This article talks about sales strategies and how you could increase your sales profits in less time. Prospects that turn you down will be addressed as well. Many sales professionals believe the most important thing is to have many prospects that have turned into deals, and they are right in a way since the sales world is a lot about that. But the number of those prospects that turn you down and don’t become leads is equally important. So, let’s see how a business can address them.
There’s a lot to learn from a No
Of course, it’s ideal for any business to close deals and make money out of them. But whenever a prospect says no, they’re sharing relevant information about themselves and the other prospects you need to research, your market, and how you could gain more time in your sales process. Research all this data further. Check the kind of companies that are opting out depending on the industry, region, size, and so on, as well as what positions the prospects saying no are occupying. Analyze this information, looking for similar results and behaviors. You will shorten the time you’re giving to leads research by knowing who will or won’t buy your product.
10 ways to creating a successful sales strategy
Here are the ten ways to develop the most successful sales strategy:
Include value proposition in your message
Most prospects don’t even know how to talk about the challenges they’re facing every day. This means that, regardless of how remarkable the product you’re selling might be, your buyers may not always recognize the real value it brings them or their organization. This is why you need to talk about your offer’s value in a persuasive message. Don’t just tout your product’s features and hope buyers choose you, as this approach would only lead to a competitive bake-off. Instead, talk about what you can do and why you are doing it better than others. Create that buying vision known to define new sets of challenges that align themselves with your specific strengths.
Create the need to change fast
Without even realizing, most companies are positioning themselves for a competitive bake-off on the benefits and features they’re bringing, answering the question “Why should I choose this?” for their prospects. This is a mistake because a significant proportion of the buyers out there would rather do nothing than change. If you want your sales strategy to be successful, you need to understand your competition and help your buyers decide on change (which involves choosing you, of course).
Tell a memorable and compelling story
Salespeople are trying as much as possible to get their facts straight before engaging in a conversation with prospects. However, even if they may have the most accurate statistics and data on them, their customers won’t resonate with offers if marketers are not telling a memorable story. Analogies, metaphors, and personal experiences are very compelling, way more compelling than presenting facts and statistics. When listening to a story, customers are getting a vivid picture of what they’re being told. The moment when they start thinking about their current situation and what’s possible connects your offer to their specific situation. Moreover, storytelling builds stronger, more rewarding relationships.
Address the problems, not the sales process
The sales process is nothing else but a set of repetitive steps used by a salesperson or a sales team to lead a prospect towards making a purchase. Usually, it involves the steps of prospecting, discovering needs, qualifying, negotiating, and in the end, closing. It would be ideal for you to follow this checklist, yet only if all your buyers would happen to be robots passing through an assembly line you have access to. To put it more simply, you need to be more problem-centric and less program-centric. You should focus on your customers’ specific needs as they arise through situational messages that are relevant and comprehensive.
Don’t make the mistake of relying on buyer personas
While, in theory, buyer personas and customer profiles sound extremely good, a successful sales strategy is usually based on collecting common demographic behaviors, attitudes, and attributes of the target audiences so that your messages are framed and aimed. When used superficially in the profiling approach, buyer personas can make your message sound confusing. Persona-based selling is assuming your target customers’ actions and behaviors, supported by the internal characteristic they’re having. Still, buyers are more motivated to make a purchase when their status quo is externally changed, and they have been convinced to make changes. Therefore, what drives your buyers’ behavior is the challenges in their situation. This means your sales strategy should be focused more on inconsequential attributes. Address your buyers’ situation and try to make them see how this situation is putting them at risk.
Don’t fall into the commodity trap
Many salespeople base their marketing messages on what needs they have been told their prospects have. After identifying certain needs, they’re connecting these needs to their corresponding capabilities. This is the standard selling solution. The thing is, such an approach puts you at risk of falling into the commodity trap, where you and your competitors are sending messages as a response to the exact same inputs. In other words, you start sounding just like everyone else out there. This leads your prospect to become indecisive and not at all interested in making a change fast. Your prospects have to be introduced to missed opportunities and problems they haven’t recognized. Their unconsidered needs can be addressed with your unique strengths. Tell them!
Lead by being insightful, not by asking discovery questions
Many salespeople are trying their best to be the trusted advisors of their buyers, whom they’re asking discovery questions to identify their needs and, after, to present them their solution that perfectly fits the criteria. This approach does both you and your buyer a disservice since it’s very confusing for the customer. What you should do is directly ask your customers what they want, and then assure them you will get it for them. This is what buyers are looking for in salespeople. They don’t want to feel they have been tricked into buying.
Align sales with marketing
Sales and marketing are very important departments in a company, each with their own goals that are compatible. Marketing is about creating the tools and messages for generating leads, whereas the sales team uses these messages and tools to turn leads into profits.
Focus your sales strategy on customer expansion
Most of the time, marketing and sales teams spend a lot of time and money on demand generation and customer acquisition. In the meantime, a lot of your revenue is very likely generated by your existing customers to which you’re either upselling or making renewals for. Use customer acquisition to challenge the status quo so that the benefits of changing to your solution are highlighted. Customer retention and expansion should be about reinforcing your position as a status quo with your old buyers from whom you generate most of your annual revenue, so don’t forget to focus your sales strategy on them.
Make situational training a habit
If you want to be as efficient and effective as you’re supposed to be in today’s market, it’s essential that your sales training is a lot about situational relevance, customization, and whole new levels of flexibility. Use on-demand and flexible training modes that enable you and your time to solve problems as they’re occurring.
Conclusion
By acknowledging how important these steps are for your sales strategy, as well as by taking your time to do more advanced research on your prospects so that you don’t contact the wrong ones, you will notice at the end that you have gained much more time and saved a lot of money along the way.
By taking more time doing more scrupulous research and being pickier about who you want to contact, you actually gain time at the end of the race. You will only contact people that are interested and are likely to become closed deals.
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