As I reviewed the eight most common barriers to accelerating sales cycle, I identified a number of actions that product management and product marketing can take to help accelerate the sales cycle.

Due to the time constraints of the webinar, I wasn’t able to delve into these actions in much more detail, so with this blog post, I want to provide links to additional resources that will provide you additional guidance and insight into these topics.

• Understand key issues/pains/goals/needs of buyers. (click here)

• Create a well-defined and focused market plan (target segments, buyers, messages). (click here) 

• Understand and map the “buying” process. (click here)

• Enable the sales team and channel to properly sell your products. (click here) 

• Build sales and marketing tools that help move leads to prospects and help prospects make buying decision.

• Define a lead qualification/scoring system. (click here) 

• Develop lead nurturing programs.  (click here)

If you do these things I’ve identified, you’ll be able to establish yourself as a “market expert” and significantly enhance your relationship with your sales team or channel which will lead to improvements in the sales cycle and increase revenue.

BTW – if you know of any other good resources, please add them to the discussion listed below.