All of us know the general meaning of sales. Sales refer to selling products or services, but there’s more to it than meets the eye.

Traditional sales were all about being pushy and persuasive with the customer. But the concept and dynamics have changed a lot today. Modern sales are more customer-focused rather than outright promotional. The ability to help your prospects matters more than your “convincing” power. Managing Sales team to target customers and beyond

What Is An Effective Sales Strategy?

“How you sell matters. What your process is matters. But how your customers feel when they engage with you matters more”-Tiffani Bova

What does this mean? It means you have to actively listen to your target audience, get a grip of their pain points, and know their specific needs or wants.

Next, identify if your product or service is the perfect fix for their problems, offering them a customized solution within time. Meaningless pitches that waste your potential customer’s time are a big no!

Why your brand is amazing is expressed better when the customer’s problem is permanently solved rather than promotional announcements.

How To Close The Deal With Your Next Client

“Sales go beyond selling; it’s about educating the client and building trust.”

Every time you convert a prospect into a client, have you noticed their behavioral pattern in each stage? All these stages are collectively known as the “sales cycle”.

You have to understand this cycle better to be able to gain more leads.

Here are the basic steps:

1. Qualifying prospects: This is the first step where you figure out who are the people who are likely to have a demand for your offer. What problem can your product/service solve? Who are the people who will find value in it?

For instance, you want to sell an ebook on how to build a side hustle. Who are the people who will be interested in paying for it? Students, freelancers, and low-income group people are probably your ideal prospects.

Next, figure out who are the people within these groups who can afford to pay the price of your product. Evaluate all of these before you jump into pitching your offer.

2. Communication: Select the most effective way of reaching out to your customers. Are your prospects comfortable with a sales call, or does email marketing work better? Whatever it is, reach out to customers according to their convenience and not yours.

3. Pitching: This is the most crucial stage in the cycle. A great pitch can be a game-changer for your business. But what is a great pitch? Let us go back to the example of the e-book.

What is so compelling about your e-book that will motivate people to spend their bucks on it? What change will it create in their life? Create a convincing pitch that communicates all the USPs of your offer.

Don’t sell the e-book! Sell them a dream life where a few hours of extra hard work will pay for their next cozy vacation.

4. Closing the sale: All your previous efforts are useless if you cannot clear this stage. How do you ensure that the prospect is converted into a buying customer?

Create a sense of urgency and FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) in your prospect. Make your CTA (Call-To-Action) so strong that the potential customer cannot resist the urge to swipe their card. For instance, use an attractive early bird offer or convince them that your offer has a limited time period.

By now, you may have sold your product or service, but don’t ignore the final step of follow-up with the client. Don’t ditch your customers! Take their feedback and solve their problems. Give them a strong sense of satisfaction after purchasing from you.

If they are not happy, what can you do to ensure absolute satisfaction with the product or service? This is a question, answer, and solution you should prepare beforehand; even before making the sale.

For instance, a company sold a refrigerator to a client. A few months later, customer care received an email from the customer with a complaint about the fridge. The customer shares their experience with the fridge. It made loud noises because of which they had to turn off the fridge and turn it back on after 24 hours. As a result, their frozen foods were ruined. They incurred food loss, money loss, and regretted purchasing the fridge.

In this case, it is the company’s responsibility to make sure that all steps are taken to repair the fridge, free of cost. If this doesn’t work either then carry out product replacement with the same model or a better one, free of cost. It would be unfair to ask the customer to pay for the new replacement when the old one had defective issues within the same year of purchase and warranty period.

Not attending to this customer will lead to a catastrophic ripple effect of complaints and eventually shaming the company publicly. Customers have the power to go on social media and ruin a company’s reputation. This is a far more expensive reputation repair that the company will have to bear as compared to the fridge replacement.

Are You Setting Realistic Sales Goals?

“A goal properly set is halfway reached.” – Zig Ziglar

Never underestimate the power of goal-setting in sales! Your sales team will lack direction or clarity if you do not set specific goals for them to achieve.

• “Make $150,000 in sales by the end of the first quarter”
• “Host four webinars by the end of the second quarter”
• “Make 700 cold calls by the end of the third quarter”

All of these are nothing but examples of goals you can set for your sales team. But how do you know if your goals are over-ambitious or too easy to achieve?

First of all, you need to assess if your brand is currently in a situation to achieve the goals you are setting.

• How many prospects are currently in your pipeline?
• How many fresh leads are you getting per week/day?
• What was your previous year’s annual review?

Answering these questions will give you a realistic idea of your goals.

Next, assess if the market currently has a strong demand for your offer. Is there any potential for the demand to grow any sooner? How fast is your client base growing?

The most crucial step is to figure out the potential of your sales team. How long does it take them to close a deal? How many calls can they make per day? The more capable your sales team is, the more you can push your goals.

Lastly, figure out a middle path between what is possible and your expectations. However, make sure the gap between them isn’t too much. After thorough goal setting, you will have reached the perfect sales milestones for your business.

Now that it is clear how to set your goals, take a quick look at the kind of goals you can structure for your business:

• Annual goals: Annual goals allow your sales team to achieve them by the end of every year. For instance, make $1 million in sales by the end of the fiscal year.

• Quarterly goals: You can divide your annual goals into four equal parts and make each of them your quarterly goals. For instance, Make $35,000 in sales by the end of Q3.

• Individual goals: Individual goals make an effective way to track the performance of every member of your sales team. For instance, you can give each member an aim to close seven deals by the end of the week.

• Team goals: These are a great way to encourage “team spirit” and “collaboration.” For instance, make $750,000 as a team by the end of the fiscal year.

• Activity goals: These are indirect goals that will help you achieve your bigger goals in the long run. For instance, conduct 12 client meetings in a week.

• Stretch goals: These goals serve the purpose of giving your sales that extra push. For instance, if the actual goal is to make five client calls a day, the stretch goal could be to make eight calls. But make sure to give them that extra incentive.

• Relationship-driven goals: Sales are not just about the numbers. It is also about building relationships with your potential and existing customers. So also set these goals apart from profit-oriented objectives. For instance, conducting seven virtual coffee chats with clients by the end of the month.

Setting up these goals may also include factors like the different stages in your sales funnel.

How To Build A Sales Funnel?

“Approach each customer with the idea of helping him or her solve a problem or achieve a goal; not of selling a product or service”- Brian Tracy

Imagine you are selling customized merchandise on your website. A person visits your website, browses through it, and leaves without buying the T-shirt.

You just lost a lead from your sales funnel! Sounds terrible? But, what can you do differently to make sure you don’t lose another lead?

The solution is to build a solid sales funnel. If you already have a sales funnel, you need to fill in the gaps and optimize it. How do you ask?

Let us first understand the four stages of a sales funnel.

1. Awareness: Did your brand just tweet something out of the box or run a creative Instagram campaign? Congratulations!

You just won your potential customer’s attention! This is the first step of making people interested in your offer.

2. Interest: Brands are competing for attention, and you have to learn to grab it. Don’t push them away by shoving your offer on their face all the time!

Instead, try to genuinely help them out in making an informed decision with your brand content.

3. Decision: Now, is the perfect time to influence your audience to buy from your brand. What will make your offer so irresistible that you don’t miss out on a single lead?

It could be the perfect copywriting, a discount coupon, or simply the value of your product or service.

4. Action: Your prospects have reached the end of the funnel. But your work isn’t done here! You can perhaps club an additional complimentary offer with your existing offer.

Alternatively, you can give them a freebie to convert them into loyal customers. It all depends on your sales strategy!

Create Your Customised Sales Funnel Today…

How do you build your sales funnel fast? Here are four easy steps that are broken down for you:

1. Research target customers extensively. What motivates them or creates FOMO in them? What are their scrolling habits? How often do they click on a brand’s website?

2. Churn out valuable organic and paid ad content. Experiment with videos, text, images, memes, and infographics. Figure out whether your audience engages more with educational or entertainment or any other genre of content and create more of it.

3. Start an email campaign. Social media content isn’t enough to promote sales. You need to have a 1:1 conversation with your prospect over an email. Continue educating them about your offer and its benefits until they are convinced to buy from you.

4. The most crucial step is to build a captivating landing page. Your landing page is your digital showroom. Display your offer in the most attractive manner possible. Use the popular technique of emotions, logic, and urgency and have a very strong CTA.

Example Of An Effective Sales Funnel

Let us imagine you own an e-commerce store that sells neon or vintage signs. People usually in the age group of 18-25 are most probably your ideal audience. For example, they hang out on Instagram and Pinterest.

So, you can post pictures of stunning neon and vintage signs on these social media platforms or run paid ad campaigns to drive your target audience to your landing page.

On the page, you can ask your website visitors to subscribe to your mailing list. You can perhaps offer them a lead magnet like a free e-book with room decor inspirations (with vintage/neon signs).

Now, send in a weekly or bi-weekly newsletter to lure your prospects into buying from you. Maybe share some design inspirations, vintage sign aesthetics, tips on decorating rooms with these signs, etc.

At the end of every mail, you can include a compelling CTA of a 15% coupon code, and there you go! You have to build a customized sales funnel for your brand.

Do you want a quick customer retention hack? Add the people who buy from you to a new mailing list. Send them gallery inspirations for signs, Pinterest ideas, or how they can gift them to their loved ones. This will indirectly influence a second purchase.

Secrets To Make More Sales…

Making sales is more than just bombarding the customer with offers or creating great campaigns. You have to leverage the power of pricing if you want to make more sales.

Do you know about “psychological pricing”? It refers to influencing your prospects into believing that your offer is cheaper than it is, for instance, prices ending with 5 or 9 ($45 or $99).

You can even take advantage of “tiered pricing” to make more sales. For instance, you can sell two or more products together as a package and price it a little lower than the sum of their prices.

This will make your customers feel like they are getting a lot more value than they are paying. Will this not improve the chances of your sales? Other smart strategies can be limited-time offers, weekly deals, limited edition offers, etc.

Managing Sales Team to Target Customers and Beyond So Your Sales Team Can Make All The Difference

“Great salespeople are relationship builders who provide value and help their customers win” -Jeffrey Gitomer

If you want your brand to be a success, investing in the sales team will lead your company in the right direction. You have to build, nurture, and motivate a team that helps you hit all those revenue goals and more for your business.

Here are some tips:

1. Put your efforts into educating and training your sales team.

• Do they know how to make the best use of the software and resources provided by the company for effective sales communication?
• Do they have the required soft skills to communicate effectively with prospects?

Even if the answer is yes, there is always scope for improvement.

2. Give your salespersons sufficient incentives to hit their goals. Compensate for all those extra hours put in to close in on a client.

Be loud in appreciating your sales team as they achieve crucial milestones. Offer them career growth opportunities.

• Motivate your sales team at every next step.

• Did your client upgrade from a basic plan to a premium subscription?
• Did your one-time customer just convert into a retainer?

Reward your sales teams for all their achievements.

Five Tools That Will Make Your Sales Process 5x Easier

Your sales team will never be able to reach their full potential and further push it, without the perfect resources and tools.

Here are five sales automation tools your business needs today:

1. CRM software: As a brand, your job isn’t just to sell off as many offers. You need to focus on maintaining and enhancing those relationships as well as being a part of your customer retention strategy.

A CRM support system, along with automating all repetitive sales-related tasks will also provide real-time updates.

2. Sales intelligence and sales prospecting: Your sales team requires accurate customer data and insights to give their best performance.

This software can offer all the relevant information like purchase history, business objectives, digital footprints, etc.

3. Sales acceleration software: Can you imagine how many new clients you could close in a day if your sales cycle is shorter?

This software will automate all the technical tasks and streamline the sales process to speed up the closing process massively

4. Sales analytics software: You can improve the performance of your sales team rapidly with this software. It allows you to effectively track and evaluate their sales activities and sales campaigns.

5. Customer service software: Apart from your product/service, if there is anything people will remember your brand for, it is your customer service.

This tool can manage all the inbound and outbound communications of your business, resolve customer issues and make service delivery more efficient. It uses tools like a help desk, live chat, complaint management software, etc.

You can run as many marketing and branding campaigns as you want, but the core of your business boils down to sales. Investing in your sales team and activities is the best investment you will ever make in your business.

But do you know your sales, marketing, and branding activities are related to each other? We have covered all the relevant insights on this in our next chapter.

Disclaimer: Digitalz Pro Media & Technologies (P) Ltd. is a 360 Degree Marketing & Branding Company in Delhi NCR. If you want to take your brand to the next level, book your consultation now.

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