As a startup, you know that one of the most critical factors in your roadmap is establishing and optimizing your sales process. Having a well-oiled machine that allows you to identify what is and what is not working is going to be essential if you want to make it into the black. To grow your sales, there are going to be many things you will need to stay on top of. From your marketing and lead generation, to how your train your managers.
Sales Training
Very often, entrepreneurs who are good at understanding how to identify a problem, do not necessarily have the expertise to sell their solution when they enter the marketplace. If you have ever seen shows like Shark Tank or The Profit, you will notice that these businesses are great at creating their product or service, but do not understand how to sell it. Very often, this is why companies hire sales trainers and speakers who can not only teach your sales team, but inspire them to overcome any obstacles that may be in their way. These experts can also guide your managers on how to onboard new hires.
Consumer Demand
Consumers are getting more and more demanding these days, which is why salespeople have to go out of their way to make an appointment or close a sale. Every year, businesses lose their customers due to either poor customer service or failing to meet customer expectations. Increasing sales performance therefore represents a real challenge that must be addressed. Here are ten topics you will need to consider if you want to ensure your sales charts are trending in the right direction:
- Defining an effective business strategy
No matter how good your offer is, you need to be on the same page as your target to build trust with them. In principle, your target customer will not be able to remember all the information. It is therefore in your interest to only talk about the essentials, as long as this puts your offers forward. We therefore advise you to highlight three axes during your pitch:
- The arguments that allow you to stand out from your competitors
- Solutions to your customers’ problems
- The relationship between your offers and your client’s objectives
Many corporate leaders will tell you that without a clear strategy, you are dead in the water.
- Prioritize your actions
Your marketing campaign should follow a schedule established in advance. This will allow you to put the most important ones through and focus on the priority actions. Scheduling also means delegating certain tasks. It is a method to save time and achieve more productivity. Very often companies get overwhelmed or caught in analysis paralysis because they have not prioritized their efforts.
- Know your competitors
Analyzing the positioning of other competitors is important to situate yourself in your economic environment. The Internet today offers you opportunities to see what others have in store. This will go a long way in helping you position your business and identify your business effectiveness. Start by analyzing the presence in the market segments, the size of the company, the positioning of the offers, the profiles of the customers they target.
- Attract visitors
The Internet is a source of qualified customers who are all potential sales leads. Consumers who have specific needs go online to find answers to their problems. Your role will therefore be to propose the appropriate solutions to satisfy these needs. In order to attract visitors, you must demonstrate your expertise.
Your site must be optimal and full of relevant information. All of your pages should contain impactful keywords. The information you present must be attractive enough to arouse the interest of Internet users. Take time to interact with visitors or other users on social media.
- The conversion funnel
Commercial performance goes through the conversion funnel From the outset, you have to know your target and interact with it. Sending quotes is a good idea so that they go further into the details of your offer.
When you see that your prospects are showing interest in your offer, you must turn them into customers at all costs. Use your calls to action such as landing pages and contact forms. By getting a list of contacts, sort out the qualified leads, that is, those who are likely to respond to your offer, and then write down their needs.
6.Google analytics
At the end of the conversion funnel, you will be able to calculate your conversion rate. If necessary, use Google Analytics. This is the best way to know the origin of your prospects , the time they spend on a specific page of your website. You can then adjust or improve your conversion strategy in relation to the stages of the conversion funnel.
- Prioritize tasks according to prospect’s needs
The maturity of prospects is not the same for all of them. The actions you take will depend on the prospect’s behavior at each stage of the conversion funnel: your content must be adapted to their needs .
- Control the customer life cycle
A prospect becomes a customer when you are able to take certain parameters into consideration. To be able to control the life cycle of a customer , you have to know when your prospects became customers and by what information processes they got to know you. You must also clearly state your objectives in this area: develop your conversion funnel over a specific period.
- Customer loyalty
From the moment you master the lifecycle of your customers, you can then focus on them to improve your business relationship . You can dedicate newsletters, auto responders or even send personalized emails to their birthdays for example.
Your content must be more qualitative than ever. It’s not just about increasing your traffic, it’s about nurturing the customers you have already acquired before.
- Refer to performance indicators
These are clues that allow you to better perceive your problems. Any manager must be able to deal with subjects and evaluate the indicators in order to master the entire company. The more relevant and important the indicators, the less difficult the decisions will be.
