sales tips & articles

Did you come back from the New Year break invigorated and inspired to make 2012 your best year yet?

I love the saying "if nothing changes, then nothing changes" so in order to achieve bigger success this year, changes need to be made, and remember, it's not just the business which might need tweaking, ask yourself what you will do differently to achieve your goals this year.

Use these 5 quick tips and get motivated, get active and start taking the steps toward building your success this year.

Set Yearly, Quarterly and Monthly Goals.

What do you want to achieve each and every month? It can be related to sales figures, client numbers, performance, units sold or even the number of networking events & client meetings you would like to have. Ask your salespeople to write a one page plan and list their goals, what they plan to do differently and how they plan on achieving monthly and quarterly targets.

Regularly review progress

If you aren't already, hold weekly sales meetings to review the activity and performance of your team and ensure they are on track with their plans and sales achievements. 

Have you got a 'consistent' process in place to know where you are each month, identify red flags and ensure your salespeople are accurately estimating their potential? Receiving weekly forecasts and a pipeline from each person in the team provides much needed visibility into the future and allows you to provide feedback and take corrective action, if required.

Review your sales process

How easy is it for customers to buy from you? How long does the process take from first meeting to signed order to implementation and how many people get involved? How many leads or customer orders fell out half way through?

The sales process begins when you start discussing a potential opportunity with a new or existing customer. Review each step to streamline the processes and remove unnecessary steps or delays that may have caused the sale to stall or be lost. 

Knowing you are different just isn't enough. You might have the best product or the best servcie in the world but if no one knows about it, it's worthless. Additionally, staff who deal with customers tend to become bogged down in a world of negativitiy,  never ending issues and complaints and will lose sight of all the benefits and positives that the business has to over 

Analyse customer base and improve customer loyalty

The simplest and cheapest way of increasing sales is to look through your client base. Analyse your customer database to discover  what percentage of sales each customer contributed to the overall revenue. Classify your customers into A, B and C level depending on the spend, percentage or value to the business.

With particular focus on your A and B class customers, how loyal do you think they are? When things start to get tough and your competitors are knocking on their door offering savings, will they pay more to stay with you?

How will you demonstrate or communicate the value you bring, over and above what they are paying for?

Dig deeper and analyse what products or services each of your A and B  customers haven't bought and what else they could get some value or benefit from. 

Arrange to visit your customers and discuss their plans for 2012 and what they hope to achieve. Is there any products or services that you have that will assist them or make it easier to achieve? Use the visit to update them on your plans for 2012, how you plan to 'love them' this year, new products or services being introduced or talk about a product or service that they aren't buying that you feel they might get benefit from.

Lastly, let them know that your plans are to grow in 2012 and you would welcome any referrals or introductions.

Be different and yell it from the rooftops

Knowing you are different just isn't enough. You might have the best product or the best servcie in the world but if no one knows about it, it's worthless. Additionally, staff who deal with customers tend to become bogged down in a world of negativitiy,  never ending issues and complaints and will lose sight of all the benefits and positives that the business has to over.

Hold a staff or sales meeting and review the successes and positives from last year. Have a discussion on the differences between your business and the competition, as a group analyse your strengths and weakness vs their strengths and weaknesses. How can you use your strengths to highlight their weaknesses and how will you combat their strenghth over your weakness?

Keep focussed on the positives and discuss what is possible and what can be achieved when everyone stays positive and focused. This will help staff to forget the negatives of last year and see the potential opportunities of the future.

Assist staff who aren't comfortable talking about themselves by discussing ways these benefits and differences can be introduced into the conversation or how they can be used to overcome objections and negotiate. 

Understand and identify what new business you want

In the end, it all comes down to prospecting. When we know what we want, we know how to find it and prospecting is no different.

Don't leave it up to the salespeople to decide what customers your business should have in 2012. Share the new business strategy to the team and discuss what the business plans to do to support them and make the job of prospecting easier and more successful.

And remember................ if nothing changes, then nothing changes. Here's to great selling in 2012.

This sales article was written by Karen Andrews, Director of Shine Sales Solutions, a Sydney based Sales Coach and Sales expert that works with businesses to increase their sales through strategy development, sales coaching and mentoring.

If you liked this article, subscribe to our monthly Sales Success ezine. You will learn...

* Easy ways to increase your sales and grow your business
* Simple strategies to sell yourself, even if your not in sales
* How to generate sales easier and quicker!

Enter your details at the top of the page or click here