Creating and selling a great product or service is only the beginning of establishing a successful, sustainable business. Knowing how to build on that foundation is the key to taking your business to the next level. Learn how to increase sales effectively to position your company for growth.
This old business adage is still around for good reason. When you follow how and where people spend money, you can draw some valuable information about consumer interest and current market place trends. Research your competitors to see what products customers are buying. What are they talking about on Twitter and what do they study at college and business school. As you learn how (and why) your ideal customer base is spending money, you’ll be able to make some decisions about how (and to whom) you should be promoting your product.
External data can give you some valuable baseline measurement to compare how your product offerings are doing relative to your competitors. Internal data will help you know how and what your customers respond to. Combine external and internal data to build a picture of customer trends and behaviors. This information should help you to create marketing and sales strategies to attract this customer base.
Your audience needs to know what you have to offer in order to arrive at your place of business. Whether you have a physical storefront or an ecommerce store, getting the word out about your business is a critical step. Leverage social media platforms that resonate best with your target audience. Take yourself on a regular tour of your website to ensure that when potential customers land there they have access to the information they need to make an informed decision about your product. Create attractive lead magnets that offer something your customers just can’t live without. When that casual visitor becomes an interested lead, be sure you’re capturing the information. Create clear call-to-action (CTA) features that guide your interested potential customer toward information to make a decision about your product.
Make sure your product lives up to the promises your marketing makes. If you say you’ll solve problems for your customer—be sure that you do. Whether it’s a lead magnet or your product for purchase, ensuring that you meet or exceed customer expectation is the best way to generate goodwill, referrals and repeat customers. Conversely, when your product is disappointing, one customer generally equals one sale, the end. Since you’ve invested time in generating and nurturing the lead and have managed to convert the lead into a buying customer, take time to invest in a quality product that delivers on your promises.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is a way of measuring if and how often customers are coming back for more. Once you invest in cultivating a customer, you should invest in maintaining that customer so he or she makes repeat purchases with your business over time. How often you have repeat customers reflects the quality of your relationship with customers. New customers are vital to growing your business and repeat customers will provide a solid foundation on which to build.
Time is money and when you have more time you can invest in the important elements of your business that increase sales. One of the best ways to gain time is to leverage technology to do some things faster freeing you and your team to invest time in the most valuable human elements of your business. Explore the options for using technology including client management, email automation and social media automation.
Employee satisfaction may seem like an unrelated topic in a discussion about how to increase sales effectively, but it’s actually a core strength required to build an effective and sustainable sales business. Happy employees mean happy customers and conversely when your company culture doesn’t support employee satisfaction, it becomes difficult to engage and satisfy customers. People want to do business with other people who are happy and encouraging. Make sure you’re investing in your employees (and yourself) so that you project an attitude of joy about what you have to offer other people.
Initial sales are wonderful, but without a strategic plan to increase sales, your business may struggle. Consider the tips here for creating a strong, growing business. Use data, technology and above all invest in people to create an environment where happy employees and happy customers can thrive.
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