Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a secret recipe for increasing sales? A cup of this, a teaspoon of that and a dash of something else, bake for an hour and ‘Voila!’—the perfect sales accelerator. While there is no single recipe for successfully increasing sales, there are some essential elements that contribute to more sales—and some of them may surprise you. Explore the ingredients below and learn six little-known ways to increase sales.
While this may seem like an obvious ingredient, many businesses struggle with understanding what their customers need and want. This is the baseline ingredient for increasing sales—offer something people want to buy. Do your homework. Get to know your audience and learn what your ideal customer needs.
Always remember that everyone with whom you have a relationship has an invisible sign on their forehead that says ‘Make me feel important.’ Treat them accordingly.
--Eric Philip Cowell
We live in a big, fast-moving world and the struggle to feel significant is a growing issue for many people. Helping people feel important and valuable through communication and a positive customer experience is a small thing to build into your marketing and sales strategies that will have a great impact on increasing sales.
Some businesses fail to understand the value of building and maintaining relationships with customers. Making a sale is just the beginning. Invest in knowing your customers and growing a relationship with them. Making note of significant customer details and offering follow-up products or services that resonate with your customer’s unique preferences is one of the ways to demonstrate that your customer is more than just a dollar sign.
The purpose of a business is to create a customer who creates customers.
--Shiv Singh
Set a goal to go beyond customer satisfaction. When you aim to amaze your customers the results are likely to include increased sales. Part of delighting customers is delivering on the promises your product marketing makes. The other, and possibly more impactful, element of this ingredient is to surprise your customer with even more value than they expected. Your product may out-perform expectations or your customer experience may be so special that customers are eager for more—or both.
We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better. --Jeff Bezos
Data is your friend. Sometimes we don’t want to deal with numbers, but knowing the data connected to how customers respond to your marketing, product offering, lead magnets, call-to-action and sales campaigns will help you refine and improve your strategy. When you know what’s working, you can do more of it. And when you know what’s not working, you can kill it and do something different. The technology boom birthed a range of tools that can help you track open-rate, use lead scoring and monitor conversion rates. Seek out the tools that are the best fit for capturing and analyzing your numbers and monitor your progress every month.
Winston Churchill’s famous challenge to persevere applies to increasing sales as well. Many salespeople give up after one or two contacts and potential sales are lost. Many sales gurus say it takes seven to 10 contacts to make a sale. You never know if the next contact might yield a decision to buy. Most of us won’t make a purchase decision on the first introduction to a new product or service. Don’t give up. Be resilient and persistent in offering information, educating and engaging potential customers. Think of sales as a journey, not a destination.
As you assemble the perfect recipe of ingredients for your sales masterpiece, remember that, just like cooking, creating a dynamic customer experience is an art. And that’s really what sales is all about. Yes, you will need to manage the basics of ‘Sales 101’ effectively-- lead generation, lead capture, customer contact, closing the deal. But when you focus on building relationships and helping people to solve problems, you’ll find that sales becomes more than just selling a product. It becomes helping people live their best lives. And maybe that’s the best-kept secret of all.
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