WASHINGTON D.C. — Government leaders, corporate executives and seasoned founders gathered at Booz Allen Hamilton on Sept. 9 for an all-female panel titled, “Why Is the Sales Cycle So Slow, How to Close Your Customer,” during DC Startup Week.
Moderated by Kelly O’Malley, mid-Atlantic regional director of Vinetta Project, panelists included Liz Sara, chairwoman of National Women’s Business Council; B.J. Wiley Williams, CEO and Founder of SoHookd; and Elise Whang, CEO and cofounder of LePrix. The women opened up about their thoughts on sales cycles, acquiring customers and their recent wins.
Here are 4 Sales Cycle Takeaways
- Content is still everything. “You’ve heard content is king and marketing is queen,” Whang said. “For our customers a lot of the time before we approach a marketing and sales strategy, we ask, ‘what’s in it for them?’ She said content is still a great tool for B2B engagement.
- Customer discovery is important. Avni talked about how customer discovery helped to instruct the choices her company made on both the supply and demand side of the business. “It’s been very clear and we know who we’re going after,” she said.
- Automate, automate, automate. “Figure out where you can automate,” Williams shared. “That 15 minutes of follow up, if you already have those emails built and if you already have the attachments you want to send, then you don’t have to worry about recreating it.”
- It’s not just about getting customers, it’s about keeping them, too. Whang said once her customers signed up and were onboarded, making sure they were buying the right merchandise and focusing on customer success and happiness were key.” All feedback is good feedback … it’s a very important component of sales. You want to make sure you retain customers because you spent all that effort upfront to get them in,” Whang added.
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