As a small business, bootstrapping and putting in more hours will only take you so far. After a certain point, rather than a matter of hard work, it becomes a matter of optimization. So how exactly do you increase sales for your business?
Rather than simply focusing on your salespeople, increasing sales is actually a three-pronged operation with equal attention paid to the three customer-facing business functions: marketing, sales, and customer service. Only by improving in all three of these areas can you truly improve your bottom line.
So how exactly do you do that? Here are five actionable steps you can take to help you increase your sales figures.
1. Start an Email Campaign
Our first tip is to start an email campaign. When asked for the most effective digital marketing channels, small- and medium-sized businesses across the globe answered that email marketing (36.1%) and social media marketing (18.9%) were the most effective in driving sales, reports Statista.
That means that whether you’re emailing fresh leads personally, sending out monthly newsletters, or following up with previous customers, email is the way to go to appeal most strongly to potential customers. To make the most out of each email you send, we recommend personalizing emails with each recipient’s name, sending at least two follow-up emails per lead, and focusing on short, succinct messages with a good blend of words and graphics.
2. Use Social Media Marketing
Our next tip is to use social media marketing. While you don’t have to be the trendiest of posters, posting every once in a while and showing off the photogenicness of your business is a sure way to attract organic attention. And with that attention, new leads are sure to come meandering in. You could even attempt to go viral, and bring in thousands of leads in one fell swoop!
On top of attracting new customers, a consistent social media presence can have other benefits as well. When potential customers look into a brand, they’ll likely scope out two places in their evaluation: your website, and your social media accounts. As it’s easy for shell companies to make websites solely to scam customers and disappear a simple website does you no favors in building your credibility with potential customers.
However, a social media account with a record of posting consistently and a dedicated fanbase is much harder to replicate, meaning that it also boosts your SEO ranking online. In other words, a good social media presence is paramount to building your brand reputation.
3. Outline Your Sales Funnel
Attracting new leads with email and social media is only a fraction of the battle. The next step is to nurture that interest until the lead is ready to buy. To do so, you should carefully develop your sales funnel, outlining each step salespeople should take to turn the lead into a customer.
The hard truth is that people who visit your website or social media aren’t ready to make a purchase yet. If a salesperson goes too hard on the sale right out of the gate, they’re more likely to scare them away than convince them to purchase.
That’s why salespeople need to first provide more information about the product through sales enablement material, gradually increasing the level of detail in each communication and honing in on value propositions that appeal directly to the lead’s needs. To do so, outline your sales funnel with discrete levels of interest, and create designated sales enablement materials, sales scripts, and targeted calls to action for each of them.
Confused about how to arrange your sales funnel and pad it out with content? Luckily, there are plenty of online guides to help you increase sales for your small business.
4. Use Lead Scoring
However, even with an exceptional sales funnel, there’s still the possibility that a potential customer, or lead, is unqualified to purchase – maybe they don’t have the appropriate budget, aren’t authorized to purchase by themselves, don’t have the right need for the product, or don’t need it right away.
Selling to those sorts of people is meaningless, as they won’t ever turn into customers. Thus, businesses should take care to weed out these disqualified leads as soon as possible using a method known as lead scoring, where leads are given numerical scores based on how qualified they are to make a sale. Sales reps will then prioritize the leads with the highest scores, increasing the number of leads who become customers.
Rather than personally nurturing each individual lead to a sale like with the previous tip, lead scoring is a numbers game: the goal is to process more leads faster, so you can sift through the masses and hone in on the ones who will truly become customers.
5. Offer Exceptional Customer Service
Finally, our last tip is to offer exceptional customer service at every moment of the customer journey. From any questions a curious lead might have to post-purchase support queries, each conversation with the customer is a chance to improve your brand image, build a loyal following, and gain an attractive reputation for excellency.
After all, let’s face it: unless you developed a truly innovative new product or discovered a new operational shortcut, there’s probably at least one other company that sells your exact same product at a similar price point. If you can’t differentiate yourself through the physical product or price, the best way you can make a lasting impression on customers is by making a lasting emotional impression through exceptional customer service.
Some ways you could do this are by keeping customer records to personalize communications with repeat customers, maintaining a quick turnaround time for all questions and comments, and having an FAQ or chatbot on your website to quickly provide answers to customers’ most common queries. Though the last one may seem counterintuitive, remember that empowering the customer with self-service also improves satisfaction!
Conclusion
For small businesses, it might seem like a monumental challenge to increase sales. But by following these tips to fully utilize email campaigns, social media marketing, sales funnels, lead scoring, and customer service, you can improve your business operations step by step and watch your bottom line grow.
