5 strategies To Improve your Company’s Sales Performance

Chomwa Shikati
Aug 9, 2017 · 3 min read

Whatever Industry or business venture you’re in, Sales is a big part of your business and in today’s markets anything can happen that will affect your sales. In a blink of an eye new competitors emerge, new products better than yours are released and suddenly it’s a tumble downhill. What worked yesterday may not work at all today in regards to sales. This may be an ideal time to learn how to improve your sales.

For a little guidance, I bring to you 5 lessons I have picked up on my journey from immensely successful Sales experts who have made millions for their firms.

Set SMART Goals: What are SMART goals? SMART goals are an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely goals. Here’s an example of a SMART goal: to increase sales from cloth line B by 60% in the last two quarters of 2017. A non-SMART Goal example would be: to increase sales.

A key element of setting SMART goals is that you can check in periodically to see if you’re on track. If you’re not, it may be time to change tactics. Once you have the SMART Goals in place it’s time to move to the tactical level to figure out your plan to achieve your goals.

Sell to customer needs: Always assume a potential customer will only buy what they need. How can you convince them of that need? Emphasize the features of your product or service that reduce costs and solve problems for the customer. You need to start being creative in your marketing.

Increase Social Media interactions: Social media interactions are a measure of how relevant your product, content, Brand is and a measure of your perception as a thought leader in your industry. If your business is not on social media then you’re not achieving your maximum sales.

Social media will allow you to interact with your customers. This will help you learn more about what the customer needs and you can focus your marketing efforts towards their needs. Social media interactions will spread your message beyond your immediate network to the followers and connections of the people interacting with your content. Set daily interactions goals. For example, we will interact with 4 customers a day; that is 20 customers in a 5 day week and 100 customers in a 4 week month.

Increase LinkedIn and website referral leads: For B2B companies, LinkedIn social selling effort is becoming a requirement for sales success. LinkedIn social selling is not direct selling but if done correctly social selling can lead to interest in you and your company and this will lead to an increase in sales. Start participating in groups and offer help to solve people’s problems and occasionally share your company’s content. Demonstrate your value and knowledge in your industry and hopefully, people in your sphere of influence will view your profile, visit your website and convert as leads.

Start getting referral Sales: Referral sales are the consequence of providing excellent service to your customers and should be included in any business development plan. After providing an excellent service and have achieved good results for your customer, set up a review process which will let you get more referrals. Sit down with the customer and ask them what you did right and what went wrong in order to improve your business service. Not a lot of companies are doing this. At the end of the review you can simply ask ‘Do you know anyone else who can use and benefit from our services?’. Doing so consistently can lead to a significant improvement in sales.

Do you know other ways of improving and increasing sales in a business? Comment and leave your thoughts below.

Chomwa Shikati

Written by

A Lamp Lighter (cshikati@gmail.com)

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