Sales strategies are one of the most important pillars in any company to achieve good economic results and growth.
Sales strategies define the actions that will contribute to the company’s growth to achieve the expected profitability.
“Sales strategy is that type of strategy whose design is carried out in order to achieve sales objectives“.
Although this short definition indicates very well what sales strategies are, as I am going to tell you, this term goes much further.
Because this type of strategy is much more than simple planning, in fact, it must involve all the components of the company beyond the sales department to achieve greater effectiveness.
This is logical, since the more involvement there is on the part of everyone, the greater the effect will be achieved.
The life of the company depends directly on this strategy and, therefore, also on the jobs of all employees.
What to include in the development of sales strategies:
- Sales channels.
- Objectives of each channel.
- Implies by which every goal will be accomplished.
- The budget allocated to each channel and each sales action.
- Time dedicated to the development of each action.
- Type of actions to be carried out, frequency, and order in time.
- Analysis and correction tools.
A salesforce strategy allows the sales force to position the company and its products to reach customers in a meaningful and differentiated way.
What is the relationship between sales strategy and sales processes?
While sales strategies define how a company will achieve its sales objectives, sales processes indicate a series of actions that achieve more sales.
Key to success with sales strategies
For any sales strategy to be successful, we must take into account the 4 key factors that I am going to explain below.
Moreover, if we control these points, our sales strategies will surely be successful:
1.- Analyze, correct, and change
Dissect the return on initial (ROI) capital investment of every one of your activities: Discard those that provide worse profitability.
Try to improve those that may be worthwhile, seeing what has failed or what can be improved in the funnel or sales funnel.
2.- Optimize expenses
A penny well spent is a penny closer to your next customer. How to optimize costs? By analyzing, correcting, and changing your sales actions.
To find out which actions will bring you the best profitability, you can do the following:
Benchmarking: copying what the best do will never make you the best, but it will help you get closer to them.
Trial and error: try new ways to get customers and keep the most profitable ones.
3.- Increase productivity
Even if you correct your actions, keep the best ones and optimize your expenses, you can still optimize your productivity.
There are 2 principal ways of doing this:
Technology: the first thing to achieve to improve the profitability of a company is to promote the use of better and more advanced tools and machinery.
This will help to streamline processes and avoid having to hire more labor, which will be more expensive in the medium and long term.
Internal marketing: internal marketing is essential in a company if we want to improve the productivity of workers (who are our most important asset).
5 sales strategies that do not succeed
1. You think you have nothing to communicate
One of the main problems, when you want to get into the digital transformation, is that you do not have the creativity to communicate the problems you solve or the needs you satisfy, you simply decide to upload what you do, how you do it, and the details so that they contact you, however, in this digital world, the audience needs more than that, they need to feel identified and see an added value that makes you different from the competition.
In addition, it is important to know that people look for your product or service on the Internet despite having seen it physically, this is to gather more information such as product reviews, hence the great importance of communicating effectively in digital media.
2. You do not have a defined budget
Another factor may be not having well defined how much you want to invest financially in the implementation of any marketing strategy, so I share with you the analogy of the car; the car will only go as far as the gasoline allows, here the car is your company and gasoline refers to the investment in marketing, while the engine could be represented by you and all the people working together to make the company work.
3. Unwillingness to get involved
In this barrier we can find that some entrepreneurs see themselves as investors when it comes to developing marketing strategies, so they do not have complete communication to connect with customers, it is important to have that leadership, mission, vision, and values of the founders of the company.
4. Repeat cold calling
A whopping 81% of modern consumers start researching products using Google or another search engine. Customers have convenient tools to access information just a few clicks away. Use the time and resources you spent cold calling to improve your online presence.
5. Being too indirect
There is a difference between what the Harvard Business Review calls “selling under pressure” and being too indirect. With a low-pressure approach, salespeople still emphasize value and benefits. They make it clear that the product will improve their customers’ lives without selling it aggressively. Conversely, being too indirect can be interpreted as poor customer service or a lack of commitment, something customers hate.
5 Sales Strategies that do work
1. Loyalty programs
A loyalty program is an incentive program that rewards customers for purchasing certain products or services.
Customers can earn rewards by spending their money at your business. This can include free products or discounts on future purchases.
A loyalty program gives your business credibility by showing customers that you are willing to reward them for shopping regularly.
2. Cross-selling
One of the most powerful ways to increase sales is to cross-sell additional products.
You may have customers who bought tires, for example, and then you offer them other accessories such as an oil change or car wash.
Or, if you have a clothing store that offers several brands, it might be a good idea to cross-sell accessories; while your customer is buying pants, inform them that they can also buy ties and shoes online.
3. Mailing or email marketing
- You can’t sell what people don’t know about.
- Email marketing is a powerful way to reach potential customers.
However, don’t start sending emails until you understand how to use them effectively.
Communicating through email requires more work than other methods, but it can also be one of the most effective tools for generating sales.
- Participate in events as a sales strategy.
- Plan to attend trade shows and conferences relevant to your industry.
- Events are a great way to network, find new customers, and increase sales.
4. Social networking
If your product or service is particularly visual, find a way to showcase it on social media.
Don’t forget that people can share your content on their own profiles and through retweets or pins.
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest: choose which platform works best for your audience and create eye-catching, user-friendly images for them to share.
5. Center around interior development.
Our last deals and advertising plan is to zero in on outer effort as well as inward development. You can’t enough develop your business without the upkeep of your current client base. Track marketing projections consistently, checking all key presentation pointers.
Recognize what’s working and what isn’t to change your system depending on the situation. Keep your salesforce inspired with motivating forces, gathering normal input from all partners as you keep on developing.
