Greg Radner's team can turn around a sale in three weeks—or three months. The difference between those two extremes? "The more pain the customer is feeling, and the higher level that pain gets to in the company, the faster our sales cycle will be," says Radner, senior vice president of Corporate Executive Services, a Boston-based division of Thomson Financial that provides corporate board members with a Web tool for accessing business information and reference materials.

One sale, for example, flew through the pipeline due to the frustration and embarrassment upper management felt after board members didn't get their materials in time for a meeting.

Of course, not every sale is a slam dunk. So Radner developed a checklist of 15 questions that qualifies prospects by sending salespeople into a corporation's corner offices to assess pain and other buying factors, such as whether salespeople have access to decision makers. Based on the answers, each prospect is assigned a score. "The maximum score is 20, and we've learned we need to get the score over 10 for it to be a viable sale," Radner says.

Every sales manager worth his commission check is trying to find ways to shorten the time between the first sales call and the final decision. Unfortunately, that period may be getting longer. A survey of 1,300 companies by sales analysis firm CSO Insights indicated that increased competition, more complex buying processes and higher buyer workloads are adding time to the sales cycle.

How can you fight this trend? Lori Richardson, a sales trainer and author based in Seattle, suggests focusing first on whether your salespeople are targeting their customers with the right pitch. She worked with one company that analyzed their most loyal customers to determine the profile of an ideal prospect. "They found out that what they thought they provided customers, which tied into their value proposition, was different from the customer's point of view," she says. That revelation helped them shorten their sales cycle by at least 30 percent. Of course, questioning your company's identity isn't easy.

Another way to shave time off the sales cycle is improving your salespeople's follow-up. Check to see whether your salespeople are using a multifaceted strategy, Richardson says. Hold "call-in days" that get salespeople together to make follow-up calls with prospects. If your reps are scattered across the country, use technology to hold those sessions remotely.

"There's nothing like the old sales pit concept in which you have everyone in a room cheering each other on, and being able to do that virtually is really exciting." —Michele Marchetti