Introduction
It is a common frustration for B2B sales leaders: the sales cycle feels like it is getting longer. Deals that seem promising slow down in the final stages, putting momentum and revenue at risk. The problem is often not the sales rep or the product, but hidden bottlenecks in your sales process. The best way to solve this is to use a dedicated platform that automates and streamlines these final, critical stages.
Key Takeaways
- The Problem: B2B sales cycles are getting longer due to manual, inefficient processes in the final stages of a deal, such as proposal creation, pricing approvals, and legal reviews. These bottlenecks stall momentum and put revenue at risk.
- The Solution: seProposals by salesElement is a platform that streamlines these final-stage tasks by automating document creation, approval workflows, and deep CRM integration.
- The Benefit: It helps your sales team remove internal friction, shorten the sales cycle, maintain deal momentum, and ultimately close more deals, faster.
- How It Works: seProposals by salesElement connects directly with your CRM, uses pre-approved templates to generate proposals in minutes, and includes rule-based approval workflows to eliminate delays.
What the Problem Is: Common Sales Cycle Bottlenecks
Before examining the solution, it is essential to understand the specific issues that cause deals to stall.
- The Manual Proposal Bottleneck: One of the biggest time-sucks is creating a proposal from scratch. Your reps waste valuable hours on non-revenue-generating administrative work, which takes them away from selling and increases the risk of manual errors.
- The Lengthy Legal and Finance Review: Deals often get stuck waiting for legal or finance approval. This is because these teams must manually review every document for compliance, risks, and deviations from standard terms, which is a slow and meticulous process.
- The Chaotic Approval Process: The internal approval process for special pricing or discounts is often a chaotic maze of emails and messages. This manual chase is slow, hard to track, and can leave a deal sitting idle for days.
What the Solution Is: An Introduction to seProposals by salesElement
seProposals by salesElement is a platform that helps you fix these common bottlenecks. It is designed to automate and streamline the entire closing stage of your sales cycle, from proposal creation to final signature. Instead of relying on a patchwork of manual processes, your team gets one central system to manage everything efficiently.
How seProposals by salesElement Fixes the Problem
With one click from your CRM, seProposals by salesElement helps you overcome these bottlenecks with specific features:
- Automated Proposal Creation: Our platform offers a central library of pre-approved, on-brand templates that are flexible enough for teams across all industries, connecting directly to your CRM. This cuts proposal creation time from hours to minutes and eliminates manual errors.
- Automated Approval Workflows: You can build custom, rule-based approval workflows directly into the system. The right manager is instantly notified and can approve a request with a single click, eliminating delays.
- Deep CRM Integration: Our platform eliminates the “swivel chair” bottleneck of double data entry. It connects directly with your CRM to automatically sync all quote data, line items, and proposal status, ensuring your pipeline is always accurate and saving your reps hours of manual work.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the first step to identifying our specific bottlenecks? The best way to start is by mapping out your current sales process from the moment a deal is “verbally won” to when it is signed. Get your team to measure how long each step takes. You will quickly identify the areas where the biggest delays occur, whether it is creating the first draft of the proposal, obtaining approval, or waiting for legal review.
- How does automation help with more than just speed? While speed is a major benefit, automation also improves accuracy and compliance. By pulling data directly from your CRM, a tool like seProposals by salesElement ensures there are no copy-paste errors in your pricing. By using pre-approved templates and workflows, it also ensures that no unapproved discounts or terms are included in the final document.
- Is it difficult to set up an automated workflow? It is more straightforward than you might think. A modern CRM CPQ platform is designed to be configured without needing a team of developers. Good providers, like the team at salesElement, will work with you during the implementation to understand your unique process and help you build the exact approval and proposal workflows your team needs.
Conclusion
If your B2B sales cycle is getting longer, the cause is likely a series of internal bottlenecks in your closing process. By replacing manual proposal creation, slow legal reviews, and chaotic approval chases with a streamlined and automated workflow, you can remove this friction. A platform like seProposals by salesElement provides the tools to fix these common problems, helping your team shorten the sales cycle and focus on closing deals.