Category: Sales

The internet has paved the way for a new economy through its sheer size and explosive growth. It has led to existing business paradigms evolving in their entirety. In today’s competitive world, it is essential for any business to have an online identity. There are numerous businesses, including small business and medium sized companies, which have witnessed success by opting for e-commerce.

Here are the top 5 reasons why you should have a website for your Business

1. Brand Perception

Whether you offer your services or products online or not, it is essential to establish your brand image online. Nowadays, when people hear about a company and are interested in it, the first thing they usually do is search for it online; if it doesn’t have an online presence, it won’t be considered seriously. A corporate website can enhance your company’s image among your customers.

Market research indicates that around 67% of successful businesses have a website. Furthermore, about one-fourth of retail sales in 2012 were web influenced and the number has drastically increased since then.

2. Enhanced Customer Support

Customer retention is obviously something every business strives for. Good customer support is essential to retain your customers and increase customer satisfaction. The internet has made it easier for all businesses to connect with their customers and provide better customer support. The more effective the customer service, the higher your sales and profitability will be.

3. Reduced Costs

You can take any aspect or area of your business online, for example, procurement, shipping, billing, supply chain, etc. Reforming these processes through online systems will enable you to cut costs significantly. For example, you can decrease the cost of operation, repair, and maintenance by 5% if you adopt e-business solutions.

4. Doing Business 24/7

You can make sales even when you are sleeping! This is possibly the biggest advantage of have a website as your shop is open 24/7 all year round. Your customers can buy your services and products whenever they want to. This provides convenience to your customers, especially in the chaotic lifestyle we have adopted today. They can make a purchase decision quickly if it is providing convenience for them.

5. Keeping Your Customers Informed

Your website works as an online catalogue or brochure too. It is super easy and quick to update all the latest information regarding your services and products on your website as compared to print material. It is an effective way of informing your customers about the latest happenings in your company, launch of a new product/service/outlet, special promotions and discounts, upcoming events, and any other information you want to provide your customers. Unlike print ads, your website will always stay current and updated.

Aside from these five reasons, there are numerous other advantages of having a website for your business. It is much easier and cheaper to conduct business and even market your business online. It might require a bit of an effort at the start, but it is undoubtedly going to make a huge impact and enhance the success of your business. So, if you don’t already have a website, make one immediately and take your business to a whole new level.

To succeed, every business needs to develop a good sales strategy. However, good marketing is not the end of the effort. Instead, businesses should leverage good marketing for further development i.e. for planning and implementing a strategy to successfully sell to their customers. A deliberate, thoughtful activity, successful sales requires a process that you initiate repeatedly. 

Below are a few DIY sales strategy that you need to consider

In short, successful sales isn’t possible without an effective sales strategy. So, how do you create an effective sales strategy and what sales strategies do you include in it?

1. Plan Ahead

Without some planning and forethought, you cannot have a successful sales campaign. Before anything else, you need to list down the goals for your sales campaign. Once you’ve done that, set the parameters for your campaign i.e. how much you’ll spend on materials, which sales channels you’ll use, what special offers would you have during the course of the campaign and how long the campaign will run.

Be specific when setting your goals. A good thing to do would be setting the main goal and a stretch goal. For example, if your main goal is selling three thousand units of a product then your stretch goal could be selling five thousand units of the same product. Once you know your target, you will have a good idea of how long it’ll take for you to reach your goals. Moreover, you will have a good idea of how much money you should be ideally spending on your campaign.

Related:
Proven Sales Strategies

2. Consider the Type of Sales Strategy Your Business Needs

Businesses have to choose from two basic types of sales strategies: direct and indirect. If you go for a direct sales strategy, you will have to fight your competitors head on to win customers. Businesses using this strategy talk about each feature of the competitor’s product and then compare it to theirs. This is the reason a direct sales strategy is often referred to as ‘negative selling’. On the other hand, an indirect sales strategy involves the use of more subtle techniques to win customers and make sales.

Unlike the businesses using a direct sales strategy, businesses using an indirect sales approach demonstrate/promote features and benefits not offered by their competitors. An indirect sales strategy requires a lot of research and analysis to be successful.

3. Think About Ways to Motivate Your Sales Team

Once you’ve set the parameters for your sales campaign, you need to think about how you can motivate your sales team to make the campaign successful. Even the best-planned campaign will fail if you don’t have a motivated sales team. Offering extra compensation to the sales team can help you to make your sales campaigns successful. Of course, the easiest and probably the best way to motivate salespeople is by offering a cash bonus. For example, if the purpose of a sales campaign is to promote and sell more of a particular -product then a good strategy would be offering the sales team double commission for successfully selling that product.

Another strategy that could work well is setting up a contest where you offer the salesperson selling the most units of the new product a big bonus. If you’re short on cash, then you can offer some non-monetary rewards such as certificates and medals.

4. Define Your Target Market

Your sales success depends on how well you know your target market. You won’t be doing business with everyone. And even if you were, you’d have to start somewhere. To build up momentum in your sales campaign, you need to have a specific target area or market. This is the area or market you need to focus on. It is important that your target market is big enough. Your odds of success will decrease if your target market is too small. To have the numbers working in your favor, you may have to combine two similar target markets.

The ease to launch an online store has significantly increased the number of businesses competing against each other online. Having a winning sales strategy is extremely important for businesses wanting to boost sales and achieve customer success. To smooth out the bumps and make revenues incredibly predictable, you need to have a strategic plan to increase sales. Even a slight increase in sales will allow you to experience downstream benefits. So, having the right sales strategy in place is crucial. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to spend excessive amounts of money to increase your sales and grow your business. There are some affordable yet effective sales strategies that you can use to trigger increased sales and business growth.

Below are Proven Sales Strategies to Increase Sales

1. Offer A Single Product or Service on Your Home Page

Do you sell countless products or services on your website? If yes, then it’s recommended that you revisit this sales strategy of yours. According to the experts, the fewer products you have in one place, the more likely you are to make a sale. Though, it’s crucial that you use the additional space available to you to describe the products in more detail. Kissmetrics outlines this situation perfectly in their article https://blog.kissmetrics.com/too-many-choices/ “Are you losing sales by giving customers too many choices”.

The aforementioned- strategy is all about focus. Rather than offering a large range of products with little detail about each product to please every visitor to your site, you choose to offer one product with more detail about it to remove the doubts of your most valuable visitors and convince them to buy your product. Now, this does not mean that you stop selling your other products. You can always use follow up offers or the other web pages to offer them to your customers. However, to be 100% sure that this strategy will work with your target audience, you need to test it. Only after testing will you know whether offering a single product or service on your home page is an effective sales strategy.

2. Use AD Extensions to Get More Clicks

Ad-extension is a no-brainer if you’re selling stuff online. Available in both Bing and AdWords, this feature ‘extends’ your ad and give people more options to click. Without costing you anything extra, ad-extension increases the click-through rate of your ad. Isn’t that amazing? Following is an example that’ll help you understand this better.

In the aforementioned-example, people looking to buy a new pair of Ray-Ban have two places other than the main link to click on. The two-additional links are ‘Men’s sunglasses’ and ‘Women’s sunglasses’. By saving them a step, the additional links make it faster and easier for potential customers to find exactly what they want. This in turn prevents them from going to a competitor’s site. In the end, this increases your chances of making a successful sale, making the use of ad -extensions one of the best sales strategies.

See also:7 Sales Strategy Templates You Wish You Had Earlier!

3. Offer A Personalized Experience

By offering a personalized experienced to your prospects or visitors to your site, you will increase your chances of making a sale. Today, more and more customers, especially online customers, are demanding personalized, one-of-a-kind experiences that cater to their needs and interests. Thanks to technological advancement, even the smaller players can create a personalized shopping experience that helps them to capture the interest and preferences of the individual shoppers. By leveraging individualized promotions and user experiences, you can increase your sales. Unsure how to do this? Shopify provides examples of how this can be done https://www.shopify.com/retail/4-ways-to-personalize-your-customer-s-shopping-experience

4. Bundle Your Products and Services

A sales strategy that many businesses have used to considerable success is selling products and services as a package rather than individual offerings. Most people equate bundled services or products with savings, even if the savings are minimal.  So, by offering your services or products as a package, you will make it easier for yourself to sell. Now, when you package your services and/or products, make sure your bundle offerings are flexible.

A potential customer may not buy a bundle you’re offering if he or she feels that only two of the five services/products offered in the bundle apply to his or her business. You will be able to use this sales strategy successfully if you stay flexible enough to change different products or services to align with multiple needs.

5. Build the Right Relationships

In the business world, who you know is more important than what you know. If you want to taste success then you must build the right relationships, both online and offline. Regardless of which industry you belong to or what type of product you sell, you will find like-minded businesses out there and these businesses are who you need to befriend.

Build a relationship with businesses that are closely aligned to you but aren’t your direct competitors.  Some examples are bloggers, suppliers, industry experts. By building relationships with the above, you will get the word out about your business and this will increase your chances of making successful sales.