Consumer behaviour dictates how we, as businesses, sell. Gone are the days of expecting your customers to find you and ask to buy your product. Now you need a dedicated and thought out sales strategy that targets customers, showing them how your product meets their needs. Here is how you can boost your sales process in four steps.
What is a sales strategy?
Sales strategies help to position your business in the market. They are a tool which can be used to develop your brand, increase customer loyalty and expand your reach. Plus the process of creating your strategy provides you with an opportunity to discuss your buying process, target audience, competitors, KPIs and sales goals.
There are two main types of sales strategies, inbound and outbound. Inbound strategies focus on actual leads, customers that you know are interested in buying your product. For these types of customers, the strategy must be more personalised, empowering the customer to buy, rather than telling them they have to. Informing customers of the value and benefits of your product will help build brand loyalty.
Outbound strategies look at targeting potential customers, those you think might use your product but may or may not be interested. This process involves a more traditional sales approach. However, sales reps still need to work hard in order to avoid sounding pushy. This kind of strategy is often viewed negatively so be careful when you decide to use it.
How to boost your sales strategy
Whether you are planning to target inbound or outbound customers or a combination of both, it is important to have a solid strategy in place. Often, finding the right mix of each method works best for most companies. In order to make your strategy work best for you, there are a number of methods you can use.
- Create a plan
The first step to creating any successful sales strategy is to develop a plan. The plan will detail which steps you need to take to get your customers to go from being potential leads to actual sales. Without clear guidance on how to progress through each of these steps, your hard work could easily be in vain and sales can be missed.
Firstly, you should decide on a sales timeline to give you measurable results which can be compared to sales from previous years or quarters. Next, you will need to make a list of all the critical areas of the plan such as budget, KPI’s and your team’s roles and responsibilities.
The final step in creating a successful plan is to ensure you know your target audience. There is no point in creating an excellent sales pitch if you can’t get it in front of the right people. Building a customer profile will help you understand who to target, how they think and what pain points your product can solve for them.
- Invest in training and technology
Once you have created your plan and identify your audience, you need to ensure you have the know-how and resources to support your strategy. This can mean investing some time and money into getting the right tools and training, but it will be worth it in the long run when the sales start rolling in.
You will need to build a strong sales team who understand the plan and how to implement it. This should be considered from the outset with a strong onboarding process. This will help get your sales team and any new hires up to speed with the plan. Be sure to share this information with other departments in order to align plans.
In order to make sure your now highly trained sales team can make the most of every sale it is vital that you offer them the tools they need. This can include CRM and metrics software and documentation. Be sure to do some research into what tools you may need and what are the best options before implementing them. Then be sure to again train your team on how to use them effectively.
- Review your process
You’ve got your plan, you’ve trained your team and you’ve set them up with every piece of tech they could need. The sales process has started and the leads are popping up left right and centre, or so we’d hope. Now is the time to really streamline the process, to stop and review your strategy to see what’s working and what’s not.
This is when your sales metrics become one of the most crucial parts of your sales strategy. These metrics will help you see if your sales goals and the results you are achieving are equally aligned. Here you should consider your KPI’s, including revenue, conversion rate and contract value.
By looking at this data in detail you should be able to identify the parts of your strategy that are working and the parts that aren’t. This information is essential for helping your strategy succeed. By changing any poorly performing areas and focusing on the areas of success you can further improve your strategy.
- Ensure there is continuity
There is no point spending time creating and reviewing a sales strategy if you are not optimising your other departments in order to support it. Sales and marketing go together like bread and butter. Their strategies need to work in unison in order to be successful and enable overall business growth.
Before customers even decide if they want to buy your products, they will have a predetermined idea of your company based on your marketing. Often, a customer will do research into a product to see if it meets their needs before they decide to speak with the sales team.
It is because of this that your marketing department needs to work in alignment with your sales team. A potential customer should feel supported and informed throughout the whole buying process with no areas of confusion or conflicting information. This will make your sales strategy much more robust.
Go forth and sell…
You’ve now got a solid sales strategy in place. You’ve reviewed it and made the necessary changes and now you are successfully converting leads into sales. However, this doesn’t guarantee that the process will be easy. Some customers are more challenging than others and will need more time to make a purchase decision.
If a sale fails for any reason, make a note of it, explore what went wrong and when you find the issue, fix it. This will help you further develop your understanding of your customer and enable you to create an even more successful sales process for your business. For those of you who are looking at boosting your sales process online, why not check out our webinar on how to transform your sales team into digital performers. Reinvent Your Sales is an online event which shares some key strategies you can deploy to increase the effectiveness of your sales time online. Sign up today!
