9 ways to further increase your Sales

Your sales and marketing strategy will be driven by where your customers !  and your strategy should be based on:

Who your customers are?

Where your customers are?

How many potential customers?

Why they will buy from you ? (your unique benefit or problem you solve)

Networking both online offline and Online :

1. you need to be constantly engaging in conversations with new and existing customer
2. Offline :nothing is more powerful than a friendly smile, handshake and face to face interaction> for example there are numerous conferences and exhibitions. If you’re in sales and marketing you can kill two birds with one stone at the http://3xedigital.com conference run by the Digital Marketing Institute  https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/ . You can meet potential customers face to face and listen to presentations for the movers and shakers in the Digital Marketing world.
3. Online :there are the social media channels

Mobile Marketing:

At the moment mobile has overtaken desktop as the main medium of communication, in 2 years time it is estimated to represent 70% of customer engagement. Content is king and customers will only engage with your content if it is entertaining, educational or of some health benefit etc

Traditional sales :

Cold calling is dead but you can turn your prospects into hot leads with good content, video etc

Phone your hot leads

Meet your main prospects and communicate listen to the needs both rational and emotional. Ask open questions, read the body language as well an the words , present a tailored solution to match their needs and if you’ve done your marketing research and are in front of the right person you’ll get lots of sales.

Remember it’s the emotive needs that dive the sale:

1. Sharpen your sales skills
2. Open the sale with a clear message/ benefit statement
3. Establish rapport
4. Ask open Questions, who, what, why, where, when and how
5. Listen to understand and read the body language
6. Summarise the customers needs / requirements
7. Present your solution, this is where technology may help
8. If you’re in front of the right people the sale will close automatically
9. Negotiate on price etc

 

Social Media:

• Social media is about conversations, community, connecting with the audience and building relationships. It is not just a broadcast channel or a sales and marketing tool.
• Authenticity, honesty and open dialogue are key.
• Social media not only allows you to hear what people say about you, but enables you to respond. Listen first, speak second.
• Be compelling, useful, relevant and engaging. Don’t be afraid to try new things, but think through your efforts before kicking them off.

Social media channels:

• Blogs: A platform for casual dialogue and discussions on a specific topic or opinion.
• Facebook: The world’s largest social network, Worldwide, there are over 1.86 billion monthly active Facebook users (Facebook MAUs) which is a 17 percent increase year over year. Users create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including status updates. Brands create pages and Facebook users can “like” brands’ pages.
• Twitter: A social networking/micro-blogging platform that allows groups and individuals to stay connected through the exchange of short status messages (140 character limit).
• YouTube & Vimeo: Video hosting and watching websites.
• Flickr: An image and video hosting website and online community. Photos can be shared on Facebook and Twitter and other social networking sites.
• Instagram: A free photo and video sharing app that allows users to apply digital filters, frames and special effects to their photos and then share them on a variety of social networking sites.
• Snapchat: A mobile app that lets users send photos and videos to friends or to their “story.” Snaps disappear after viewing or after 24 hours. Currently, we are not allowing individual departments to have Snapchat accounts, but asking that they contribute to the Tufts University account.
• LinkedIn Groups: A place where groups of professionals with similar areas of interest can share information and participate in a conversations
• Whats app :the amount of monthly active WhatsApp users worldwide as of January 2017. As of that month, the mobile messaging app announced more than 1.2 billion monthly active users, up from over 1 billion MAU in February 2016. The service is one of the most popular mobile apps worldwide.

https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/

Linkedin is a good B2B social media channel

https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/blog/linkedin-b2b-marketing/2017/where-b2b-marketers-achieve-undeniable-results–interactive-info

Video marketing :

1/3 of all online time is spent watching video !

59% of executives would rather watch video than read text -Hubspot

Video in an email leads to over 200 % increase in click through rate (CTR)

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/video-marketing-statistics#sm.00001dexxregqse9ju9vpwvtcd058

Email Marketing:

An effective email marketing list can be a very effective way of communicating with your customers and effective customers . Try to collect personalised email address as info@ often goes into the customers spam folder. It has to be permission based marketing as there are new data protection laws in place and some companies have got fined for sending too many emails.

https://www.dataprotection.ie/docs/FAQ_-_mailing_lists/929.htm

A good email database for emailing is :

https://mailchimp.com/

Artificial intelligence :

let the robots do the number crunching in marketing and free up your time to listen, converse, delight and exceed your customers expectations.

A company based out of Belfast and managed by mainly Irish guys is making strides in this area and changing the way we live and work:

http://www.kainos.com

Virtual Reality:

Google and all the big companies are behind this and it has so many applications to enhance your customer journey. You can engage your customers in new ways:

Pay per Click advertising (PPC) :

As more and more companies increase their spend on digital advertising and marketing the price per click will increase.

http://www.google.ie/adwords/

Will Apps take over from websites as the main marketing tool ?

Content :

Telly your story, be personable. Remember your customers are humans not numbers.

Who knows what else will emerge as customers become more curious and educated and drive sellers to become even more creative and innovative. Watch this space…

Social Selling Tips : How to overcome challenges to finding new customers

Old fashioned selling used the push strategy, terms like pounding the pavement, hungry for results and breaking down doors were commonly used.

Modern selling encourages to the customer to enter into a mutually beneficial relationship.

The sales person needs to be more strategic and research, connect, engage and educate.

Who are your potential customers? Identify buyer personas.

Where are your potential customers? network with them online and offline.

Why will they do business with you? position yourself as an expert on WordPress through blogging, Linkedin, Twitter.

There are many other social media tools to engage with potential customers such as Printerest,Facebook

and mobile Apps such as Vine and Whatsapp.

Gather intelligence and then you can leverage warm introductions.

Sales Tip : Are you too focused on self promotion?

Finding the right customers can be like finding a needle in a haystack. With all the sales channels  available it can be hard to know how to focus your sales strategy. Self promotion on social networks such as tweeting your great offers doesn’t work. You need to add value, be interesting or informative. With time, effort and the right sales and marketing strategy you’ll find sales coming you.

How can Cold Calls be turned into Hot Leads?

Sales people  often make lots of calls  to secure sales visits.  Cold calling(when no one knows you) can be demoralising  for both the sales person and the potential customer. Start ups  have to be particularly careful as potential customers don’t know anything about them.

To build trust start with engaging  potential customers. Know who their potential customers are, where they are and why they will buy from you?. Creatively use of a range of  resources  like going to exhibitions, Linkedin, social media, blogging, engaging in conversations with potential customers. and tweeting.

Then the cold calls can be converted  to hot calls which leads to sales.

As in any type of sales tailor your pitch to your contacts on Linkedin etc

In your personal and business life quality is better than quantity. As with friends all business contacts are different and it’s important to tailor your pitch to them to generate interest in your products or services. Everyone is sick of spam and are bombarded with messages and emails. Spam to lose contacts and interest. This can time and extra work but it pays off in the end.

How Linkedin can help sales people, be mad, be bold, be unique

You can do the following but always think of how to be unique and stand out from your competitors:

Your Profile, not only on LinkedIn, but also shows up in search engines like Google, contributions in Answers and Discussions. Try to be different.

Finding the right people at prospects or at current customers. Think about who you went to college with and worked with.Find their Profile via Advanced Search or by browsing through the network of your network.. Find information about prospects as preparation for your meeting. Read the Profiles of your contact persons before your meeting.. Maintain relationships with prospects or customers.

Sending personal messages, sharing ideas in Discussions and answer questions in Answers.Often appropriate humour works.

Receive Recommendations which are visible for everyone and in particular for prospects and customers.How can LinkedIn help? Receiving Recommendations and showing them in your Profile. Discover relationships between:Customers, prospects and other contacts Prospects and colleagues so you don’t contact the same prospects.

Searching and browsing in the network of you own contacts. Introductions or referrals to prospects.How

Through the “Get introduced to” option or via an email outside LinkedIn after finding the relationship between them on LinkedIn. Visibility, reputation and online branding of yourself and of the organization you work for.

Your Profile, not only on LinkedIn, but also in search engines like Google, contributions in Answers and Discussions. Word of mouth advertising, the best form of advertising.

Recommendations you have received and people who talk about you in Discussions, mention you as an expert in Answers or talk about you outside LinkedIn. Receive notifications when someone changes jobs. In this way you can ask to be introduced to the person who replaces them. You might also become the supplier of the new organization of your contact. Via Network Updates on your LinkedIn Home Page.Hear about trends in the market place from customers, prospects and other sales people.

Membership of Groups of which your customers and prospects are also member of and Groups where you can exchange ideas with other sales people.

Make sure that customers and prospects regard you as an expert (and as a consequence keep faith in you and are happy to refer you) Building trust is a major factor in sales. Contributions in Discussions and Answers.

Find the right organizations to become member of, both online and offline. Via Group Search and via the Profiles of people in your own LinkedIn network.