Peter Finkelstein of DaiShõ Marketing, South Africa’s leading sales consulting practice suggests four ways online sales interaction can help you accelerate your sales cycle...

Get right to the decision maker. In a typical sales scenario a salesperson meets with a prospect who then meets with various other people in the organisation to discuss what was learned from the sales executive. It can take weeks for your prospects to get to everyone they need to see – weeks in which you’re waiting for feedback and to move the sales process forward. Cut out all these steps by emailing prospects a rich presentation that incorporates information about how prospects could benefit from your solutions. Decision makers can then view the presentation instantly and forward it to all the right people with a click of the mouse.

Warm up your cold calls. When you pick up the phone to cold call, have an instant eMail ready to send. You’ve only got a few seconds to grab someone’s interest – grab it by getting right to the point and, while you are on the phone, eMail your presentation. This you’re your prospect can get the data while you are talking to him and short circuit the lengthy process involved in sending data and calling back.

Get expert input quickly. How many times have you given a sales presentation only to have audience members ask a technical question to which you have to say: I don’t know the answer to that, but I’ll get back to you? So you get back to the office and email your technical expert, who eventually writes back to say more information is needed to answer the question. So you go back to the prospect for more information and then back to the expert. It’s a week later before your prospect has an answer. Using eMail and online support you can call up experts the minute the question is raised, get the answers to their questions and the prospect’s answer without losing any time.