A twelve-month sales cycle punishes a bad memory

Long cycles fail differently

In a short sales cycle a lost enquiry is obvious. Somebody said no, or bought elsewhere, and it happened this week.

Over nine or twelve months, enquiries do not get lost. They get forgotten. Nothing is decided, nobody says no, and the follow-up that would have mattered in month four never happens because there is no prompt and no record that month four was when it was due.

Record what happened, not how it felt

Grading an enquiry as hot, warm or cold records a salesperson's impression on a particular day, and impressions are not comparable between people or across months.

Recording the state instead is durable. Site visited, budget discussed, finance under arrangement, documentation started. Anyone can read those a year later and know exactly where a deal stood.

The list nobody looks at

The most valuable report in a long-cycle business is enquiries with no contact in sixty days. It is also the least popular, because it is a list of things somebody was supposed to do and did not.

Reviewed weekly it recovers deals that were never actually lost. Not reviewed, it is a database of missed opportunities that grows steadily and gets cited as evidence the system is not working.