2022 is coming to a close. To start off 2023 strong, it’s time to think Q1! 

And like any entrepreneur, you’re probably focused on what you and your team can do better—especially when it comes to sales. 

Understandably, it can be quite daunting following up on a great (or not-so-great) sales year. But with the right strategies in place, nothing is impossible. 

So whether you are looking to reinvigorate sluggish sales or blow last year’s number out of the water, here are three expert-backed tips to make it happen.

Let’s jump right in! 

3 Powerful Tips To Jump-Start Your 2023 Sales

Tip #1: Get your team in tip-top shape 

 Big sales goals call for a top-notch sales team.

Start by taking an objective look at your current roster. List down their strengths and weaknesses. From there, you can determine which ones can take on bigger roles and which ones will need additional training. 

This is also the time to see whether or not you’ll be needing new recruits to fill in certain gaps that are keeping your team going from good to great. 

Bonus tip: It’s much more cost-efficient to invest in existing talents than to keep hiring new ones, so see what you can improve in your current team before expanding. 

Check out Why Sales Network’s Training Lab for online courses and up-skill classes! 

Tip #2: Automate what you can

 To take your sales to the next level, you’d want to focus your team’s time on revenue-generating tasks as much as possible. 

But the reality is, there is also plenty of administrative work that needs to be done to make sure operations are running smoothly. 

What’s the solution? Automation! 

Automation tools can take care of repetitive, time-consuming tasks for your team. Everything from data entry all the way to prospective research can be automated nowadays! 

With these on autopilot, your team can now fully dedicate their time to prospecting, closing deals, and other critical tasks that move you closer to your sales targets. 

Bonus tip: Not all automation tools are made equal. Take some time to research the different types of tools available for the function you need (you can start here). From there, thoroughly assess which ones meet your team’s requirements. 

Tip #3: Invest in a sales mentor

Breakthrough sales are not only achieved through technical skills. 

They also require the right mindset, behavior, and inner work that allows a salesperson to show up as the best that they can be.

However, you can’t learn these from textbooks. These are things that either take 5, 10, or 15 years to develop in your practice. 

To fast-track the process…invest in a sales mentor!

A good sales mentor can help you skip much of the trial-and-error and jump straight to adapting the inner work that actually leads to success. Plus you get tips and tricks of the trade that can skyrocket your sales in no time!

Bonus tip: Not enough resources at the moment? No worries! Why Sales Network’s blog offers an arsenal of insights from industry-leading mentors in the world of sales—and you can access them all for FREE! Bookmark this page for easy access.

Wrapping up

Getting off to a strong start puts you and your sales team in the best position for a lucrative year ahead. So be sure to follow our tips above to secure it!

If you have any questions or comments, we would love to hear from you!  Leave us a comment below or reach out via our contact us page.

If you are one of the top sales agents in your company, then you’re likely about to be offered a sales commission plan—if you haven’t already. According to the Boston Consulting Group, the employees who are happiest and most likely to stay with the company for a long time are those who feel appreciated. And what better way for a company to show appreciation than by offering its top performers a competitive compensation plan?

This offer helps both you and the company. As an employee, you are rewarded for the outstanding performance and effort you put into your role. For the company, it’s a way to motivate and inspire loyalty in a dedicated agent. And when an agent is happy, they continue to deliver quality results.

If you are currently being offered a sales commission plan, congratulations! You are on top of your game! But that doesn’t mean you should accept it right away. Take some time to do research on the different options, compare offers, and choose the one that gives you the most value. You may be tempted by fancy On-Target Earnings (OTE) but hold your horses! Before you say yes to a sales commission plan, here are 6 factors to consider.

1. How and when are you getting paid?

You want to maintain a consistent cash flow. To do that, you need to know how you will get paid, and how often. Different companies may offer different policies. If your payout is set on a quarterly basis with 50% incentive pay, then your cash flow isn’t going to look great. Target at least 30% to 60% incentive pay every month.

2. Ramp policy

Most companies offer a ramp period of 2-3 months where you get paid the incentive pay in full while you train and learn about the business. Find out the percentage of guaranteed incentive pay you’ll get in the first month, second month, and so on.

3. Revenue vs non-revenue goals

Getting incentives based on closing deals tends to be more secure—after all, closing is your main job as a salesperson. Plus, closures usually get higher commission rates than other non-revenue components. If a firm says you will be paid greater than 20% of your incentive through opportunity generation, that’s a potential red flag!

4. Bookings vs invoices

As much as possible, opt for a commission or compensation plan that is based on bookings rather than invoices. In bookings, you get paid for closing the deal, and then you can securely move on to the next one. With invoices, you get paid only after the customer has paid the company.

5. Advanced commissions

Some sales are seasonal. You may close several deals during holidays but very few to none during the other months. In this case, ask your employer if you can take an advance on your commissions during off-season months, which will be later deducted when you earn your commissions.

6. Sales cycle

Your sales cycle can vary depending on what you will be selling. Some cycles are less than 3-6 months while others can be as high as a year. Clarify this with the HR team so you know what to expect at the onset.

Conclusion

There you have it—the 6 things that you should take into consideration before accepting a sales commission plan! A good plan is a great way to keep your cash flow steady, instead of waiting for a big payday every quarter.

Make sure your expertise and dedication get the comp plan they deserve. Take your time to compare the offers, dig deeper into all the details, and never hesitate to ask for clarifications. We hope this helped!

We all have different reasons for pursuing careers in sales, but we can’t deny that most people are in it for financial security! Sales can be a highly profitable venture if you play your cards right and pour your heart into your work. But money shouldn’t be the only thing compelling you to set foot in this highly competitive industry.

There are many unique advantages and benefits you can get from being a salesperson. So with that being said, today we’re here to give you nine reasons why you should consider becoming a professional salesperson. Ready to find out what they are?

Reason #1: You’ll Learn Valuable Career Skills

Perfecting your craft as a professional salesperson will no doubt expand your arsenal of skills and techniques. If you decide to switch careers, you’ll find that many of the things that you learned in sales will help you greatly, regardless of what field you want to try out next!

Because of the nature of sales, most salespeople will excel in these skills…

• • Interpersonal communication
  • Persuasion
  • Problem-solving
  • Versatility
  • Creativity

…and many more!

If you want to challenge yourself and come out a well-rounded individual, becoming a professional salesperson can help you achieve that goal!

Reason #2: You’ll Build Valuable Connections

As a professional salesperson, you’ll undoubtedly have to deal with various individuals and groups of people. Many of them may not stick around in the long term, but if you make a lasting impression, they could still remember you and seek you out down the road—or even recommend you to their colleagues.

And if you have a hand in important projects or deals, those may just open opportunities for you in the future! You never know how the people you meet could push you to greater heights, whether in your career or just as a person.

Reason #3: It’s a Highly Accessible Profession

This may come as a surprise to some, but becoming a salesperson is actually a lot easier than it seems.

Why? Because most sales positions usually don’t require specialized training, or even a college degree! While there are certifications and courses you can take online that will help boost your credibility, they aren’t a hard requirement. 

You can start your career as early as today! All it takes to succeed as a professional salesperson is having a genuine passion for sales, the right mindset, and a solid work ethic.

Reason #4: You’ll Travel A Lot

Want to see the world and explore all of its hidden gems? Become a professional salesperson! No, seriously. To explore new markets, network with potential clients and partners, and maintain relationships with other businesses, you will often have to meet them where they are.

It isn’t a vacation—but if you love sales, it might as well be!

Reason #5: You’ll Face Challenge After Challenge

Are you someone who thrives under pressure? If that’s the case, then you’ll love being a professional salesperson.

Thriving and excelling in sales isn’t easy. You will always be pushed out of your comfort zone, and have to face different kinds of people and challenges that will test your skills and wit. But overcoming all these challenges comes with a unique sense of satisfaction at the end of the day.

Plus, a lot of sales departments give hefty bonuses to high performers!

Reason #6: You’ll Learn to Handle Rejection Better

You will not close every deal and sell to every customer you meet. That’s perfectly fine—rejection is a normal part of the sales process. But you’ll be able to handle it better each time, not to mention that each rejection teaches you valuable lessons about listening to your customers and finding out the true reason behind the “no.”

In the initial stages of your sales career, it may be difficult and there may be some hard feelings. But after a while, you’ll find that you can deal with it and bounce back with a positive attitude and an even better work ethic!

Reason #7: You’ll Have a Clearly Defined Career Path

When you pursue a career in sales, you can be sure you’ll never feel lost. The path ahead can be flexible, but it is clear.

From the minute you set foot into sales, you can begin to work your way up the ranks as you aim for a management position. Or, you can make a lateral shift into business development once you’ve gained enough experience. And as we mentioned previously, the skills you learn in sales can help you in most any other career you choose!

Reason #8: You’ll Help Other People

A truly great salesperson is passionate about helping people. After all, sales isn’t about making the sale itself, but showing your customer the value they can get from your offering. And from pitching to implementation, you’ll be right there to help them make the most out of their purchase.

Think of it like this; every time you convince someone to buy from you, you’re actually helping them by providing them with an effective solution to their problems—all while earning a nice payday for yourself. It all works out!

Reason #9: Sales Can Be a High Paying Profession

Sales is a pretty stable profession. After all, it’s the lifeblood of any company’s revenue-generating efforts. But top performers are very desirable to other companies—which means they often get enticing benefits and other bonuses. While it depends on how hard you work to get results, make no mistake—there is a tremendous upside here.

And once you’ve figured out the sales process, you can easily build momentum and keep closing more deals. You can earn a lot of money from commissions, on top of your monthly base salary. 

Final Words

Sales is not for everyone. But if you’ve been on the fence about it, consider this your sign to dive in! Sales can be an amazingly fulfilling career.

And if you’re looking for a little guidance to help you get started or to level up your skills as a sales professional, keep an eye out for more blogs from Why Sales Network!

The multitude of digital innovations over the past decade have been causing paradigm shifts in the business world. The world is more connected, and many sales processes have been streamlined with new technologies. But despite all these changes, the goal of all businesses is the same: to increase revenue. We still want to make as many sales as possible, optimizing the sales process so you spend fewer resources for each sale. It’s quite a simple principle to follow, yet a lot of sales teams still struggle to apply this in their operations.

Why? Because many businesses fail to realize that convenience and productivity are not a package deal. Just because you can reach more prospects, doesn’t mean that you are connecting with them meaningfully. And in upping your sales productivity, it really all boils down to quality over quantity.

So how do you increase the sales productivity of your team in the new business landscape?

Setting (Realistic) Sales Goals

Without practical, specific, and attainable goals, your sales team will be dead in the water before they can even begin. A lack of structure or purpose can be demotivating: people achieve higher levels of success when there is a concrete standard to strive for.

Goals are also useful tools for assessments, aside from being powerful motivators. This is why in setting your team’s business goals, make sure to arrive at a criterion that is realistically aligned with where your business is currently at and the capabilities of your sales team. This way, you can easily glean insights on how you can continuously improve, regardless of whether you reached the goals you set.

Understanding the Value Your Business Provides

The key to making sales is in how you communicate the value that your business and brand provide.

And not just you: you also need to make sure your team members are experts on your services or products. They will be making sales, convincing customers why they need your offerings, and dealing with possible touchpoints for customer rejection. They cannot communicate your brand’s value if they don’t understand it themselves. 

Ensuring this will help you establish a systematic approach to doing sales pitches, and also serve as a confidence booster for your team. And the more confident your team is, the smoother they can communicate with prospective customers.

Embrace Automation

Repetitive tasks that eat up time you can devote to sales have long plagued most teams. Digital marketing and business software can help you offload these tasks and maximize your resources, so it’s about time you embrace them. With the tools available today, you can schedule social media content and ad postings, qualify prospects, send drip email campaigns, and follow up on customers, so your team can focus on the work that still needs a more human touch. 

It’s also worth noting that various automated data analytics tools are also readily available to help you keep track of your team’s performance. By embracing these tools, you can efficiently identify specific performance gaps and make substantial improvements to increase your business’s productivity. 

Remember that in today’s fast-paced business and sales environment, there are so many moving parts that even a team can be overwhelmed. To prevent them—and you—from succumbing to burnout, you should use all the tools at your disposal.

Acknowledge Your Team’s Progress

Make no mistake about it—sales can be incredibly stressful and taxing. You can implement all sorts of efficient and up-to-date strategies to increase productivity but still fall short in making a sale. That’s okay. 

Sales work is all about constantly adapting to the changes in the market and embracing mistakes as stepping stones to overall growth.  

This is why, beyond the actual sales work, it’s essential to take care of your most important resource: your team. 

Make it a point to praise any progress they make, no matter how small they are. This shows them that you genuinely care about their growth and empathize with their struggles. 

After all, a team can’t be productive if they’re not motivated.

Conclusion

Quality over quantity.

 Times may change, but the battle cry will always remain the same. The road to making profitable sales is a long one, and you won’t get too far if you constantly put the idea of hard work on a pedestal.

 Focus on nurturing a solid growth process for your team and seek out new opportunities to see ideal sales results in no time!

“A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.” —Michael LeBoeuf

Customer acquisition is crucial to any business—your customers and sales make your revenue! But making sales isn’t easy, especially with such a tight economy and a competitive market.

The key for your business to thrive and flourish is to earn repeat business. Why? Because up to 80% of your future profits can come from 20% of your repeat customers! Customer retention plays a huge role in growing your business, not only because of revenue but also because happy customers are more likely to spread the word about your business and bring in even more customers.

There are many strategies businesses use to gain repeat customers. Some of them work, and some are a waste of time—and could even cost you. While it’s good to try out different techniques and figure out what works for your business, in this blog we’ll be giving you 4 surefire ways to turn your regular customers into loyal supporters!

Give exceptional customer service.

Customer experience should be at the forefront of your customer retention strategies. The key to making your customers come back for more and earning their loyalty is by giving them an excellent experience—which entails knowing their needs and wants, and understanding how they think. You know the saying; treat the customer as if you are the customer.

Try to connect with them and offer assistance even beyond making the purchase. This way, you build trust for your brand and establish yourself in their minds as a place where they are assured of good service—not just endless sales talk. When you master this step, it will be no surprise when they keep coming back for more.

Use personal communication channels

One way to make your customers feel closer to your brand is to use more personal communication channels. This can be through social media, or even through texts or calls for very long-term customers.

Don’t limit yourself to formal channels like email. While these are effective, informal channels make your brand seem more available and accessible to them should they have any inquiries about your services. And when they feel more at ease interacting with you, they are emotionally more open, and it’s easier to garner their trust and loyalty.

Reward loyalty

One way to gain repeat customers is by having events and deals that reward loyalty. If your customers are already getting a good experience and good service, the cherry on top would be the promise of an exclusive reward that they can’t get anywhere else. Rewards also make customers feel special, which strengthens their emotional connection to your brand.

Loyalty programs don’t always look like stamp cards; some of the most common ones we see in online businesses and shops today are points systems. Now, you don’t need to implement a point system in your own business if it doesn’t fit, but you should understand why it works so well. The top reason is that points are easy to earn and easy to spend. Don’t make your customers jump through hoops; if they can passively earn rewards just by doing business with you and availing of your services, it encourages them to keep coming back.

Keep them posted

Keep all your customers updated on new events or products. This ties in with customer service; respond quickly and send them important updates, taking care not to spam them, so that you build trust and rapport, and make your brand seem more available.

And if you have enough customer data and you’ve done the research, you can also personalize your updates to customers based on previous products that they’ve bought or shown interest in. This way, they add new products to their list of tried-and-tested favorites.

Conclusion

There you have it—the secrets to getting repeat customers for your business! As a salesperson, you should remember that your customers should be at the heart of all your strategies. Customer loyalty is one of the most important things you need to take your business to success.

There are many traits that a competent business leader should possess, but self-confidence should always be near the top of the list.

Why? Because having confidence in yourself is absolutely necessary if you want to realize your full potential as a leader. Here are some reasons why you should develop and maintain a healthy level of self-confidence.

It Commands Respect

Have you ever worked with someone who sometimes looked like they didn’t know what they were doing? Didn’t that make you feel uncomfortable, not knowing whether or not that colleague of yours could be depended upon when the time comes?

Good business leaders should be able to command respect from their subordinates. Being confident in your abilities will make it easier for you to inspire others to follow your lead without hesitation. Your team needs to know that you can be trusted to deliver excellent results time and time again.

It Creates Opportunities

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” — Wayne Gretzky

Running a business means having to constantly find and close deals with potential clients or business partners. Here’s the thing, you have to accept the fact that you won’t be able to close all of these deals. But if you’re confident in yourself and in your company, then you should keep pursuing new business opportunities.

You can’t let your past failures deter you from achieving success in the future. Because if you want to keep your company afloat, you need to constantly create more opportunities for growth. And that will only happen if you are tenacious and determined.

It Enables You to Make Decisions (And Stick to Them)

As a business leader, you will have to make a lot of crucial decisions. So with that in mind, it is imperative that you commit to each and every decision that you make. 

There is no room for half-hearted decision-making when you’re a CEO. Everything you do can and will affect the direction of your company. That is why it is very important that you are confident enough to make well-informed decisions that minimize risk while maximizing the potential for reward.

In business, success has always been attributed to a leader’s ability to create a well-defined strategy for gaining profit. A good plan is crucial when it comes to long-term success in any endeavor, and it’s important to mention another relevant factor that ultimately determines whether a plan succeeds or fails—research.

What is research?

Simply put, it is a systematic investigation of pertinent information. Research is an integral part of any strategy because without the right data, your plan won’t be able to cover the important bases.

You’re probably familiar with the phrase, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Perhaps, in your other endeavors, this has long been the mindset that you and your team follow when utilizing proven strategies to attain your desired outcomes. Unfortunately, no matter how practical and universal this mindset may seem, it can’t always be applied to a business setting, especially if you’re aiming to sustain your brand’s market relevance for generations to come.

Is reinventing the wheel really ineffective? Why is that? It’s because the market is constantly evolving. Year in and year out, innovations and trends come into play, dictating the overall complexity of the market and the industries within it.

Consider the world’s shift into the digital age, for instance. Easy access to a wide range of information and content has completely changed the way people construct their market preferences. Gone are the days when attention was simply a cheap resource.

And what about the expansion of social media into a full-scale business platform? It wasn’t too long ago when the likes of Facebook and Instagram were used only for digital communication between family members, friends, and acquaintances. Nowadays, it’s unfathomable for a business not to have a social media presence.

This is why conducting market research is so necessary. The business strategies that have worked for you in the past provided optimal results simply because they were aligned to the market trends and dynamics of that period.

By having a thorough understanding of the business playing field today, you will be able to quickly identify and make the most of any and all opportunities that come your way. More importantly, you’ll be able to determine critical market threats as well as performance gaps that need fixing. This way, appropriate strategic adjustments can be made to ensure your brand establishes a stable footing in this constantly evolving business environment.

At the end of the day, the market will never adjust to you. The true measure of long-term business success is in your willingness to adapt to trends. Keep in step with the changes or watch your business fall into irrelevancy.