Sharpening Your Sales Strategy The Easy Way
A strategy is everything. You can't simply do what you've always done and yield greater results.
Before you can expect the sales to start pouring in, you need a sales strategy. Even if you’re generating revenue without a strategy, it may not be long-lived. For example, if you land national or international coverage and the result is a windfall of revenue. How can you re-create that success? How do you reach the same target audience over and over?
Inbound
In the modern age, inbound marketing has garnered more respect than its outbound counterpart. Inbound marketing attracts prospects from your target audience and it’s your job to filter them through the sales pipeline. Outbound marketing is mostly disruptive. Therefore, your outbound marketing efforts and dollars should be spent on qualified leads.
Inbound marketing includes; blog posts, videos, SEO, ebooks, and any content that draws your audience in. When creating each piece of content, consider the personas it is intended for. You need inbound content for the top, middle, and bottom of your marketing funnel. The content you create to generate awareness should lead further down the funnel to the consideration stage and finally to conversion.
The 4 Step Sales Process
There are four stages of a typical sales strategy. A full sales strategy includes steps to convert complete strangers into leads. First, you need to find where your audience is and target specific personas. Second, determine which leads are qualified. Third, identify the best opportunities to serve your qualified leads. The fourth step converts qualified leads into customers.
Demand Generation
Generating demand for your product or services is a part of the sales process. You can do this by hosting webinars, hosting live events, and publishing ebooks. You can also generate demand through paid acquisition channels.
Demand generation is different from lead generation and further down the sales funnel. The first increases the demand for your products or services while lead generation involves getting the information of prospects in your target audience. Lead generation is at the top of the sales funnel and involves getting your customer interested in your offer. Your demand generation strategy is what your business does to garner attention.
Retargeting
This is considered a demand generation method because the prospect or customer already knows you. The term is also called remarketing. This practice will let you re-capture the attention of traffic that has bounced from your website.
It's worth your while to get these visitors back on your site because only a small percentage of visitors convert on the first visit. Services like Google Remarketing and Adroll will help you display retargeting ads as your prospect shops online.
Webinars
This is an excellent way to show your top-notch ideas to interested prospects. People always want new and relevant information. It's even better to pull off a partnership webinar where you work in tandem with a complementary brand or business.
Webinars serve many functions; boosts brand awareness, shows how you're different from your competitors, and gives you valuable leads to follow up with.
Know Your Customer
Increasing your sales relies heavily on qualifying your prospects. Going after random customers without knowing if they are truly interested in your offering wastes a great deal of time and money.
Determine who your best customers are by analyzing their history of engagement with your company and demographic details. What are the greatest objections you experience when selling? You and your sales team need to know these intimately. Equip yourself with rebuttals and quick access to educational materials and resources.
Share the Responsibility and the Profits
Create best practices for your sales team. If you don’t have a sales team, you need one. Sales drive business. Thinking that a sales team is not financially feasible is the main objection that business owners have to hire.
No matter if you’ve been in business for decades or you’re bootstrapping a startup, you can afford to hire. Simply consider a commission based payment model. You may be surprised how quickly you’re able to grow your sales by being willing to share the profits.
The Art of The Close
Keep a ready list of closing techniques. You may want to offer a percentage discount for making the purchase right at that moment. Create a timeline of how long it takes you to move through the sales process, from the first contact to closing. Track all of your KPIs and review them quarterly and compare to the last quarter.
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