When we look for ways to improve our bottom line, it’s common to look for ways to trim the timeline on closing a sale. If you’re already seeing high success rates, it’s the only path really left to you–there are, after all, limits to your closure percentage. So how do you find a faster route to closing a sale? You’ll need to approach this question from two fronts: Speeding up your process, and optimizing for individual clients. In this article, we’ll discuss both approaches and how the two work together to make closing a sale a faster, cleaner experience for savvy sales people.

Process

Define Your Process. Before you can trim your overall process, you need to have it concretely defined. If you’re in the habit of winging it through each sale, finding faster routes to closing a sale will be much more difficult. With a stable, consistent process, you can see where you’re spending your time and use metrics to see how the time investment in each phase of the sale pays off–or doesn’t.

Collect and Consider Hard Data. Sales is equal parts art and science, but too often sales people forsake the science and rely wholly on the art. That might result in closing a sale all the same, but you’ll get better returns if you collect and analyze metrics. What aspects of your sales game give the best returns? What things that you do slow or deter sales? With hard data (and a defined process), you can quickly cut the bad and enhance the good.

Universal Improvements. There are certain ways to improve the time it takes for closing a sale which every sales person should be utilizing, if they’re not already. You’re probably already aware of these, but just in case:

• Lead Qualification. You shouldn’t just consider whether or not you can close a given lead, but how long that kind of lead will take. Is the time investment worth it, compared to better leads? If you’re in a position to generate your own leads, taking the time to do so may result in faster sales overall, despite the up-front time investment. 
• Provoke Investment. A prospect who has given you time or resources at their own expense will be eager to do so again in the future–they’ve invested something in you, so they want to keep investing until they see a return. Basic psychology and mandatory for closing a sale quickly.
• Sell. Don’t drag your feet; as soon as it seems reasonable to close, close. Many sales people drag their feet entirely too long–or wait for the prospect to broach the subject of spending money! If you don’t ask for the sale, closing a sale will take far longer than it needs to. 

Individuals

Educate Yourself in Advance. If you’re looking to speed up closing a sale on a case-by-case basis, you need to research, research, and research. Let’s say you have a killer anecdote–but it only works on older family men. You’ll be wasting your time if you go through that bit of your sales rhetoric with a younger prospect, or a woman, or a single man. A few minutes of researching the prospect as a person and not a sales target can save you hours on closing a sale–or determine whether or not you close at all.

Take Notes. Write things down constantly when you’re interacting with a prospect. You’re probably wasting more time than you realize asking questions you should already know the answer to, or just sitting alone later trying to recall some important detail. Little things can speed up closing a sale far more than you realize, so take notes. Later, you can add parts of your notes to your hard data for general process speed, for bonus incentive.

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