Even if your business has already established a stable stream of customers and a consistent sales level, the desire for growth is a natural inclination. There are also instances when a company finds itself in stagnation. During such moments, it becomes crucial to reassess your current sales strategies.
While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, this article shares seven effective strategies for improving sales performance. Keep reading to explore and identify the most suitable options for your business.
1. Create Your Unique Mission Statement
As a brand grows and evolves, entrepreneurs often focus on customer acquisition during its initial stages. Yet, as a business expands, it becomes essential to establish a clear core mission, identifying your goals, values, and ethical principles.
This is what distinguishes your company and allows you to attract individuals who resonate with these values. A compelling example of a mission statement can be seen in Google’s approach, which strives “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.“
Here’s a brief instruction on how to create a mission statement for a team and customers:
- Outline your business’s core values in a global sense. For example, children’s brands can make childcare routines easier for parents through convenient products;
- Determine how your brand delivers these values. For example, these can be unique product features, fast shipping terms, or personalized customer approaches;
- Clearly specify what your company does and how it achieves its goals. It’s better to write down multiple ideas so you can develop several statements;
- Identify your business’s mission by analyzing your ideas. Combine the most important values into a compelling statement that defines your brand’s purpose.
2. Monitor Marketing Trends
Marketing and sales are deeply interlinked because creating long-term customer relationships hinges on quality leads. Marketers are responsible for analyzing consumer trends, preparing detailed target customer profiles, and choosing effective promotional strategies. The chosen approaches can significantly impact the types of customers your brand attracts.
In 2023, one of the most prominent trends is account-based marketing (ABM). This strategic business approach prioritizes targeting select accounts within a given market.
For example, while traditional marketing aims to reach as many people as possible, AMB centers on attracting high-value accounts in your niche. It involves tailoring personalized campaigns to address the unique attributes and requirements of each decision-maker.
According to Demand Metric, 96% of marketers believe that the ABM approach is a key driver in increasing a company’s revenue. The report also states that this strategy allows 83% of brands to increase engagement levels with valuable leads.
FAQ: What are three business strategies to increase sales?
Three common business strategies to increase sales are inbound, outbound, and account-based marketing. The inbound strategy is about capturing customers’ attention so that they approach your brand by their own choice.
On the contrary, outbound strategy implies cold calling, where companies reach out directly to potential customers. And account-based marketing emphasizes a personalized approach.
3. Diversify Sales Channels
Novice entrepreneurs often make a notable mistake by focusing on a single sales channel, such as their company’s website. However, this approach can result in losing a significant portion of your potential customers.
Here are various sales channels you can consider to expand your distribution points:
- Retail stores;
- Your personal brand website;
- eCommerce marketplaces;
- Social media;
- Mobile applications;
- Affiliate programs.
HubSpot, in its recent report, states that social media can be a reliable sales channel for B2B and B2C domains. This is particularly evident on viral platforms like YouTube and TikTok.
When boosting your business presence on these social media platforms, you must generate fresh and unconventional short video concepts. Creative briefs with detailed descriptions of your content vision may come in handy.
4. Attend Networking Events
Participating in offline events encourages more personal interactions, which in turn makes it easier to connect with potential customers and partners. Marketing and sales teams should annually evaluate upcoming events to develop a strategic plan. To find events, you can utilize platforms like 10Times, where exhibitions are categorized by topic and location.
FAQ: How can businesses attract customers?
One effective method to attract customers is to provide special deals and promotions. These offers can range from discounts to free shipping. Additionally, you can utilize special retention programs to encourage customers to refer their friends and family to your business.
5. Ensure Your Marketing and Sales Managers Work Hand in Hand
The rivalry between marketing and sales departments is a common challenge in many companies. Although they should ideally collaborate, conflicts of interest often arise due to different metrics. For example, this may happen because marketers are more focused on lead generation, while sales managers are not satisfied with the quality of inbound requests.
If you face similar challenges, consider these tips to foster seamless collaboration between your marketing and sales departments:
- Create shared Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and key results. These metrics can include customer retention levels or desired revenue targets.
- Encourage regular meetings between the two teams. During live discussions, departments can identify problem areas and develop a better understanding of each other’s roles and challenges.
- Get the sales department involved in creating marketing content. Since sales managers directly communicate with your clients, they can highlight common customer pain points and interests for marketers.
- Implement centralized data sources for both departments. This can ensure your teams operate the same information in their efforts.
6. Invest in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software
Since the sales process can involve several steps, keeping information about your customers in order is key to success. To store all necessary data and make informed decisions, you can use CRM systems.
CRMs are a suite of integrated, data-driven applications designed to manage, track, and store information about your company’s existing and potential customers. Depending on the chosen solution, you can expect the following features:
- Contact management—a centralized customer database.
- Lead management—the functionality to track, qualify, and monitor leads through the sales pipeline.
- Sales automation—multiple tools to simplify the sales manager’s job, like automatic follow-ups.
- Customer support—the functionality to manage customer inquiries, issues, and requests.
- Reporting and analytics—customizable dashboards to monitor sales performance.
- Social media integrations— tools to analyze customer behavior on social media platforms.
- Mobile access—the possibility to manage customer accounts in a CRM from mobile devices.
- Predictive analytics—data-driven tools to make informed sales decisions.
- eCommerce integrations—access to online store platforms to manage order processing.
Moreover, if you’re going to sell your business, CRM can be a valuable tool. It contains all the necessary data about your income and revenue. So, if you’re curious about how to value a small business for sale, analyze this information.
7. Create Your Upselling Strategy
An old sales adage states that acquiring a new customer costs five times more than retaining an existing one. When you invest in customer retention strategies, you don’t need to spend your marketing budget on acquisition or explaining your product.
One of the ways to do this is through an upselling strategy where businesses can encourage consumers to purchase more expensive products or services. For example, if you’re a B2C brand, this can be extra laptop applications. Or, if you’re focused on the B2B segment, you can offer service packages, like Lite or Enterprise programs.
FAQ: What do companies do to increase their sales?
To increase your sales level, you could consider introducing new products and services, expanding your target markets, intensifying marketing efforts, and enhancing customer service.
Conclusion
To boost sales in your company’s operations, it’s necessary to continually reevaluate and reconsider your current business approaches. You can try new marketing methods and techniques to evaluate what works best for your brand. Refer to the practices described in this article to determine your go-to approaches to sales and customer retention.
Also read: 5 Factors to Consider While Choosing IT Hardware for Your Business
