Sales Life Cycle and Dynamics

On Sales Life Cycle;

Hello people, long time no write.

In the past 3 months, I have been taking a couple of interviews in different organizations/sectors and one thing is paramount as a Sales professional, you get asked about your sales strategy and process and how you intend to bring in sales to the organization that is looking to hire you.

While you know your onions as Sales professionals, there are a few realities that we must not fail to realize.

This is the typical sales cycle for different industries.

We need to understand that B2B sales is a long way from B2C

Also, we need to be able to tell the difference between a B2B product and a B2C product. In some cases, most organizations offer services across the board i.e B2B2C. Bearing in mind that B2C sales take a shorter time to convert as opposed to B2B.

Having established that you are now left to deal with time frames as they relate to different Products/Services your potential organization is offering.

Based on my findings, research, and of course as a result of multiple interviews, here’s my conclusion on the Sales cycle for the following industries;

Software Development
B2B — 3 months
B2C — 1 month

Fintech
B2B — 1 months — 3 months
B2C — within 2 weeks to 6 weeks

E-commerce
B2B — 2 months —
B2C — 6 weeks or more.

Edutech
B2B — 1month — 8 weeks
B2C — 1 month

Logistics
B2B —
B2C —

Food (food is an essential)
B2B — 1 month
B2C — 2 weeks — 1 month or even shorter if it is a walk-in restaurant.

Automobile
B2B — 1 month to 6 months (Now this depends on the B2B type, if you are selling to a dealer who is a reseller, it takes a shorter time, if you are selling to an organization about fleet purchase, the process takes longer time as there would be several vetting stages and different decision makers along the line.
B2C — 3 months (People save up for an automobile expense)

In the end, some of these time frames may also be shortened or lengthened based on different factors that may or may not be within your control as a sales professional.

I guess I will stop here for now.

Thank you.