The Ides of March are upon us. You might remember that this is the day in 44 B.C. when Julius Caesar, the great military hero and first dictator of Rome, was assassinated by a circle of friends who believed they could bring back the good old days of the Roman Republic if Caesar was out of the way. What they actually started was a civil war that ended with Caesar’s nephew, Octavian (he later changed his name to Caesar Augustus) being named emperor. This began a succession of emperors who kept the old republic from re-rooting itself. The friends convinced themselves that a knife in the back of Caesar was the quick fix and all it would take to get everything back to normal. Isn’t it funny how we convince ourselves that there are simple solutions to a complexity of problems?

I was talking with a friend the other day and she was relaying a new marketing effort her company had implemented. She described the new market they had targeted. She described the ideas she had and I thought she would be successful until I asked how long she had to make a sale. "The boss is giving me 30 days to make it solvent!” she replied. That seems hardly worth the effort, especially when you are trying to crack a new market, but it is exactly the sort of thing that is happening now due to the poor economy. Sales cycles that should take six to nine months are being shortened by demand of management, as if by decree the customer can be made to purchase sooner than they are ready to buy: another attempt at an easy solution to a complex problem.

There is a lot of pressure on sales departments to shorten the sales cycle – kind of like going from a first date to a wedding in a week. Traditionally, this is not how sales are generated. It takes time for a customer to warm up to your company’s offerings. And in a slow economy, many consumers are taking a wait and see approach. The consumer confidence index is dragging belly right now. It does not bode well for the sales rep that is charged with closing sales quicker than ever before and is looking for the hidden knife in every passing toga. It does not make for the best working environment. However, there are some tools that will help you shorten the sales cycle that are an indicator of the mood of a client to purchase or not to purchase. Email marketing tools, such as an e-blaster, are good at tracking interest in your offerings. They not only direct traffic to a specific area of your web site, but they also give you precise feedback on who looked at the information and when they were on your site. This becomes valuable information in following up on sales leads. It might not lead to the "one week matrimonial bliss” contract between you and your new customer, but it does give you a much better indicator of who might be ready to make a purchase from you. The key is following up quickly on the leads.

I spoke about the mood of the customer. In a typical sales cycle, there is a moment when the customer is ready to make the purchase. (See my article Purchasing cycles: the art of good timing in marketing) What the email marketing stats tell you is who might be in the mood for a sale. It is strictly an indicator, but a pretty good one to gauge customer interest, especially if you have built your web site to drive a customer deeper into the site with every passing click. We measure clicks. Looking 20 pages into a web site is a good indicator of interest in your products or services. We also measure the date and time a customer is looking at the site. This may be the best indicator in measuring the customer’s mood for a sale. For instance, if I know someone has come back to a page multiple times over a couple of days, no doubt, they are interested. If someone clicks on several pages, but that event is transacted in a matter of two minutes, they are less likely to be in the mood for a sale. These stats should help you sort the suitors from the pseudo-suitors. The real key to making the stats work for you is the speed in which you follow up on the lead. Just like the demand from the boss has been to shorten the sales cycle, so customer time demands are shorter as well. The customer has a very small attention span, especially for items introduced to them online. If you do not get to them shortly after they click through your web site, their attention will turn to other matters.

If you have an interest in finding out more about email marketing, contact us. You can also learn more by clicking here. In the days in which we live, having a tool to speed up the sales cycle becomes crucial for survival.

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The Ides of March, History.com http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-ides-of-march