10 Fast Ways to Generate More Sales this Month
Every busy entrepreneur has times when he or she needs a few ways to boost sales without having to spend time and money redesigning his entire business. Thankfully, there are many ways to generate more sales by focusing on key leverage points that can boost revenue.
Here are 10 fast and easy to implement ways to generate more sales this month.
1. Ideal Clients
Identify your ideal client and write a detailed description of his characteristics. Make sure to include company size, industry, reason for purchase and reason for urgency. You can also include geographic location, buying criteria and typical objections. Once you have a precise description you can refine your lead generation campaigns to target the very best prospects.
By focusing on the best prospects you’ll produce a higher ROI on lead spending and you’ll close sales more quickly. Most business owners are obsessive about getting as many sales leads as possible but the fastest way to grow a business is to insist on quality not quantity when it comes to lead generation.
You need to be very clear about who you can best serve and you need to know who is most motivated to buy right now. This one shift in outlook can produce higher sales very quickly.
2. Prospect Motivations
Different prospects have different motivations for buying your product or a competitive alternative. And the sooner you spot the primary motivation of your prospect the sooner you can speak in terms of what matters to him by tailoring your presentation to address his reasons for buying.
Prospects reveal their priorities by the questions they ask and by the non verbal responses they exhibit when you make different points. Pay close attention to these responses and you’ll know which product benefits to spend more time on and which ones to review more quickly.
The salesperson who adapts his message to each prospect will always out sell the salesperson who presents the same message in the same way to everyone he meets. Flexibility and the ability to focus on what matters most to the prospect will enable you to close more sales with much less effort.
3. Growth Companies
There is no reason to treat all companies and all industries as equal. The business world is comprised of companies that are growing and companies that are in decline, and we also have industries that are growing quickly while other industries are experiencing a long term decline.
The best prospect is a growing company in a growing industry because optimism and good cash flow encourage buyers to act decisively and quickly. This is especially true of high margin businesses.
When you target different industries, prioritize growing industries and prosperous companies before all other prospects. Sell to the very best prospects first!
4. Differentiation
Companies often make the same meaningless statements about how they believe in customer service, their people are their greatest resource and their mission is to be the leading player in their industry. These statements are so generic they can be said by any company and so they have no impact when it comes to differentiating a business.
It’s extremely important to differentiate your business from your competitors otherwise why should anyone listen to you? Why buy from you if there are a number of almost identical alternatives?
You need to communicate a company identity that is based on your genuinely unique strengths and you need to express those attributes in a way that resonates with the values of your clients. Be different or be ignored!
5. Existing Clients
The easiest and fastest way to make more sales is to sell to someone who already knows and trusts you i.e. your existing clients. It is far cheaper to make contact with your clients than to find new prospects yet too many companies obsess over finding more leads when they already have a database of clients who would pay attention to any new offers they make.
Stay in touch with your clients and make offers that are exclusively available to them. By having regular contact you are well positioned to better understand the needs of your clients and you also encourage a long term business relationship with repeat buying.
You can also ask your clients if they have urgent problems you can help them with. This approach can reveal new opportunities for products and services you would never have considered without their input.
If you get to know your clients’ needs better than your competitors you’ll improve your current products and spot opportunities for new products. And you’ll have a list of clients waiting to buy more from you.
6. Risk Reversal
When it comes down to it every transaction requires the prospect to make a decision that involves risk because he doesn’t know for sure if you can deliver on your promises and he can only hope he has considered all the facts and made a good assessment of how trustworthy you are.
For these reasons it’s the salesperson’s responsibility to remove risk from the decision he is asking the prospect to make. The best way to do this is to offer a performance and service guarantee, just make sure it’s highly specific in terms of what is covered. A well structured guarantee will prove you stand by the promises you make and it’ll also distinguish you from all the competitors who don’t have the courage to back what they promise.
View the guarantee from the prospect’s point of view. Does it remove all risk? Does it address his main concerns? Does it remove uncertainty from the purchase decision?
7. Special Offers
Every company can boost sales by running special offers at various points throughout the year. You can even design different offers for different lists.
- Make a special offer for cold leads as one last effort to make a sale without spending too much time on them.
- Make a special offer for good leads that are procrastinating and dragging out the sales process.
- Make a special offer for new leads to encourage them to pay attention to your marketing information.
The key is to always make an offer with a firm deadline and to give a reason for the offer. Unless you give an understandable reason for an offer it’s easy for the prospect to ignore it as just another marketing message but when the reason makes sense it encourages people to pay attention.
You can also schedule special offers to run with logical deadlines such as the calendar year end, the tax year end, the end of season, the pre-holiday period etc.
A good special offer with a firm deadline is a great way to thin the herd of prospects to reveal the few who deserve your attention right now.
8. Credibility
Today’s buyer has never been so well informed before making a purchase and you need to expect that any serious prospect will research both you and your business before committing to a major purchase. You must prepare for this by ensuring any online search will show you have credibility, a good track record and satisfied clients. There needs to be an ongoing campaign to maintain and boost your online presence.
Get informative articles published in industry magazines and websites, issue press releases to highlight company success stories and design your site with an emphasis on proof. You need to prove that you and your company are reliable and honest in your dealings. Use client testimonials, industry awards and reports of company growth to demonstrate this.
In an online world, credibility needs to be established before the sales presentation!
9. Payment Plans
Every industry has norms and most players blindly copy the industry leaders. This is especially true when it comes to payment terms. If everyone offers the same payment terms you may feel obliged to do the same but you don’t have to.
Consider offering alternative payment plans. You could offer a one time payment price or monthly billing that adds up to a slightly higher price, you could offer better service terms for a longer contract period or you could offer free upgrades for multi site contracts. There are many, many ways to be flexible with payment plans and contract terms and this flexibility can help you to close sales more quickly.
The price and how it’s paid can be an important negotiation tool that’s worth using to get the contract signed as soon as possible.
10. Higher Prices
Price is not the number one criteria that determines whether a prospect buys or not. It’s a key criteria but it’s typically less important than the ability of the vendor to deliver a product that meets the most important needs of the buyer. For this reason we often have more flexibility when it comes to setting prices than we sometimes assume, as long as we differentiate our product from the competition and we genuinely offer better value.
It’s always worth testing higher prices and using price to signal that you have a superior product. A higher price defines your product as different and better than cheaper alternatives so it compels people to pay attention to your pitch.
Use a price test to see what the market will bear, you’ll often be surprised to see how readily buyers will pay more for an excellent product especially if you use a guarantee to remove their perceived risk.
As we’ve just seen there are many ways to boost sales without redesigning your entire sales process. The key is to follow the money by asking a few important questions. Ask yourself what is already working? What kind of clients are already buying without resistance? Which products are selling with the least effort? Then do more of what is working well instead of trying to make the poor performers do better.
You always need to be asking yourself: how can I quickly expand what is working now? That’s where you’ll find the greatest potential for fast sales growth. But this is not what most business people do because they want all their products to be loved by everyone. This can lead to a doomed effort to be all things to all people.
It’s far more profitable to let the market tell you which products people want and to let the market reveal which type of clients most value what you have. You can then strategically neglect the products and market segments with poor growth prospects while investing more resources in the winning products and receptive market segments. You will always sell more and do so with relative ease when you swim with the tide and narrow your focus.
