I've been running a podcast since 2016 and in that time I've met some amazingly interesting people.  Today I was talking with Daniel Hall and we are going to do a session on Revenue Operations (Rev Ops) in the near future.

Daniel was talking to me about various metrics that as a business we need to get our heads around one of them was "time to deal".

As Daniel explained, "just think, in a recession, if you can put less effort into a sale and the money for that deal, ends up in your bank account quicker.  Your going to be the fan of your CFO."

And he went onto say "and in these days of recession, where pipeline and cash flow is tight, this is a big win to your business."

And he's right.

The other week I wrote this blog about selling in a recession and how you need to be the friend and be able to articulate to your clients CFO the business benefit of your solution.  What CFOs want is a return from investment (ROI), if they pay you $ they want to see more than $ come back.

For example, one of our clients have seen an ROI over 10,000 to 1.  Which means for every $ they gave us, we gave them $10,000 back.  Not a bad return.

If you can't sell to the CFO, it's going to be a rough 2023 for you 

So how can you be the friend of your own CFO?

Put very simply, social selling.  What we find with our clients is that sales cycle shortens by 20% and that we have found is repeatable and predictable.

You cannot do it with what you are doing now, otherwise you would have achieved it.

Say your sales cycle is 182 days and your average deal size is $100,000.

If you shorten your sales cycle by 20%, your sales cycle is now 146 days and the money hits your bank sooner than it did before. 

Want to know more about social selling, check out my new book

"social selling techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition".

In this brand new edition, I have updated all the text, I have also got 15 practitioners, so people who are doing this already to explain how they are get (practical) business benefit. From the CEO that has been running a digital business for over 18 months to sales leaders who use social selling every day.  

Articles on how these business have and are implementing digital, from Mercer, Telstra Purple, Ring Central, Cyberhawk, Namos, Ericsson, Crux Consulting, DLA Ignite and more.

What does Mark Schaefer, Marketing guru think of the book "social selling - techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition"? watch the video here

It's available on Amazon worldwide.  Link to Amazon.com here and Amazon.co.uk here.