Business Mastery
How does your sales team stack up?
8 ways to increase sales
Even the most successful business needs to constantly look ahead for the next opportunity. Force #4 of the 7 Forces of Business Mastery: Sales Mastery Systems is determining how to find your clients where they are, rather than waiting for them to come to you.
How to increase sales
Ways to increase sales should always be on your company’s agenda as a means to explosive growth. One of the big mistakes business owners make is attempting to sell their product or service without defining who their target market is. Your team can come up with ideas to increase sales all they want, but if they don’t know who they’re selling to, these ideas will not be successful. You need to clearly define your customer before you implement any other strategies to increase sales. Develop buyer personas based on characteristics of your ideal customer such as their age, gender, family dynamics, income, education level and other relevant details.
Once you’ve defined your customer, you can then identify their pain points. Your customer’s life is your business’ life, and when you’re able to see what you can do to make their life happier, healthier or easier, you’ve identified a natural way to increase sales. What are the biggest challenges they face? Are they too stressed? Struggling to find certainty in these uncertain times? Battling chronic pain or lack of energy? Once you know their challenges, you can offer solutions.
This also leads you to better able identify your competition. What is your competitive advantage that will create raving fan customers? How can you make your business talkably different so that your clients and customers end up doing the selling for you?
Once you’ve accomplished the above, you can put a Massive Action Plan into place to increase sales.
Ways to increase sales
Is your current sales team reaching all the markets they could be? If not, here are eight ideas to increase sales you can immediately implement to help skyrocket your revenue:
1. Start the conversation
One of the best ways to increase sales is hiring the right sales team who treat your prospects right. Fewer than 25% of leads are ever contacted, and once they’re contacted it’s often a brief, impersonal interaction. A friendly, warm interaction that builds rapport goes a long way, and the genuine affability of your sales team will stand out in the mind of a customer who is otherwise dealing with a rushed sale. Remember, the quality that clients see in your sales team directly relates to the quality they expect from your product. Those wondering how to increase sales would do well to hire a team that focuses on developing one-on-one client relationships – especially with prospects overlooked by your competitors. Coach your sales staff and make sure they are true ambassadors of your company’s core values.
2. Develop a growth mindset
Every day you are not growing market share and driving revenue is a day someone else is taking that market share and revenue away from you. An effective sales team will focus not only on active demand for your products or services, but even more so on latent demand – customers who don’t know they are your customers yet. By continuously looking for ways to broaden your market share, you will build momentum. Increase sales by encouraging your team to develop empowering beliefs about the value your company offers and how you can help customers with your product or service.
Every sale counts. A new client may not have brought in as much business as you were hoping, but that doesn’t mean they won’t bring you more business in the future. Yes, you want to double or triple your sales, but setting incremental goals can help you more easily track your progress.
3. Lead boldly
For a company to truly establish itself and continuously increase sales, its team must be willing to go the extra mile to capture new markets. This is true regardless of how large or small your business is. Consider the environment in which your business currently exists: In this digital age, all your prospects have immediate, detailed information about your company’s products and services, along with information about all of your competitors and their products and services. They have access to real-life, real-time reviews. Rather than waiting for a marketing campaign or a sales person to approach them, clients are proactively seeking products that are best suited to their needs. In addition, these self-directed, web-savvy clients prefer to shop online, according to their own schedules, to create the outcomes they want.
When looking for ways to increase sales, you must ensure your organization is accessible, flexible, informed, responsive and willing to help clients achieve their desired outcomes. Your sales team needs a strong leader to oversee the task of scouting business prospects and to craft and utilize functional sales strategies, as well as grow and maintain a strong, innovative sales force.
4. Keep marketing in the loop
Your sales team and your marketing department should constantly be in touch with one another when developing ideas to increase sales. Craft an effective corporate communication and feedback system that includes updates about the type of leads needed and the strategies being deployed to deliver those leads. It should also include processes being used to follow up on those leads and the progress being made. Make sure you are keeping track of performance — and spending time analyzing those numbers.
5. Globalize
The world is almost wholly interconnected now; when you’re looking at how to increase sales, try thinking of the world as one giant market. Branching out into new cities, states or countries poses unique difficulties, but can lead to rich benefits. This doesn’t mean pack up your staff and move to a remote corner of the world – but through managed expansions or channel partner relationships, your business can find demand in any corner of the globe. Think strategically about a specific product that could be successful outside your typical market. Then, sit down with your team and make a strategy to enter that market while minimizing risk. Constantly innovating to bring your offerings to new markets around the world is not only a good way to increase sales, but it’s also effective insurance against being disrupted by a competitor.
6. Harness the power of the Internet
When looking for ways to increase sales, the power of the Internet cannot be ignored. Your team – especially your salespeople – need to know how to win at social media by properly promoting your brand, connecting with potential customers and providing valuable information to those who follow your pages. Your company should also have a professional, user-friendly website that effectively captures who you are as an organization and makes it easy for customers to get in touch with you or make purchases.
7. Be flexible
Are your sales people trained to narrowly focus on a few core services or products and automatically say “no” when potential clients ask for something different? When looking for ideas to increase sales, you should train your team to be flexible and think of their role as problem-solving rather than selling. As Tony often says, where focus goes, energy flows. If your team is focused on providing the ultimate customer experience and is willing to think outside the box for your clients, you will continually find new ways to increase sales and keep your customer base happy.
8. Connect with decision-makers
Is your team spinning their wheels trying to sell to those with no decision-making authority? You can save a lot of time and increase sales by teaching your sales team how to reach those who are ultimately in charge of buying your products or services. This is usually a longer process that is more focused on relationship-building than it is on selling. If your salespeople can make instant connections to those in lower-level management or selling positions at a company, they can create allies who will pave the way to the decision-maker’s door.
A strong, dependable sales team is critical to finding new ways to increase sales and experiencing incredible growth. Attend Business Mastery to learn how to increase sales and build an outstanding sales team from Tony Robbins himself.
