Every business understands the importance of sales and when you’re not hitting targets, it’s time to think about why that might be and what you can do about it.
Over the years, I’ve worked with over 250 businesses in and around Northamptonshire to help them increase their sales and achieve the growth they are looking for.
Key to that process, though, is a well-thought-out sales strategy, and that can sometimes be the barrier to success. All business owners want to grow their revenue; all sales- people believe they can sell to anyone. But without a clear strategy, that’s not necessarily a winning recipe.
The route to revenue
When someone invites me in to help them increase revenue, the first question is always to ask about sales strategy. Lots of ideas but no sales strategy just isn’t going to get you anywhere, because good processes are the bedrock of success.
Products, services, sales and marketing are all building blocks for business growth. You’ll hear a lot of salespeople say ‘I can sell anything to anyone’ but if you are looking to be successful you need to understand your target market and look at how your product or service meets their needs, their wants, or solves their problem.
Put simply, people buy from you because they have a need, a want or a problem.
If you can sell to anyone, how do you differentiate between a small company and a large company? The two will have very different needs, wants and problems and you will need to find different ways to help them.
Look and analyse
One of the first steps to a sales strategy is to consider your current client database and what your existing customers look like. Think about their needs and the issues they face, and what you’re doing for them, and that enables you to get a good handle on what works. Think about what you’re doing well already and try to work out from that who you should be targeting.
Think about how your goods or services help people resolve their problems or fill a need; ask yourself why they buy from you.
It’s also important to look at pricing and where you sit within in the marketplace. What is your competition doing? Are your prices too high, or are you undercutting yourself to get sales? There’s a difference between price and value, and both too high or too low can put your target market off.
Are you ready?
When a business has set its revenue goals and has all its plans and ideas on a piece of paper, it’s time to look at the practicalities.
If you know what you want your sales growth to be but haven’t looked at the capacity within the business to create that growth, you will come unstuck. A sharp rise in sales is fine, but do you have the capacity in your warehouse or production facility, or within other departments, to cope? It’s important to think about the impact on the rest of the business and whether it is in a position to help deliver the growth you’re aiming for.
Consider recruitment, staff training and upskilling, what approaches to use. If you have people who have been taking incoming orders and now you expect them to get on the phones and sell, that’s a whole new set of skills. Similarly, do you need to expand your sales team? That’s fine if you do, but consider carefully how big that team should be. What you don’t want is a lot of people who need training, or who are selling services your production team or warehouse can’t cope with.
Don’t be impatient
The main thing with a sales strategy is that you give it time. People can get carried away by what they see as a shiny new opportunity and put all their efforts into coming up with an amazing sales strategy and then discard it because it doesn’t have an immediate impact.
If you build your infrastructure, feel confident that you can cope with the scale of growth you are aiming for, and you tie it in with the work of the marketing department, so everyone understands what the goals are, it gives your business a synergy, a direction for growth.
Yes, it can take a while to start seeing results, but if you have measurables that show you’re going in the right direction, and you give the strategy time to work, you will see start to see sales skyrocketing.
The Sales Ace offers a free 60-minute sales review. Find out more on 01604 532004 or visit their website.
Founder
The Sales Ace
