1. 4 TIPS FOR REACHING TARGETED DECISION MAKERS
& SHORTENING THE SALES CYCLE
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2. 2How to Reach Decision Makers & Shorten the Sales Cycle
As a sales professional, you know how difficult it can be to reach decision makers. Maybe
they’re too busy for a phone conversation or you’re just not targeting the right people.
Whatever it may be, if you’re looking to shorten the sales cycle you need to understand
who your best buyers are in order to fuel your pipeline with new contacts matching your
personas.
Here are 4 tips to get you on the right path for fueling your sales pipeline with
new contacts and shortening the sales cycle.

3. 3How to Reach Decision Makers & Shorten the Sales Cycle
1. Identify Your Target Market
In order to identify your target market, talk to your marketing, sales, and finance
teams. Then take a look at your existing data to validate. Who are your top performing
customers? Leads? Biggest deals? Fastest sales cycles? Also consider title, job function,
company size, and industry. Look at the characteristics and common trends these people
have. If your data is incomplete or inaccurate, you need to fill in the blanks and update the
out-of-date information in order to figure out who your target market is.
According to CEB, 57% of the
purchase decision is complete
before a customer even calls a
sales rep.

4. 4How to Reach Decision Makers & Shorten the Sales Cycle
2. Segment Your Current Personas
Once you’ve identified your target market, segment them into different personas
and create relevant talk tracks, voicemail scripts, email templates, and pitch
templates for each one. Targeting your buyers with relevant messaging and
content increases your chances of getting a response. Do your homework
to fully understand your different segments and have a consistent plan in
place for how many times you plan to call and email these people and
what your messaging is.
According to Aberdeen, leads who are
nurtured with targeted content produce
a 20% increase in sales opportunities.

5. 5How to Reach Decision Makers & Shorten the Sales Cycle
3. Build targeted lists for prospecting
Now that you’ve identified your target market you can fuel your pipeline with new
contacts matching the characteristics of your best buyers. Since these contacts are
similar to your best buyers, they’re likely to have a need for your product or service,
whether they know it or not. To drive success it’s important to create a personalized
connection with your leads. Building out targeted lists will help ensure your prospecting
approach is relevant.
Relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue
than broadcast emails.
(Source: Jupiter Research)

6. 6How to Reach Decision Makers & Shorten the Sales Cycle
4. Spend more time selling
& less time researching
The U.S. Department of Labor projects up to a 40% turnover rate in corporate America,
meaning contact data that was valid last month may not be accurate this month. Partner
with a data provider to ensure you have accurate contact and detailed background
information at your fingertips at all times. With access to on demand email addresses
and direct dial phone numbers, not only will you have the ability to reach leads faster, you
won’t have to search for bits and pieces of information on Google, LinkedIn, and other
sites. This will also eliminate individual sales reps at your organization creating duplicate
contact records in your CRM and keep them from manually typing information in, avoiding
human error. Reaching contacts on the first try will increase productivity and drastically
shorten the sales cycle.
Did you know 43% of people’s phone
numbers and 37% of email addresses
change annually? (Source: ZoomInfo)

7. Are you looking to shorten the sales cycle? ZoomInfo can help. Contact us today for more
information on how to identify your target market, segment your best buyers, build targeted
lists for prospecting, and spend more time selling and less time researching.
Learn more! Call 866.904.9666 or visit www.zoominfo.com.