Understanding Sales Cycles

For my first 16 years in tech sales, I averaged 240K/year W2 income. In my last 4 years, I averaged 720K/year. In order to triple my income, I had to change my sales approach entirely. Here's what I changed: I started using a new approach that I now call Yo-yo selling: 🪀 Yo-yo selling emphasizes starting at the executive level, conducting thorough discovery within the organization, and then returning to the executive with a tailored business case. Like holding a yo-yo, you are constantly in communication with the Executive Sponsor and updating them as you collect information and conduct deep discovery lower down in their organization. You are literally going up and down the organization, but always taking everything back to the Executive Sponsor to surface your findings along the way. Here's a breakdown of the framework: 🎯 𝐈𝐚𝐧 𝐊𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐚𝐤’𝐬 “𝐘𝐨-𝐘𝐨 𝐒𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠” 𝐅𝐫𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 This strategy involves a three-step process: 1. Start at the Top (Executive Engagement) Initiate contact with a senior executive to understand their most pressing challenges, the reasons behind the need for change, and the consequences of inaction. If your solution aligns with their needs, secure their sponsorship for further discovery within their organization. To secure the Executive Meetings, it's essential to create a tailored POV (point of view) on where you think you may be able to help them based on your initial research of their highest level goals and priorities. Chat GPT has made this research a LOT faster now. 2. Conduct In-Depth Discovery (Middle Management) Engage with department heads and key stakeholders to uncover the day-to-day challenges they face. Focus on understanding their processes, pain points, and the implications of current inefficiencies. Gather direct quotes and insights to build a comprehensive view of the organization's needs. 3. Return to the Executive (Present Findings) Compile the insights gathered into an executive summary and business case. Present this to the executive sponsor, highlighting how your solution addresses the identified challenges. Tailor your demonstration to focus solely on relevant aspects that solve their specific problems. 🚀 Why It Works 1. Accelerates Sales Cycles: Engaging executives early ensures alignment and expedites decision-making. 2. Builds Credibility: Demonstrates a deep understanding of the organization's challenges and showcases a tailored solution. 3. Facilitates Internal Buy-In: By involving various stakeholders, you ensure that the solution meets the needs of all parties, increasing the likelihood of adoption. I'm pleased to share that that Yo-yo selling was recently awarded as a Top 15 Sales Tactic of All Time by 30 Minutes to President's Club, and I received a cool plaque for entering the 30MPC Hall of Fame. Since I have no chance of entering the Hall of Fame for my baseball or golf game, this is a nice consolation prize 😁

My client fired their entire SDR team on Tuesday By Friday, their pipeline had grown by 60% This sounds impossible It's not After auditing 50 B2B sales organizations over 10 years, I've uncovered the most expensive myth in modern selling: → The belief that MORE activity at the TOP of your funnel will fix conversion problems at the BOTTOM Let me share what actually happened: This mid-market software company was spending $350,000 annually on their 4-person SDR team - 100+ cold calls per rep daily - 17 meetings booked weekly - "Incredible metrics" according to leadership - But their close rate? A devastating 1.2% The VP of Sales was convinced they needed MORE outreach, MORE automation, MORE top-of-funnel I suggested something different: pause all prospecting for 7 days Instead, we had their account executives do something radical - engage with the 215 prospects already in their pipeline who'd gone cold after initial meetings Using a framework we developed: - 65 prospects responded within 24 hours - 41 booked follow-up meetings - 23 re-entered active buying cycles - 6 closed within 14 days (total value: $212K) The shocking revelation? - Their pipeline wasn't empty - It was overflowing with neglected opportunity. This company didn't have a lead generation problem. They had a lead nurturing catastrophe. By reallocating resources from mindless prospecting to strategic engagement, they've now: - Reduced CAC by 60% - Shortened sales cycles by 30% - 2x their close rate The counterintuitive truth: Sometimes the fastest path to growth is to stop chasing new opportunities and start converting the ones you've already earned. What percentage of your marketing and sales budget is focused on prospects who've already shown interest vs those who haven't? That ratio reveals everything about your future growth trajectory P.S. If you need help with your sales, send me a message

We used programmatic advertising to turn $5.8K ad spend into $19.5K in revenue with a 3.36x ROAS for an 8-fig DTC brand WITHOUT website traffic retargeting. Here’s how: THE CHALLENGE: CTV ads are great for awareness but tough to track. Unlike Meta or Google, CTV doesn’t have a traditional attribution path. It's an incredible tool for generating awareness and intent, but tough to generate direct performance from without the right strategy. This is where most brands miss the mark - they stop at top-of-funnel awareness and never close the loop. THE SOLUTION: Instead of treating CTV as a standalone play, we used it to fill the top of the funnel… ...then retargeting those engaged viewers through programmatic ads across the open web. STEP 1️⃣: Ran CTV ads to build awareness and get initial audience engagement. STEP 2️⃣: Retargeted those viewers in the middle of the funnel using display & native ads, as well as retargeting through CTV again. STEP 3️⃣: Removed all bottom of funnel retargeting as to get a clear view of CTV performance without cannibalizing other ad channels' traffic. THE IMMEDIATE RESULTS: 👉$5.8K ad spend → $19.5K revenue 👉>90 purchase conversions 👉3.36x Holistic ROAS across all campaigns over a 7 day period Why This Works: 👉 CTV builds brand awareness, but without retargeting, it’s incomplete because it's hard to actually purchase through this channel - ie., it's impossible to 'click' on your TV. 👉 Retargeting those engaged users across the open web moves them further down the funnel, and allows us to be exposed to the CTV traffic in a format that can be engaged with and tracked & attributed. 👉 Retargeting CTV engaged users through CTV again increases brand awareness and recall, thereby increasing purchase intent through the same channel of original exposure. The takeaway? CTV isn’t just a top-of-funnel play. When combined with programmatic retargeting, it’s a conversion machine. You reach massive new audiences that don't exist on other platforms, and convert them across the entire web, not just social platforms. Programmatic is here to expand your marketing funnel, as well as your revenue.

I recently closed a six-figure deal with an enterprise client. While most deals this size take 6-8 months, I closed this one in under 60 days. Here's exactly how I did it: When selling to an enterprise company, it's easy to get trapped in long deal cycles. To avoid this from always happening, here are the 4 steps I take to expedite my enterprise closing process: 1. Subject Matter Expertise Plays    Most sellers pitch products. We pitch proven expertise in their space. This shifted the entire conversation from "vendor" to "expert." • Pitched as an industry expert, not influencer • Showed proven processes from our team  • Focused on vertical expertise vs following Expertise beats influence every time. 2. Multi-Threading     Instead of focusing on one champion, I built relationships across the organization. Each stakeholder had different things that made this a win for them. • Built relationships with seven key stakeholders • Sent a recap email to each buying department so everyone knew what was going on • Had notes for each department's goals and why they wanted to win Throughout the deal, I always asked who would feel left out if they weren't involved. Every time I found a new person, I made it a point to meet them. That means more allies for the deal to sell internally. 3. Weekly Momentum Building    Most deals need more momentum. That's why I keep the energy high. • Sent weekly videos to keep my POC informed • Highlighted each stakeholder's priorities • Highlighted work we were doing along the way Momentum beats perfection. 4. Procurement Fast Track This is where deals typically go to die. Not today my friends. This is where the party starts. As soon as I get introduced to procurement, I ask for a quick 15-minute call so I can quickly text edits as my lawyer goes back and forth. • Asked for concerns up front • Built solutions into proposal • Asked what do you people typically redline when they approach you Being proactive beats being reactive every time. Because doing the little things well will always yield great results. P.S. Have a favorite step?

Your product isn’t failing…it’s grown up. Every successful Indian brand eventually hits a point where sales slow down. That’s the maturity stage of the product life cycle. The brands that survive don’t panic. They play smarter. Here’s how you can also do : 1️⃣ Find New Users When your current audience is saturated, growth comes from people who have never tried you. • New Markets: Move beyond metros. Tier-II and Tier-III cities are hungry for quality products. • Competitor Switchers: Offer loyalty points or “exchange offers” to tempt rival customers. 👉 Think of how Zomato started targeting small towns once metros were crowded. 2️⃣ Increase Usage Among Current Customers Sometimes you don’t need more customers you need more moments of use. • Show fresh ways to enjoy the same product. • Encourage higher frequency: “twice a day,” “every weekend,” etc. 👉 Amul promotes butter not just for toast, but for parathas, desserts, even baking. 3️⃣ Refresh the Product People love the familiar, but they notice when you keep it exciting. • Quality Upgrade: Better ingredients, more durability. • Feature Upgrade: New flavours, limited-edition festive packs, eco-friendly packaging. 👉 Parle-G introduced premium “Platina” cookies while keeping the classic biscuit alive. 4️⃣ Adjust the Marketing Mix Sometimes a smart tweak beats a big reinvention. • Price: Create a ₹10 entry pack for reach or launch a premium version for status. • Place: Sell on quick-commerce apps, WhatsApp, or local kirana tie-ups. • Promotion: Regional festivals + local influencers = instant attention. 👉 Tata Tea nails this with hyper-local ads for every state. 5️⃣ Build the Next Big Thing While you stretch today’s hero product, quietly invest in what’s next. 👉 Reliance didn’t stop at Jio; it’s already deep into retail and AI. Example Product: South Indian Filter Coffee Goal: Make people drink it more often. Visual: A lively Bengaluru co-working space. Copy: “Morning ritual? Now your 4 p.m. brainstorm booster. Ready-to-pour filter coffee packs, anytime energy.” A single new habit = more sales. The maturity stage isn’t the end it’s the test. Brands that educate, refresh, and adapt turn maturity into long-term dominance. Which Indian brand do you think is stuck in maturity but ready for a comeback? Drop your idea in the commentslet’s share strategies that could spark its next growth wave. #linkedin

VP of Sales: We need to stop forcing buyers into discovery calls. CEO: That's literally how we sell. What are you talking about? VP of Sales: Buyers have changed. They don't want to talk to us until they're ready. We're losing deals by pushing calls too early. CEO: Our demo show rate is 65%. That's industry standard. VP of Sales: And our close rate from those demos is 8%. I ran the numbers. The deals we actually close? Most of them pushed back on the first 3 call requests. CEO: Because they're busy. That's why we follow up. VP of Sales: No. Because they're not ready to be sold to yet. They want to research on their own terms. By the time they agree to a call, they've already decided if we're a fit. CEO: So what, we just wait around hoping they call us? VP of Sales: We give them everything they need to make a decision without us. Product demos on YouTube. Case studies. Pricing transparency. Then the sales call becomes a buying conversation. CEO: You want to show pricing upfront? Are you trying to kill our ACV? VP of Sales: Our competitors already do it. Prospects are finding it anyway. We look sketchy hiding it. CEO: This sounds like you want to eliminate the sales team. VP of Sales: I want to eliminate the dog and pony show. The reps who can't adapt will struggle. The ones who educate instead of pitch will thrive. CEO: We've done it this way for 8 years. VP of Sales: And our average sales cycle has increased from 45 days to 93 days in the last two years. Because buyers are tuning us out until they're ready. CEO: You have one quarter to test this. If pipeline drops, we revert. VP of Sales: Deal. But when our close rate doubles, I want budget for more content. CEO: Don't get ahead of yourself. VP of Sales: Already ahead. Johnson closed a $180k deal last week. Prospect watched 4 of our YouTube videos before the first call. Sales cycle: 12 days. PS - This isn't about eliminating sales calls. It's about earning them. Stop interrupting buyers. Start informing them. I'm Conor Paulsen & I help companies turn LinkedIn into a top revenue channel through a combination of organic content + outbound messaging. Follow me for more actionable LinkedIn sales tips & tricks.

95% of tech buyers aren't actively shopping right now. But... 82% will switch vendors if you catch them during their "silent research" phase. I've been testing this for 7 months with my clients at PipeBagger. Here's what actually works: 1) Dark social listening (tracking mentions of pain points across private channels). 2) Intent data mapping (identifying research patterns before RFPs). 3) Authority content seeding (being exactly where they look). 4) Hyper-contextual outreach (messaging that matches their exact research phase). The results? 3x faster deal cycles. 🚀 Why this matters: Your ideal customers are researching solutions RIGHT NOW. They're just not telling anyone. Not even their team. Here's what you need to do: - Set up social listening tools across the digital channels. - Track competitor mention patterns. - Create content that answers their silent questions. - Build authority before they need you. Because when they're ready... They'll already trust you. I'm curious: Are you already tracking your prospects' "stealth mode" research? 

Imagine you're at the end of the sales cycle. You think you've got this one in the bag. You've forecast the deal to your boss. But then everything slows down. And all of a sudden the deal is stretching on into infinity. You've forecast it to close every week for 6 months but nothing seems to be working. You thought you'd made it clear that the status quo was untenable. The buyer agreed with you. They hated their current solution too. They saw all the benefits of an ideal future state where your product changed everything for the better. But they just can't seem to make a decision. So what happened? Well, you've made an important but subtle mistake. You've mistaken the buyer's hesitancy with the idea that you haven't defeated the status quo. But you have defeated the status quo! The problem is that the buyer can't make a decision. And most of the things you're doing to try and make them make a decision are making it worse. That's my #1 takeaway from Matt Dixon and Ted McKenna’s book, "The JOLT Effect: How High Performers Overcome Customer Indecision." That “maintaining the status quo” is not the same thing as “indecision.” People that like things the way they are are not necessarily the same people that literally can’t make a decision. And want to know the most fascinating part?? All the lessons we’ve learned about how to beat the status quo backfire when the issue is indecision. When you’re trying to move a buyer off the status quo, your interest is in creating a “burning platform”. Making the cost of indecision so high as to compel them to move towards your desired future state. That’s the essence of everything from SPIN to Gap Selling. But when it’s indecision that is killing your deal, all those efforts to make the status quo untenable only increase the fear and anxiety your buyer is doing their best to overcome in the first place. Because with indecision, your buyer isn’t worried about the cost of the status quo. They’re worried about the cost of messing up! They’re worried about what happens when they go all in on your software and only later realize you were completely full of beans and your solution doesn’t do what it says. So if indecision is the problem, your strategy needs to be to calm them down, to reassure them, to make things easy. Terrifying them or creating even more anxiety about their current solution will do exactly the opposite of your intention: Ramp up their fear and push them further away. In a world where buyer cycles are lengthening, it’s imperative you determine if indecision is the challenge to overcome and adopt your strategies accordingly.

A VP of Enterprise Sales at a telecom just told me her commit category was 90% garbage. Here's what she found when she actually ran the math. Kerry's been in telecom for 20+ years. Carried a bag. Led sales engineering. Now runs enterprise revenue for one of the fastest-growing fiber operators in the country. When she stepped into the VP role, she did something most leaders never do. She ran her pipeline data through AI to find trends. What it spit back was brutal. Deals were getting pushed month after month after month. But they weren't getting shifted to best case or upside. They were staying in commit. Because her reps and managers didn't have a shared definition of what "committed" actually meant. Some were committing deals they'd had 3 discovery calls on. Some were committing deals where the buyer said "call me back in 3 months." Some were committing deals because they hoped the number would come through. And when Kerry drilled down with her directors, the answer she kept getting was some version of: "Well, I think it'll close." That's not a forecast. That's a wish. Here's what she did about it: → Built a 10-checkbox definition of what a committed deal actually is → Rolled it out in a training session with enablement → Told her CRO: "The commit is going to look ugly this month. But it'll be real." → Started coaching her directors to challenge every commit in their 1:1s → Created psychological safety so reps could put up a smaller, accurate number without getting reprimanded The result wasn't a bigger forecast. It was a real one. Which meant she could actually shift strategy mid-month to the best-case deals that could be pulled in. Instead of finding out at month-end that commit was fiction and it was already too late. If you want to see the full conversation with Kerry (including the onboarding system she built, her biweekly ecosystem calls, and how she holds her directors accountable to the new forecast standard) watch the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/gwkx5NBC Or listen here: https://lnkd.in/gEynQRve Or here: https://lnkd.in/gkZ9Ym4q

I warmed up a prospect for 3 months on LinkedIn before our first call. They signed a £75K deal in 3 days. Modern selling demands a new approach: cold outreach fails, warm relationships win. Think about it... That prospect had consumed 47 of my posts. Watched my videos. Read my articles. Engaged with my content. By the time we jumped on that first call? They already trusted me. They already knew my approach. They already understood the value. I didn't have to sell them. They'd already sold themselves. Here's my framework for turning content into closed deals: 👇 1. Build trust at scale BEFORE the pitch Stop spraying and praying with cold messages. Start building relationships through value. Each post builds trust. Your insights mark credibility. Stories create connection. Your content is doing the heavy lifting while you sleep. 2. Let buyers self-educate on THEIR timeline Modern buyers don't want to be sold to. They want to discover solutions themselves. ↳ 70% of the buying journey happens before they talk to sales ↳ They're researching you before you even know they exist ↳ Your content is either attracting or repelling them Give them what they need to make informed decisions. 3. Recognize the REAL buying signals Forget MQLs and SQLs. Think about PQLs (product qualified leads) Here's what actually matters: - Multiple engagements across different posts - Bringing colleagues into the conversation - Asking specific, detailed questions - Moving from public comments to private messages These aren't leads. These are pre-qualified buyers. 4. Keep momentum BETWEEN meetings Here's where most deals die: The 167 hours between your calls. While you're chasing other prospects, your buyer is: ↳ Getting cold feet ↳ Talking to competitors ↳ Forgetting why they were excited Smart sellers stay present even when they're not there. This is where tools like Consensus come in. They let buyers explore demos on their own time. Answer their questions at 10 PM. Share materials with their team. Stay engaged between touchpoints. It's how you keep social selling momentum right through the demo stage. https://lnkd.in/ePVWw-Bi 5. Close with confidence, not pressure When trust is already built? When value is already proven? When buyers are already educated? Closing feels natural, not like a battle. The best deals I've ever closed felt inevitable. Because the relationship started months before the opportunity. Here's what this approach delivers (in my experience): ✓ Significantly faster sales cycles ✓ Much higher close rates ✓ Bigger deal sizes (pre-sold = less negotiation) ✓ Happier customers (they chose you, not the other way around) Stop thinking of social selling as "nice to have." Start treating it as your primary sales strategy. Your next big deal isn't in your CRM. They're scrolling LinkedIn right now. What content are you creating to catch them? #ConsensusPartner