If you saw this article on the web or social networks and decided to click there are two options, or you are a businessman with a vision to grow your business and you want to increase sales quickly to grow your investment; or you are an entrepreneur with problems in your business and likewise you want to increase your sales quickly to avoid disaster. In case you’re wondering this article is aimed for the latter, we want to help you avoid the disaster and grow your sales as soon as possible.
As everyone who knows will tell you, the first thing you have to do to increase sales is to analyze:
- Your value proposition
- Your market
- Your channels
- etc…
But for practical purposes of this article we are going to give you concrete actions that you can immediately apply to your business and increase sales quickly. Obviously it depends what kind of business you have, but this can apply for most, I hope you serve:
Call all your customers and ask them for a reference
If you have been in the business for some time, you already have some clients and the best way to have more is to start from the ones you already have. Your clients already know you, they trusted you and they already know how you work, so they are the most apt to recommend you to other people. I recommend you start asking for references to your most loyal customers, followed by the oldest ones (which are not necessarily the same), and you ask for references even to new clients, you do not lose anything and in my experience they can give very good contacts. We use this strategy very often and it has brought us clients who trust us, even before we sell them, and it makes the process much easier.
Increase sales (not necessarily customers)
What I mean here is that you do not necessarily need to get more customers to increase sales, you can sell more things to your customers. If you urgently need to increase sales you can think of a product that serves your customers and complements the solution you are currently giving them, so that it is a logical step to buy this new product. This is one of the most effective and above all sustainable ways. In fact you should consider it part of your business strategy to develop at least 4 products.
- A free product to attract prospects
- A cheap product that helps you distinguish the best prospects
- Your star product
- And the next logical step, something you can keep selling after they buy you the star product.
For the most successful companies, where do you think most of their income comes from? They come from the 4th product, since that is what makes the purchase repeat. If you want to know more about this strategy, look for the Entrepreneur Revolution book.
Go out to sell
I know that this should not be hard to imagine but I have seen many businessmen who complain about their low sales and do nothing about it. If customers do not reach you, go find them.
You can start by making a couple of calls to potential clients, ask them to give you a little of their time to talk about how great their company is and how your product can solve that problem they have, ask for a later appointment and go see them. Once you feel more confident you can go to the places where you know your customers are and address them directly and in person, maybe it is something aggressive but believe me if what you want is to achieve sales, this is the easiest and fastest way to achieve them
I know for many, this strategy may simply not be an option, either because your client is not easy to find or is not very accessible but there are always ways to achieve it, just be more creative and use the tools at your disposal. For example, if your business is B2B you can use LinkedIn to search for clients, and then reach them creating connections and making friends with people known to them that can connect them (more on this in another article).
Something that helps a lot when selling personally is to bring a sales presentation, it helps both you as a salesman to never forget your dialogue, and your client to see graphically what you are proposing. I recommend the article that we write about this here in Impactum: [SLIDESHARE] Effective sales presentations.
Invest on Facebook
For most of those who want to increase their company’s sales but do not have the budget to hire an agency, I recommend that you test with a Facebook adds. I usually give them instructions on how to do it and some ideas of what to put in the advertisement so that it has a better impact, I do it mainly to help them solve their problem since the majority of those who arrive to us is because they are in a situation similar to the one mentioned at the beginning.
Most of us who help in this way often respond very grateful because that announcement brought a certain number of customers, and also helps them see that advertising is not an expense but an investment that must be recovered.
Facebook has the advantage that it is extremely easy to use for an advertiser, which is new and is such a popular social network that I can assure you, without fear of being wrong, that no matter who your target audience is, you can reach it through from Facebook. For this reason it is a very useful tool that maximizes your results, as long as you know how to use it.
What did you think? These are just some ideas so you can increase sales of your business. I would very much like to know your opinion about it, leave a comment in the bottom part and if you want a personalized advice to see the particular case of your company, click on the banner below to schedule an advice with us.