Kyle Porter is the CEO of SalesLoft, Sales Intelligence

One glance at your inbox and you’ll understand how today’s buyer has more on their plate than ever before. They can hardly bear to add more complexity to their world, especially the challenges that come along with buying and implementing your new offering.

But don’t despair, there’s always hope for your sale. If you work hard to understand your customers’ needs and simplify steps through the sales process, you can motivate your buyer to prioritize you. By maximizing simplicity, you can win more business and close deals faster. These 7 principles will help you do this:

1. Streamline communication

Your buyers are busy and dismissive. Quite often, shaking up the status quo with a new offering is a low priority for them. In order to make their lives easier, you’ve got to communicate better. Advice: keep emails shorter than 6 sentences and never leave long voicemails. Avoid bothering prospects by phone when email or text will work, and never meet in person when a call will be sufficient. Remove all the cliches and buzzwords from your messaging and chop your presentations in half. The less time it takes buyers to understand what you’re sharing, the higher likelihood they’ll take next steps.

2. Answer questions in advance

You get questions daily from your prospects, right? Well, here's a simple trick: write down the 5-10 most common questions you receive. Now create detailed, transparent answers and post them to the web. When your prospects ask you those questions going forward, you can save both parties’ time by pointing them directly to your FAQ.

3. Make customer research a habit

You should never waste time asking customers to answer simple questions you could have easily researched yourself. Bypassing basic questioning will allow you to get straight to their problems and communicate how your product solves those problems. We recommend using Data.com to get primary prospect information rapidly. For dynamic information, setup Google Alerts, subscribe to your prospect’s blog through RSS and follow them on Twitter and LinkedIn. Look to sales intelligence apps for a deeper level of efficiency. Acting upon relevant information should become a daily habit as it will condense sales cycles.

4. Turn around proposals & customer requests lightning fast

Proposal presentations and technical back-and-forths are all too often the culprit of long sales cycles. It’s never a good thing when you (the seller) are the one slowing down the sale. Adopt proposal systems from the AppExchange that integrate with your CRM. Build an efficient system for internal Q&A feedback using collaboration tools like Chatter. If you show your prospects quick turnaround on your end they may be motivated to move faster on theirs.

5. Break your sales process into simple, well-documented and easy to execute steps

You want your customers pressing the easy button each time you connect with them. Regardless how rigid your sales process, you should define and communicate next steps in the process to your prospect. If you find yourself waiting for the buyer to suggest next steps, you’ve already lost the battle.

6. Make your buyer the hero

Congratulations on your hard-earned awards but save the boasting for your website and recruiting calls. Buyers don't want to hear about your accolades, they want to receive their own. Focus intently on them. Put yourself in their shoes and answer the question: how can I make my buyer successful? Decisions are easier for buyers to make if there is a clear-cut way for them to come out a winner.

7. Sell with sincerity

Selling with sincerity means constantly seeking ways to be a source of help to your buyer. Rather than just focusing on getting the sale done, practice empathy and feel the pain of your prospect. This will build trust and improve the relationship, creating a more compelling reason for them to work with you.
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Keeping things simple is the first step to winning in complex sales. Hope these concepts help you speed up opportunities and close more deals. It would make our day to hear your own ideas below on how to reduce friction to change with your buyers.