The closing and onboarding stage
The final phase of the traditional sales cycle is the closing process. One potential sale might go through all these stages in a matter of weeks, and others might take months; it all depends on how educated your customer is and their level of intent.
Key traits that often lead from an initial sales conversation to a deal:
- Every key party has a path to onboarding
- You have been introduced to procurement or the final person for signoff
- You have confirmed where you are in the process compared to competitive solution offerings.
A majority of B2B buyers say the biggest factor in their purchase decision is competitive pricing. Other significant factors include:
- having a broad range of flexible high quality products,
- offering fast resolutions of issues and demonstrating value for the money,
- providing speedy and efficient service response
- allowing buyers to contact the vendor at a time that suits them and in the chosen medium
If you have these factors in the deal, you should feel confident that a deal is close, so make sure your sales experience shifts to meet clients’ expectations so that the potential customer understands the next steps in going live.
When many people think of sales, they immediately think of giving a powerpoint presentation and the person signing on the line. In reality, the modern sale is really a series of events where signing the contract is a step in the process that is typically more important to the seller than the buyer. In your buyer’s mind, they think of things in terms of
- vetting the solution,
- ensuring the budget is ready to go,
- getting alignment with key groups internally,
- putting together a plan to go live, finalizing the contract, and then
- having the real work begin in utilizing the product!
At this stage in the process, you are trying to drive toward the onboarding stage and initial user adoption, so the main goal is to get the implementation plan in motion. Put the customer in the process, and help them clearly understand what’s going to happen next so that they can rest at ease that everything will be handled with their purchase.
In order to move to the onboarding phase, you need to focus on having two actions verified. And they are:
1. Scheduling plan for subsequent training sessions or onboarding with various stakeholders
2. Schedule key reviews of the business values and ROIs in the proposal.
When the customer signs, the real work begins. The client has signed the contract and has the relevant people ready from their side to go. What happens over the next weeks/months, depending on your product, will make or break your potential renewal in months or a year from now. It’s critical to spend a significant amount of time in your customized sales journey map during this phase.
When clients “fail to launch”, you find yourself having to go back stages in the process to reestablish a plan and realign stakeholders on the benefits and the reason it is so important to go live now.
So much of customer churn is simply due to teams not having a set process for working with their clients after the sale or setting the right expectation during the sales process. Fix this issue, and you will have a stress free transition.
When an organization views its sales experience all the way through the process, with the end goal being to create power customers, it changes behaviours earlier in the experience. Companies such as Hubspot even built in compensation rewards for sellers whose clients renew.
Key pointers summary
- Understand the late stages of sales
- Enable buyers to finalize their decisions
- Consider a proof of concept
- Treat closing as the beginning of a new professional relationship phase with the customer
- Prioritize the customer’s needs during onboarding.
Disclaimer note:
The opinions expressed in this post are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of any company and their associates.
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