How are your sales numbers this year? Are you struggling to close more deals and hit your sales quota? Well, don’t worry about it. Often, even the best businesses need help to get things moving. We will help you regain control of your sales by following these simple tips and strategies.
1. Marketing and Sales teams should work together
The sales team can make a big difference to your bottom line but for this to happen and truly make an impact, you’ll need the support of your marketing team. In the inbound methodology, marketing and sales are no longer two departments that work separately, rather they need to work together and be in constant communication.
Effective marketing and sales alignment will help you attract more qualified leads, reach your goals and increase your revenue.
Do you need help to align your marketing and sales team? Download our free Smarketing Checklist here!
2. Pay Attention to Existing Customer Behavior
Analyzing your existing customer behavior is a great starting point to gain a clear understanding of what they are looking for. Too often we tend to focus on selling our products or services to new customers but we fall short because we don’t have enough information about what our clients want or need.
If you have a list of actual customers, it’s a good moment to enrich your relationship with them. Provide them new helpful content and conduct simply A/B testing to gain an understanding of what are they interested in. Another approach is to deliver more personalized services or training or offer an upgraded solution, the idea is to gain new insights that can help you with future clients.
3. Ask for Feedback
Now that you have improved your relationship with your existing customers don’t forget to ask for feedback. Far too often we see companies missing out on this opportunity. In the new era where customers are more aware of what they consume, they always have something to say and they’re not afraid to express it.
Getting feedback from them will help you adjust your strategy, improve your customer experience and increase your sales.
4. Do a Content Audit
Take a deep dive into your current content and sales materials. Is this what your clients need? As we are in the middle of a worldwide pandemic (COVID-19), now it’s more important than ever to evaluate your content, is your content tone-deaf, does it reflect the way you will do business tomorrow? Do you need to edit, remove or add footnotes to make it clear that it was produced before the pandemic?
Are you focusing on features more than benefits? If so, you should adjust your strategy. Take advantage of the feedback your customers have already given you and optimize your content to make it more human and valuable.
5. Develop Your Competitive Advantage
Define your value proposition. Be clear about the reasons people should choose your product or service and the benefits they will receive. In other words, why your business is better than your competitors in the same industry.
If your sales reps have this concept clear, it will be easier for them to convince prospects to do a purchase. Left to their own, your sales teams will be underperforming. Working with your marketing team to create a unified message will enable all of your teams to clearly talk about the value you offer and the benefits your customers will experience.
6. Nurture your Leads
Usually, the marketing team attracts new prospects and guides them along a path that eventually ends when they make a purchase. But things don’t necessarily end there. You need a way to nurture your customers to keep this cycle in constant movement.
One of the most effective ways to nurture them is through email marketing. Email marketing enables you to keep in touch with them through automated email campaigns where you can provide specific content, offer an upgrade of your product or service, a special discount or other offers. This helps demonstrate to them that you understand their problems and you are the right choice to help them solve them.
7. Get Google Reviews
Customers are more conscious than ever about the products and services they consume and need trust in brands to make a purchase. Consumers today often trust what other customers have to say increasing your positive reviews on Google can be the deciding factor in choosing your business instead of your competitors.
Bonus: How do you manage negative reviews? It’s always a good idea to be consistent in communicating with your audience and replying to reviews is one great way to do this. But what about negative reviews? You should also consider replying to negative reviews by acknowledging a grievance or dissatisfaction with your product or service and offering to understand what led them to feel the way they do. Offering to engage further and gain a clear understanding of the problem reinforces to other potential customers that you are responsive, interested and willing to work hard to provide quality service and stand behind your business.
8. Use Social Media to Promote your business
There are at least 3.5 billion people using social media platforms. Imagine how many opportunities there are for people to find your business just by having a presence on social media. The best part? It’s free!
You can use social media to promote your content in different formats like images, videos, slides, Gifs and build a strong relationship with your customers. The more they trust in your business the more opportunities you’ll have to increase your sales.
Take a look at twitter, a Security Guard named Tim was given responsibility for managing social media for the National Cowboy Museum in Oklahoma during the shutdown and stay-at-home orders amidst COVID-19. The results have been nothing short of amazing.
9. Use Social Media Advertising
According to the CMO survey, brands will almost double their budget allocated to social media advertising by 2023. Social media enables brands to connect with their ideal buyers based on their geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioral characteristics.
While it is true that the use of social media platforms is free, marketers will often use platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc to pay for additional ads and deliver your message to your ideal buyers throughout the buyer’s journey.
At the end of the day, we know that acquiring new customers and increasing your sales isn’t an easy job, it takes time, constancy and resources, but it’s not impossible to achieve. By applying these simple strategies and tips you can improve your sales results and grow your business.
