Sales recipes
Driving Sales Growth Through an Experience Focus
A growing number of businesses recognise the need to drive sales growth through the customer experience. Yet, a successful customer focused organisation looks beyond merely providing service training to incorporating an experience focus from the top down. The customer focused organisation needs to lead through both culture and also practical execution.
Pressures of a Changing Retail Landscape
Online retail in Australia is expected to exceed $13 billion in 2011, or around 4.4 per cent of total spending. With the growth of online retail and the high Australian dollar, retailers need to respond to the rapidly changing landscape by moving beyond competing purely on price. Businesses can adjust their business value propositions and implement a strategy of building market share and customer loyalty by providing an enhanced buying experience — a branded experience.
Four Ways to Improve Sales
Every business wants to increase sales. Always concerned with the bottom line and the livelihood of their organisation, astute leaders also recognise that sales are invariably boosted when staff provide high quality customer service. To this end, quality customer service training and sales training pays significant dividends.
Of course, there are a number of ways that businesses can increase their sales. Here we take a look at four of these strategies:
1) Thoroughly follow up on sales leads:
Too many businesses fail to capitalise on sales leads that come their way. If leads are to be converted to sales, they must be promptly followed up and potential customers provided with an attentive and professional service. It is perilous to delay a response to interest expressed in your products, services or other business activities. Potential customers are quick to examine the offerings of your competition and will often purchase from them if they do not receive a timely and efficient response from you.
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How to Develop a Sales Culture
If you want your sales to increase then all you need to do is introduce training programs to develop a sales culture!
There are two intrinsic mistakes in the above statement. Firstly, it is believing that sales training is the only thing that will produce sales results. And secondly, it is believing that somehow training alone will create any kind of culture.
The truth of the matter is that training is indispensible in supporting a successful sales culture, but it cannot succeed in isolation.
Let’s look at the first of these assumptions. Coming home from a shopping expedition, whether it is to buy shoes or a golf club, what would you tell your partner – “Look at the shoes/golf club I just bought” or “Look at the shoes/golf club I was just sold”? Like most of us, you would choose the first as, from your perspective as a customer, you have been doing the buying. That is what customers do…….they buy from us, and all too often we don’t acknowledge that and only approach the sale from how we sell to them.
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Ways To Conduct A Productive Sales Meeting
If sales is a huge part of your company’s business, then conducting productive sales meetings is vital to landing a new client or keeping an older one happy with your services. If you have noticed that your sales meetings are running too long or too short, that most meetings end up without a sale or lack of customer interest, then you should look at how these meetings are conducted to see where changes can be made. Many times, small changes such as location and time can make all the difference.
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
Where you hold your sales meeting can really make a difference in the way customers listen to your pitch and in their response. While most customers will suggest meeting you in their offices, if you want to personalize the meeting to make it less formal, invite them to lunch at a nearby restaurant or café instead. Plan a later or early lunch so it will be less crowded and deliver your sales pitch then. A neutral location will also remove distractions from staff and phone calls.
Most customers are flattered that you offered to buy them lunch and may feel obligated to listen to your pitch. They may also appreciate the atmosphere change and are more likely to consider what you have to say.
WHEN TO END YOUR PITCH
Preparing your sales pitch in advance will give you an idea of how long it will take. If it takes you more than fifteen minutes to share your plans with a customer, then you may lose a sale. Understand that customers may be just as busy as you during the day and may not have the time to listen to more than a fifteen minute pitch.
If your pitch takes less than five minutes, then your customer may have a lot of unanswered questions. Five minutes is usually not enough to provide customers with everything they need to know. If your pitch is lacking in important information, then you need to include more before presenting it.
Make sure that if you have told a client you need a certain amount of their time that you do not exceed the time limit you have indicated – clients will appreciate your help in managing their time.
MEETING TIMES
If possible, try not to schedule meetings in the morning. Even though this is one of the times when people are their most productive and alert, it is also the time often reserved for reactive activities like attending to emails which have come in overnight or following up on urgent activities from the day before. Organising at this time can mean that meeting participants could be rushed or pre-occupied. Early lunch times and early to mid afternoon are good times to schedule meetings. Meetings in the early evening should also be avoided because people are thinking about finishing up for the day.
As you can see, these are little changes that can have a big impact on sales meeting productivity and outcome.
