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5 strategies to speed up your sales cycle

Sales experts know that accelerating the pipeline takes lead nurturing and relationship building. But creating an efficient, effective process for teams to reach their goals is just as critical. Here’s how to do it.

A team gathers around a laptop in an office.

That infamous phrase ‘always be closing’ only works when your team is a well-oiled, deal-making machine, from that first call to the final signature. A more seamless sales workflow makes room for the important stuff – like finding prospects, showing how your product fits their needs and making them feel heard along the way. Here are five ways Dropbox can help your team tighten up their deal flow to start closing with more speed and efficiency. 

 

1. Keep everyone up to date

When your sales reps are making calls or pitching customers, it can be easy to forget how much of their success relies on working with the wider team. With finance, legal and other departments chiming in, your reps might be unsure where the most up-to-date information lives. Preparing for a pitch becomes more of a tangle than it needs to be. 

 

Try clearly organising your price sheets, one-pagers and presentations in a centralised and structured file system on Dropbox so that they’re easy to find every time. Create dedicated folders for each prospect or presentation to simplify how you track internal questions, updates and feedback. Whether the team lead wants to edit a sales sheet SKU, or a product manager wants to rephrase a description, comments can funnel into the same document, directly on the items in question. The result: everyone is on the same page before every customer-facing moment. 

 

2. Connect more easily with customers

Now that you’ve created the foundation for your internal team to work together easily, you can apply the same tools to communicate with your customers. Make sure your team is always sharing the right documents by storing all customer-facing documents in a dedicated folder. This will clearly separate them from internal documents that may be work-in-progress. 

 

Additionally, when you send documents through Dropbox, your team can add another layer of professionalism with custom branding: add your company name, logo and a customisable background image to all links shared externally from your team’s Dropbox account. Customers can add annotated feedback directly onto the files they have concerns about. You can also use file permissions to control who can view the presentation through expiry date and access settings to prevent late feedback or additional comments from third parties.

 

3. Protect your work

When you have both internal and external stakeholders working on shared documents, there’s always the fear of losing control of files. And with your team on the go, how can you trust that information is always protected? Rest assured – you can easily manage cloud file security on Dropbox by creating and managing user lists and setting sharing controls through intuitive administrative tools. All files are encrypted with industry-leading tech, so you can securely share assets, no matter what device and operating system your team or customer is using.

 

You’ll never have to stress about accidental deletions or unintended edits, either. With Dropbox, if someone mistakenly deletes a file, you’ll receive desktop and email notifications and be able to recover it by navigating to the ‘Deleted files’ page, choosing the file or folder and then clicking ‘Restore’. Crisis averted!

 

4. See what’s catching a prospect’s attention

So your team has sent everything the prospect asked for, but then the trail goes cold. It’s frustrating for your team to build relationships and craft the perfect proposal, only to not know why the sale didn’t move forward. Share documents with DocSend to stop guessing when – or if – your prospect has viewed them. Your sales rep will know when a customer opens the file, and analytics can reveal what’s catching a prospect’s attention – like which pages they’ve spent the most time on. 

 

Your reps can also tell if the prospect has shared the file with anyone else, preventing surprises when a new player joins the conversation. During follow-up, your sales rep can anticipate the customer’s mindset and pre-empt concerns – impressing the prospect and getting closer to closing.

 

5. Get sign-off faster

Congrats! Your team has made it to the finish line. Don’t let the hassle of printing, scanning and email cause a prospect to delay signing on the dotted line. Every minute matters, so cut out some of the admin for your team when it comes to sending documents and getting signatures. eSignatures in Dropbox, simplify the process to just a few clicks – so reps can keep the ball rolling and move on to other tasks.

 

Try further streamlining your document workflow by setting up templates so your team can easily pull out an agreement, personalise it to every new customer and hit send. You’ll automatically have an audit trail that provides proof of when they reviewed and signed the document. Plus, you can set up automatic reminders to make sure the contract isn’t forgotten.