These are examples of business sales strategies to increase your business income in 2022. Download the free PDF and create your sales strategy!
To increase sales, business leaders must think differently. Inbound Sales sales tactics come to offer solutions for the sales team.
After working with many clients, listening to colleagues, and reflecting on the strategic shifts I’ve experienced in building my own business, as well as the novel coronavirus and remote team environment, I’ve concluded that these 10 sales strategies should be present in any organization and their respective sales processes.
Companies are called to use this type of strategy if they want to ensure a place in the present and future.
According to Sandler Training, believing that you can sell anything to anyone is a trap to avoid. Selling can be a challenge. Selling strategies are part of a complex process where there are no shortcuts.
For this reason, methodologies such as Inbound Sales come to provide innovative tactics that make change possible.
Salespeople who increase their sales take deliberate steps based on proven sales principles and techniques, combined with marketing actions to get the attention of their prospects.
Chances are, marketers struggling to win customers are either not prospecting the right way or putting enough effort into advertising effectively for their type of business.
According to Sirius Decisions , “an average salesperson only has 2 attempts to reach a prospect and 44% of salespeople leave after the first follow-up.”
Imagine the impact they would have if the sales force made more attempts or if their digital marketing positioning strategy was working to help them close sales.
In this article I will show you the effective sales strategies that I have learned from the experts during my sales training process with WSI and Hub spot.
I have combined these learnings with my experience managing strategies for products in retail businesses, and the sales techniques that I have applied in my own business. Surely these tips will help you draw up a sales action plan that increases your income and profits.
Whether you’re selling a product online through digital marketing or running a retail business, these are going to work for you. They will help you drive more visitors to your marketing funnel and convert them into sales.
These are the 10 elementary you must use to scale your business in 2020.
1. Use influence to publicize the value of your products
Influencer Marketing is here to stay, so you should embrace it soon. According to Ad week, nearly 60% of business departments intend to increase their influencer marketing budgets in the next 12 months.
Influence is the ability to persuade others to adopt your own point of view. Naturally, you believe in your product, so you want others to believe in it too.
To increase your ability to persuade others in this way, you must appeal to their emotions. Therefore, influence increases the perceived value of your products, becoming one of the most effective today.
If you have noticed, influencers tend to sell more products. Not because they have created the best product – sometimes that’s not true – but because they have built credibility over the years. People trust your opinions.
For example, in the world of Inbound Marketing, people trust Brian Halligan . This is because Brian is the Co-Founder of Hub spot and created the Inbound Marketing concept that revolutionized online marketing and saw the light in the book “Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs”. He is a sought-after public speaker and a social media influencer.
Brian has built his reputation on the advice he gives other entrepreneurs. On his network, the social sharing and response to these messages is incredible.
In fact, for an advertising campaign to match the results obtained by this type of influence tactic, they must invest very high amounts, increasing the cost of acquiring leads.
When you’re selling online, becoming popular shouldn’t be the last thing you do. In reality, you should focus time and effort on building your influence. Seriously, it’s worth the effort.
In Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, author Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D., identifies the 6 factors that lead people to do something they wouldn’t normally do.
In my experience, influence can be achieved through consistently creating useful content for a target audience and building real relationships with influencers and readers.
If you are a young business and have not yet developed a content marketing strategy , you need to overcome this first hurdle in building brand authority to influence people.
Even if you are a brand that already has a reputation in the market, do you want to continue to believe that the best way to influence people is through advertising? If when you ask yourself “what is effective advertising for my business?” you don’t think about content, you need a change.
MacLellan convinced 32 people to do influencer marketing for the company. This resulted in increased brand exposure and influence over an audience of over 150,000 people.
Therefore, within your online marketing strategy, dedicate enough time to creating content and building friendships. Respond to comments, answer questions, and, from time to time, reward your readers and give them exclusive benefits for following you. This is reciprocal.
Building your personal brand online is another thing you should do if you are looking to gain a loyal audience and become a benchmark on social media.
2. You must start by selling yourself, before selling a product
Do not hesitate: you are a product. And, like any product or service, you have to know how to communicate the value you represent to be successful. Until that happens, you will find it difficult to sell your real products or services.
Email marketing is the most effective tactic for lead generation , followed by website/landing pages and content marketing. But each of these tactics work best when you sell yourself first, then the product.
Selling yourself is not an insurmountable challenge, it’s simply a type of product strategies. There are plenty of opportunities in today’s world of online marketing. But, like many opportunities, they come with a lot of competition.
In a sea of writers, bloggers, entrepreneurs, consultants, speakers, etc., how do you stand out from the crowd? It’s very simple: become passionate about your product.
When you’re selling yourself, you shouldn’t be worried about money. Your responsibility is to educate others and convey the core message of your brand.
For example. Alticor understood this and decided to no longer limit itself to just trying to sell you its food preparation products. Instead, it is now also being sold as a brand that helps its consumers.
Learning to sell yourself first is critical to success. No matter what product you are offering or what your selling points are: do your best to connect and communicate your brand’s core values to your potential customers.
3. Use your product features to build interest
One of the most effective sales strategies is to use profits to build desires. Sell the benefits, not the features. Most executives and companies sell their products and services focusing on their features. But today, this is no longer enough.
Harvard Business School conducted a research study and found that products of all kinds are sold because of their benefits. But the benefits that drive sales aren’t always obvious from the customer’s perspective.
Whether you’re selling through email, e-commerce, Google Ad words, or social media, focus on highlighting the benefits as well as the features of your product.
Start by highlighting the strongest competitive advantages of your product, those that reassure your customers, give them serenity and ease their worries.
Selling using product strategies based on its benefits means that you are being transparent with your customers. That is exactly what they want.
When people are looking for a solution to meet their needs, what they really want to find is a future that appeals to them. According to Buffer App, ” people don’t buy products, they buy better versions of themselves. ”
Consumers are willing to spend money on products that will make their lives better. Before the iPod was invented, there were many MP3 players on the market. But iPod focused on selling the benefit: “1,000 songs in your pocket”, the rest of the story you already know…
So what is the difference between a benefit and a feature?
Benefits are what you or your potential customers can do with the product. On the other hand, features are what the product can do.
They sound similar, right? However, they are totally different things.
“Get fit without leaving home with an elliptical machine” would be the benefit.
“Timer, intensity settings, heart rate indicator” are the features.
Remember that customers are at different points in their buying journey when they come to your website or landing pages. However, all of them started that journey, first identifying a need, then looking for possible solutions, evaluating them until they decide to take action and, finally, make the purchase.
Referring to this graph, I recommend that for stage 1 and 2, selling profits works much better than when customers are in stage 3 and 4.
So how do you increase sales this way? For best results, focus 70% of your marketing strategy on the benefits of your products and 30% on their features.
Don’t forget that people buy products emotionally and justify purchases rationally.
When you build interest using features and create strong desire using benefits, you help your prospects find what they need to feel confident in buying.
When you evoke the right emotions, customers may not even know why they are responding to your product, but they will buy it.
Remember that benefits are the things that can be done with a product, while features are what the product can do. Let’s look at a real world example:
Uber is a unique travel platform. It helps you get a car in real time. But it all started from its value proposition based on the benefits of the platform: the best way to get wherever you go.
It is your responsibility to study your product and know its characteristics, benefits and advantages over your competitor’s, in order to design strategies for the product that work. In addition, this also represents a plus in customer service.
4. Sell the results by painting a clear picture
Are you selling the results of your product? If you’re not doing it consistently, you’re likely struggling to acquire leads and increase revenue.
One of the secrets of the masters to increase sales is that they understand that it is much better to sell the results of a product, rather than the product itself.
Selling the bottom line is painting a clear picture of where your prospect could be in an ideal future scenario, depicting the challenge they’ve conquered or the problem they’ve solved.
When you show the results picture of your product and show people how easy they can use it, you will build interest and inspire them to action.
In other words, the product is not the point, so don’t make it the focus of your messages. Instead, it is better to focus on the results that the product offers. One way to sell the results instead of the product is:
5. Capture attention with the benefit, not with the name of your product
If your product helps, for example, to reduce 5 hours of work per week, start with that! That is your competitive advantage. If your service helps people lose 20 pounds in 60 days, focus your communication on that benefit.
Show before and after results. Fitness instructors know how to use “before” and “after” using photos and videos to inspire action. The same applies to makeup products. If you are looking for a makeup training program and come across before and after pictures, would you like to know more?
To use the strategy of selling the results of a product, and not the product itself, you have to use visual elements that allow your customers to see themselves getting the results they want. Don’t just describe what the final result will look like, represent it with images.
In many market niches, before selling a product, you first need to acquire leads, nurture them and convince them to buy. You can use traditional marketing strategies or inbound marketing, but rest assured that with inbound you will be able to reduce the acquisition cost per lead by 60%.
Selling is not a one way street. There are several factors that play a vital role in the purchase decision. As we mentioned before, telling stories using the benefits of your product is the new way of doing business today.
You may also be interested in sales strategies:
12 inbound marketing tactics to attract customers and close sales
5 steps to create a strategic marketing plan (includes template)
6. Build credibility based on trust and experience
How to increase sales and make more money also depends on credibility. You can build credibility in a variety of ways including top-notch customer support.
Customers want to reach a sales force that can help them resolve problems quickly. They also want to interact with real people and access information to solve any problems on their own.
Trust + Experience = Credibility
You can’t be successful in business if you lack credibility. The best brands can brag about their products as they have become known and credible over the years. That is why it is difficult for a new vendor, organization or company to dominate the market.
Customers are afraid to trust you and your product. After all, you could take their money and disappear. Therefore, good customer service is the hallmark of your company’s credibility and credibility is built from the beginning.
The viral effect of poor customer service is alarming. More people share negative experiences than offer good experiences.
How can you build credibility online?
Here are some easy ways to do it:
a) Answer the questions correctly
According to the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer – a survey of trust and credibility – trust and transparency are as important to corporate reputation as the quality of products and services.
Customers are starting to see the world more in terms of true and false. Wrong answers can damage your reputation.
When people ask questions and you don’t know the right answer, don’t be afraid to say so. Offer to do some research and get back in touch with them. Don’t lie to them.
Whatever you do, don’t openly answer something you’re not sure about just because it sounds smart. The more you answer the questions correctly, the more people will trust you.
b) Produce valuable content regularly
There are no shortcuts to content creation: either you do it yourself or hire a specialist knowledgeable about your business. Publishing new content is the foundation of content marketing strategies. Doing so helps people achieve their goals more easily while increasing your level of credibility.
Don’t limit yourself to creating generic content, instead focus on creating personalized content that is relevant to your audience and aligned with your business goals.
When it comes to personalized content, one study found that “61% of consumers feel better and are more likely to buy from a company that offers personalized content.” That is why more businesses are focusing on this.
c) Offer to solve relevant problems
If you have unique skills, you can offer to solve problems relevant to your target audience. For example, if you’re a ceramics dealer, you could offer to help your readers choose the right flooring for their new apartment or show them how to veneer it themselves.
d) Build long-term relationships
Don’t let yourself be consumed just for the sake of making money. Instead, help people for free. Alejandro Meza mentions in an article in Forbes some tips to build key relationships.
Instead of scheduling a meeting with a client in the morning, schedule a meal together.
Suggest meeting outside office hours for coffee.
Find out the activities and interests of your key relationship.
Extend the invitation to your wife or children.
Make the relationship grow.
It is also possible to build credibility by displaying success stories from your clients. If you don’t have any authority in the market, it can be difficult to gain people’s trust. The best approach is to show that your product really works.
For example, Creditor Real is a financial company focused on granting loans to a sector generally neglected by the traditional banking system. Using videos as a medium, they tell of successful experiences of their clients that inspire and build confidence in other micro-entrepreneurs so that they come into contact with the company.
7. Sales is a “give and give” relationship
When you are selling a product in an online/offline market, “giving” should be a way of adding value. For example, you could give S/.25 credit to customers who subscribe to your online sales channel, like Lineo does.
If you are the author of a book, you could give the first two chapters of your book for free. Giving is what we do at Impulse every day, because it’s the only way to build a sales relationship with potential customers.
For example, we have invested more than $10,000 in content creation. But, instead of selling them, we give them away for free.
This type of strategy is based on the idea that your customers are your best salespeople. But before they can recommend your product to others, you need to make the decision to give and give away. That is the way you build a relationship between you and your customers today.
When you build a relationship early on with a prospect, it’s easier to sell to them. The best sellers are the ones who give the most.
Contrary to what many people think, the relationship with customers is not a “give and take”. If you really want to build a relationship with your potential customers and retain current ones, you should find a way to give them the highest possible value and make it more than what they expect to pay for it.
To give your potential customers a richer experience, you can use online marketing strategies such as consistently creating high-quality content. Businesses that invest in a blog generate 126% more leads than one that doesn’t.
8. How to adapt your sales strategy in times of coronavirus [Updated 2022]
At a time when sales plans have been interrupted as a result of the Covid-19 crisis, it is necessary to rethink that strategy in order to continue achieving the objectives set.
Precisely, on this topic we delve into one of the episodes of the Impulse Growth Masters podcast, in which we ask ourselves how to design a strategic sales plan in times of the coronavirus to continue achieving the objectives?
In this space, David Torres, HubSpot’s Lactam Sales Manager, gave insights on how to show that the product or service can solve the new problems that customers are facing as a result of the pandemic.
For this, it is essential that each member of the sales force is trained to give added value to each of the clients and understand the moment in which they are: “stage of surviving, adapting or growing?”.
From there, set short-term goals as well (daily, weekly and monthly); humanize the seller’s message to the customer (even with a video); measure sales processes with a CRM, and follow the Inbound Sales methodology -marketing and sales automation- to capture better leads and thus close more sales.
9. Strengthen the remote work of a sales team [Updated 2022]
The context of Covid-19 has also shown that teleworking is possible and there will surely be companies that are committed to this modality, partially or totally.
To do this, you need to improve the productivity of the sales team . How to do it? One of the keys is to use online communication tools, such as Slack, Hang Outs or Microsoft Teams. Not only to chat between sellers, but also to communicate with prospects.
10. Scale your sales process with Sales Automation: [Updated 2022]
And since we are talking about the benefits of using a CRM, the key is to take advantage of this software to scale the business process and increase sales. How to do it? With Sales Automation.
I am referring to defining the actions that are going to give way to others (for example, when a certain contact with a lead will take place) and determining what is known as lead scoring: assessing the customer with a score according to the specific actions carried out in our website to find out if it is an MQL or SQL, for example, and thus avoid annoying contacts with potential customers who are not yet ready for a purchase.
Strategies to increase sales are based on stopping pushing your products to the target audience. Instead, offer high-value content . Answer questions and show the results of your services or products.
One company that sells its products quite successfully without sounding too salesy is Blend Tec. This company used a rather novel approach with its “Will It Blend?” video marketing series.
Founder Tom Dickson understood that what people were looking for in a blender was the sharpness of the blade and the strength of the motor. In each video in the “Will It Blend?” series, Tom tested his blender by blending everything from cell phones to wooden rakes.
Don’t try to push sales too hard. Instead, educate more. Become a teacher, be passionate about helping other people.
When you teach, you’re delivering value that people can’t find elsewhere. If you continually educate and inform your target audience, you will increase sales of products or services in the process.
My conclusion:
Selling is not as difficult as most people think, but you need to change the traditional way of selling. In addition, you need to create a good habit: use these principles, tested by sales experts and designed from the Inbound Sales methodology.
