A strong sales strategy helps create an organized approach to maximize sales of your business. Sales strategies are generally driven by underlying assumptions about a business’s competitive advantage, with the primary goal of gaining new customers and keeping existing ones. It is essential to consider various aspects of your company’s product and marketing mix in order to optimize your overall sales performance, including your brand image and the effectiveness of your sales process.
Here are some of the most critical components that a good sales strategy should include in order to increase your cash flow.
1. A Complimentary Mix of Products and Services.
In general, your company should include products and services which complement each other, while catering to the core requirements of your target market. While it may take additional time to conduct extensive market research to find out what your target audience is looking for, you can get a sense of the type of products and services they would be likely to purchase from your company. It will also help you get a sense of ancillary or “add on” products and services that will increase a client’s spend with your company without hurting your bottom line. Running a competitive analysis of who else is in your marketplace also allows you to see how and what your competition is offering and how they are marketing products and services to your target audience, which leads us to the next component.
2. A Strategic Marketing Strategy.
During the strategic planning process for your business, it is very important to hone into your brand image and key messaging. As a precursor to crafting your positioning and messaging statements, conduct a SWOT Analysis. A SWOT Analysis is a simple, yet effective assessment for analyzing the organizations strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It helps you build on what you do well, allows you address what you’re lacking and helps to minimize risks, and examines how external opportunities and threats relate to internal strengths and weaknesses and create a strategy for moving forward.
Next, create a positioning statement; a brief description of a product or service and target market, and how the product or service fills a particular need of the target market.
After conducting a SWOT analysis and creating a positioning statement, the next step is to create Core and Key Messages for your products.
Core Messages are:
- Specific to the organization
- Define who you are
- Define what you do
- Define who you do it for
- State how you do it differently than the competition
Key messages are the main points of information you want your audience to hear, understand and remember. They serve as the foundation of the organization’s branding and marketing efforts and should be reflected in all written and spoken communications.
Effective brand positioning, core messaging and key messaging helps your sales and marketing teams understand how to overcome sales objections and differentiate your products and services in the marketplace.
3. A Customer Relationship Management System.
It is vital that a business has a good customer relationship management (CRM) system to manage a business’s customer database. By using the information in the database to provide timely information on existing and potential customers, you will help your sales team to increase their efficiency, while reducing costs. Training your team and creating systems for using a chosen CRM allows sales teams to effectively monitor how customers are responding to sales pitches, whom to follow up with, when to make additional offers, and how to pivot messaging to make sure the right messaging is reaching the right customers at the right time.
4. A Strong Sales Force.
The backbone of your ability to sell includes your sales team. As your sales force continues to grow in size and complexity, your ability to effectively manage it grows as well. You must consider several issues which will enable you to manage your sales force efficiently: the structure of your sales staff, their skills, their compensation, the number of days you expect them to work and whether or not you intend to add more employees to the mix. Looking for salespeople familiar with your business area is helpful. You may consider hiring people who are passionate about a product or service area and train them in sales, as they will evangelize your product and service offerings in a more robust way than someone who is not as passionate or engaged in that area.
5. An Adaptive Business Model.
As your business grows, you will probably find yourself faced with a number of decisions which impact the way in which you do business, from the products you offer to the marketing mix you use. A good sales strategy will guide you through these decisions, making sure that you use the best strategy possible to maximize your company’s profitability. A successful business model is a living and breathing component of the business. It must be referenced, evaluated and reevaluated as the business grows and needs change.
There are many factors which contribute to the success or failure of any sales strategy. However, the most important thing is that you have an effective strategy in place that is capable of increasing your profits and minimizing costs, while also ensuring that you make the most of your existing customer base. All of the key points above assist in ensuring that your strategy is sound and well equipped to increase and enhance sales.
