How a company engaged in social entrep managed sales cycles

Ateneo Professor on Entrepreneurship

Benevity, a company engaged in selling software to social entrep, so that they can manage their fund raising further had a tough time lessening their sales cycle. It took too long to close sales, and low closing ratios.

How did they solve the problems? Mr  Bryan  Lottenville, the head of Benevity is a  corporate finance lawyer by training and was head of Iphotostock which was later sold to Getty Images for $50 million.  He realized that his mindset was for profit (and not for non profit).  He discovered that giving was not an urgent agenda in companies.  And yet for Pres. Obama, he realized that there was a lot of microdonations going on.  For ebay Giving Works raised $250 million for the last four years.

He made the following decisions for Benevity:

1.  Identify more qualified leads;

2.  Shorten time to close;

3.   Increase numbe of conversions.

Results:   From 200 days sales cyle to only 100 days., sales closing of 7% instead of 0.5%