How Long It Really Takes To Close A Deal

So typically from an event, if we collect a lead, even if it's an SMB, you're looking at 3 months at the earliest for a close, 5 months at the latest. And if it doesn't close in 5 months, usually we're not going to close that SMB. So Eric and I were just talking. I got back from Web Summit Rio and I was asking him about his conference sales cycle. Do you know your conference sales cycle roughly?

I don't like it. Maybe if you talk and I think about it, maybe that will work. Go.

All right, so we do something that's— I wouldn't say that's that unique, but I would consider it somewhat unique, uh, in which when I give a speech, we have a QR code on my slides where people scan and then we collect leads from that. Then I typically, depending on the event, because I only try to speak at events that have our ideal customer, Typically 1 or 2 people from the organization will also be there. And then we do that to collect leads as well. So then we map it out all in a CRM and we see how long it takes to close a lead from it. On average, if we go to a conference, I'm going to break it down for both immediate deals and enterprise, okay? Immediate deals are usually smaller because typically if you're a large organization, you have a large sales cycle. I'm assuming you see this with Care all the time, right?

Yeah. Yep. You just can't do a deal that quickly.

No. How long does it take with Caret? Like the moment lead comes in?

Call it anywhere. It's like enterprises, like it, it could be a couple months. Yeah.

At least. And that's for software. At least.

But usually we're talking 9 to 12 months if it's like agency. Yeah. Yeah.

So what we're finding is anyone who's interested in working with us right then and there, whether it's a big company or enterprise, I mean a big company, which is enterprise or SMB, it tends to be more of the SMB that actually converts because they're more flexible with their budgets while the enterprise usually have budgets and then they've already allocated before the year starts.

Procurement.

Procurement and all this kind of stuff.

Yeah.

So typically from an event, if we collect a lead, even if it's an SMB, you're looking at 3 months at the earliest for a close, 5 months at the latest. And if it doesn't close in 5 months, usually we're not going to close that SMB. We pretty much just consider it dead. We still do follow up, but we consider it dead. Enterprise, even if they want to work with us or they scan a QR code from our presentation, fill it out, they're not, they may say they want to work with us. We usually get a lead from them. No joke. Like when I say a lead, because to clarify on this, when someone scans a QR code, fills out a form field, we then follow up and they can say they're interested in working with us or they may even tick a box. But we're typically not able to close them because of their sales cycle. But usually when I give a speech, a month, I mean, a year and 4 months later, we'll get a lead. And a little bit less than 2 years, we'll close the lead.

Yep.

So our sales cycle is actually on that, is closer to a year and 10 months.

That's why the fortune is in the follow-up. Yes.

But that's a long sales cycle. So it's just like we're going to all these events because we're mapping out how many RFPs we're getting and enterprise leads. And we map out exactly where they first touched us in the CRM, how they got to know us, et cetera. And what we're finding is, no joke, it takes roughly a year and 10 months from me speaking to getting someone who's actually working with us.

But it's worth it because you're actually applying. You're going to be speaking at more events now. Now that you've ramped it down, you're going to ramp it back up. And so you're going to have a lot more of these. And so We were just talking about how we're going to be speaking at the HubSpot Inbound Conference and we're figuring out logistics there. And how many, let's say you have 100 scans, right? How many people are in the audience?

It's roughly 18%.

Okay.

So, you know, if I have 100 people in the audience—

Call 500.

Yeah, 18 will end up scanning it. So 18 times 5 is 90. So I'd have 90 scans. If there's 500 people.

Yep.

That's my average is around 18%. And that's from all industries, conferences throughout the world. We average around 18%.

That's pretty good. That's a, that's a lot of scans. And so what happens on the scan? They're, they're on your email list.

They're on the email list, but we collect all their information, employee size, revenue, or employee count, revenue, all the stuff we need to qualify if it's a lead and see if they're interested in working with us.

But, but going back to the fortune is in the follow-up. So John Maxwell said this, right? So the, so, The way you think about it is they're on your email list and you're constantly not asking them to buy, but you're constantly following up with content. You're constantly following up with more value over time. And it's funny because after I did this, this global marketing summit, I actually got shit from someone for, so I shared the presenter slides, right? And then at the end of it, I copied my friend who shared his slides. It says, um, you can follow me on LinkedIn or on X. And then by the way, you subscribe to my newsletter here for free. And this person called me out. This person called me out and said I was soliciting for a business.

Really?

And then, and I was like, what the hell? And then I ran that through ChatGPT. I was like, hey ChatGPT, was I soliciting here? It was like, chat, no, you were not. Um, but my point is you try to get people onto your list because you can constantly add more value over time. That's the whole idea. I'm not trying to get them to buy cuz I know they won't buy immediately. You know what I mean? Yeah. So yeah.

The interesting thing when you talk about follow-up, the biggest trend that we've seen in our growth is a person moving from company to company. Uh, great example of this is I gave a talk at LinkedIn at one of their offices in Latin America. So they brought in a lot of their top advertisers. We also invited people to the event. It was a free event, but it was invite only. There was this lady, uh, amazing marketer. She worked at Deezer at the time. We weren't able to work with her at Deezer. She wasn't able to get us in. She wanted to work with us though. She then moved to Oracle and then she got us an RFP from Oracle. We didn't win the RFP, but She wanted to work with us. And now she's the CMO of a company where I think the founder is worth $20 to $50 billion. I know he's worth less than $50 billion. I'm pretty sure he's worth more than $20 billion. You know, of course he's on the Forbes list. And we were able to get a contract from the newest venture that she's part of. And they have tons of divisions.

Yeah.

And then from there you just land and expand. But it was quite interesting in which, If you follow up with people, we see it being really rewarding, not for them just being at that company.

Yeah.

It's whatever company they move to, you're continually building a relationship with them.

So there's actually 2 parts here. I mean, one, you want to continue to be helpful over time and that requires you to be consistent with content and it requires you to be on top of things if you're going to be consistent.

Yeah.

But the second thing is you also have to be kind too. If you're kind and consistent over a long period of time, people will remember you. And that's how these things are. People will generally, like eventually they'll figure something out where they'll work with you. But even if they like you, you've seen this happen, They'll follow you from company to company to company, and then you're, then the business grows, right? But I've also seen it at times where they follow you from company to company, and then the, the, if you put the B team in there, the B team screws it up and then they will never follow you again. Yeah. So you have to be very consistently good over a long period of time.

Yes. You have to be really consistently good over a long period of time. And I think you nailed it. And this is why I'm going to mention it again. You got to be helpful and you got to keep adding value without worrying about pitching 24/7.

Anyway, that's it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe, and we'll see you tomorrow. Bye.