Unfortunately, the world of B2B sales doesn’t move nearly as quickly. According to one survey, around 75% of new B2B sales take at least four months to close, and nearly half take upwards of seven months.
There are several impediments to the B2B sales process. For starters, deals are big – often ranging in the thousands to tens of thousands of dollars. Although this makes for greater revenue potential, it also means more stakeholders need to chip in before the sale is completed.
In addition, more research must be carried out for a decision to be made. B2B sales, far from being spur-of-the-moment purchases, may involve complex products that must be properly understood – in terms of both functionality and potential ROI – in order to decide whether they support business goals. A large amount of information is required to make an educated decision.
But while due diligence is a good thing for both buyer and seller, unnecessary delays are not. Part of the reason deals often take so long to close is because of inefficient sales processes. Whether it’s disjointed email threads, time-consuming admin tasks, issues related to negotiations, or delays around approvals, there are a number of things that can stall a deal from getting done. For sales reps, these are common sources of frustration. And the cost of deals being dragged out ranges from missed sales targets, to lengthier time to revenue, to increased likelihood of losing out to the competition.
At DealHub, our DealRoom puts all the relevant information and tools in one place, so buyers and sellers can close deals more quickly and with greater transparency. It removes friction from the sales process while empowering customers to make faster and better-informed decisions.
How a DealRoom helps you close deals faster
Using a DealRoom is the equivalent of walking into a digital sales showroom, complete with company branding and all the information needed to secure a deal. This includes things like pricing and product summaries, sales and marketing collateral, legal contracts, billing information, and whatever else is needed to take customers from quote to close. And it’s put front and center for all relevant stakeholders to see, ensuring everyone is informed and aligned from Day One.
A DealRoom contains all the elements necessary to close a deal, such as customer information, pricing and product summaries, terms and conditions, and e-signatures – all synced to your CRM.
A DealRoom, also known as a digital sales room, also contains important deal-closing tools. To streamline the contract-signing process, buyers and sellers can revise and make suggestions to contracts right inside the DealRoom. With everyone operating from a single source of truth, this means an end to endless email chains, back-and-forth communications, and poorly managed Word documents and PDFs.
Our DealRoom also makes it easy for sales reps to track buyer engagement. With real-time DealStream notifications, they can see who has accessed a DealRoom after it has been sent. This allows them to identify the key stakeholders they need to be focusing on, and decide how and when to follow up. Or, if they see that the DealRoom hasn’t been accessed or is being held up by a particular stakeholder, they can take appropriate action to seal the deal.
As the sales proposal process comes to a conclusion, eSign capability allows all stakeholders to sign off on the deal right inside the DealRoom – with no need for an additional external tool.
And since each DealRoom is plugged into the seller’s CRM (like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics 365), sales reps can save valuable time that would normally be spent entering and updating information. Instead, they can dedicate that time towards improving and personalizing the actual buyer experience – in other words, selling.
Digital sales rooms are the future of B2B sales
A famous saying is variably attributed to U.S. retail magnate John Wanamaker and UK industrialist Lord Leverhulme: “Half my advertising spend is wasted. The trouble is, I don’t know which half.”
Following this same line of thought, most sales reps waste lots of time and energy in a slow-moving process that can feel neverending. They may well understand how the process works, but can’t quite grasp where much of their time is being wasted. It takes the introduction of a DealRoom to understand all of the inefficiencies that can easily be cut out – this is the benefit of digital transformation of sales.
By centralizing sales processes within a cross-party collaborative environment like a DealRoom, you can bring together sales teams and customers and close deals faster. Buyers get the benefit of having everything they need in one place so they can make a quick and informed decision. Meanwhile, sales reps can drive deals forward using real-time buyer engagement insights, while sharing all relevant information in one go. It’s a game-changer when it comes to keeping deals on track and closing them as rapidly as possible.
Based on our own analysis of 193,000 deals conducted via the DealHub platform, sales win rates increase by up to 3x when a DealRoom is used, as opposed to traditional formats like email, PDFs and Word files. What was previously a pain point in the sales process is now a means of driving sales efficiently.
Welcome to the future of B2B sales. Once you’ve digitized your buyer/seller interactions, you won’t be going back to the way things were.
Want to see a DealRoom in action? Request a demo
