Revenue AI for Sales helps manufacturers uncover buyers that are in-market by capturing critical signals that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Buyers do a lot of anonymous research when evaluating solutions. For instance, the following activities can all indicate an in-market account:
- Visiting your website
- Reading your product pages
- Reading ungated whitepapers
- Comparing your product to a competitor’s on a third-party site
Without a technology like 6sense, a manufacturer could miss these important indicators. In that scenario, the company might not be aware of an opportunity until the buyer reaches out for information or submits a RFP request. In the all-too-frequent worst case scenario, the buyer never reaches out and you lose deals that you never even knew existed.
6sense captures anonymous buying signals and confidently matches them to the companies where they’re happening. Then — crucially — it immediately alerts your team to potential opportunities.
When your sellers login to the platform, they’re greeted with a list of accounts performing the most activities and showing the most interest — making it easy for sellers to prioritize outreach.
Caption: The dashboard within Revenue AI for Sales which reveals the top accounts where activity is happening.
Multi-threading is Key in the Sales Process for the Manufacturing Industry
Early identification of an opportunity doesn’t sidestep lengthy deal cycles alone.
Your early stakeholder could easily go cold, take a different job, or become focused on other priorities.
Cutting through lengthy deal cycles or staying close to the process throughout requires engaging as many important decision makers as possible — otherwise known as “multi-threading.”
Today’s buying teams are large. Gartner estimates the average size of a buying committee as between 14 and 23. Because of the sheer size of the buying team, your chances of winning a deal are directly tied to the amount of members you can engage and win over.
Multi-threading requires uncovering additional contacts at a buyer’s account, ideally across departments and with different job levels, and engaging them in parallel with other efforts.
Revenue AI for Sales not only helps you uncover these other critical stakeholders, but the platform makes it easy to acquire their contact information and quickly start engaging them.
The platform will look for research engagement from people who are likely to be part of the buying team. Additionally, the platform will recommend other key people that you are yet to engage with — making it simple and quick to understand your level of engagement across the entire company.
Revenue AI for Sales allows users to acquire accurate contact information for these people and immediately start looping them in on your existing opportunities.
With this intelligence, your sellers can shorten sales cycles by winning over many stakeholders quickly.
Conclusion
Sales in manufacturing can be difficult due to lengthy deal cycles. Revenue AI for Sales helps you by identifying buyers as soon as they become in-market, and making it easier than ever to multi-thread deals and win support for your products or services within an account.
