Despite what many online sales gurus profess, there is no magic-wand approach to sales. You cannot simply implement one strategy from scratch and watch as it takes off. Boosting your company’s performance and increasing sales comes from thorough, incremental implementation of proven processes, which will pay off over time.
Whether you are on the cusp of launching a new product and want a strong performance out of the gate or have an existing product you want to boost the sales for, these are the five strategies you need to increase your product sales.
Use a CRM
A customer relationship manager (CRM) is essential for managing your business’s relationship with existing clients and maximising sales. A good CRM will crunch your sales data, generating more prospective customers, identifying opportunities to increase deal sizes and highlighting inconsistencies.
Use Spiro to improve your sales and effectively manage your sales processes and customer relations.
Accurately Define Your Customer
Defining your customer is essential for targeting the right demographic and knowing how to market your product effectively. Your CRM can help you do this, but even if you aren’t using CRM software, anybody can effectively identify the average age, financial situation, living arrangement, sex and education of their target demographic.
Once you have a strong idea of your typical customer avatar, you can come up with an effective marketing strategy that will reach a large pool of potential customers. Without this sense of identity, your marketing strategies will amount to little more than shooting in the dark.
Build an Extensive Subscriber List
An extensive mailing list is a key part of boosting sales. After all, you could have the best product with a huge discount, but if nobody knows about it, it won’t translate into increased sales.
One of the best ways to build a mailing list is to use opt-in limited time offers. These limited-time offers create a sense of urgency, compelling existing and potential customers to sign up to your mailing list.
Once you have your mailing list, you then need to use it effectively. Send your subscribers useful information (no clutter). This could be in the form of insightful blog posts about your industry or products or it could be in the form of deals, discounts and offers. Think about what would make you open an email and click on the link inside, then apply that to your weekly or monthly email newsletters. You can also avail the services of a mailing list management software to help you reach your target audience easily. Having your customer base segmented into different groups can help you direct your email marketing efforts to the right audience collectively. This in turn can improve customer satisfaction and reduce chance of people opting out of your mailing list.
Go Mobile-Friendly Online
A recent study found that 28% of North American consumers shop from their mobile devices, and this figure is rising. If your online store isn’t mobile friendly, you are missing out on a significant number of sales (162 million to be exact).
Your site design, page speed, and store structure should all be mobile-friendly, contact your website provider to see if you can increase mobile optimization by storing personal information to save returning customers time.
Targeted advertisements on social media platforms people use on their devices, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat will mean mobile users are finding your products and purchasing them directly from their phones.
Place Your Competitive Advantage Front and Center
Your product solves a problem. There is a clear reason behind it, and a reason why your product is different from everyone else’s. This message should be shouted from the hilltops. Customers who stumble across your product, be it on a webpage, in a customer review, on social media, or in your advertising, should immediately recognize what problem your product solves, and the reasons they should buy your product and not that of your competitor.
Adopting these five strategies to boost sales will increase your company’s performance, regardless of the industry or product. They are time-tested, proven strategies that build good general sales practices and should be the cornerstones of any effective sales strategy.
