Running a business is no easy task. There are so many things to think about and so many moving parts. But one of the most important aspects of any business is sales. Without sales, your business will die. In this article, we’ll walk you through the process of planning your sales strategy.
Who are you selling to? Once you know your target market, you can begin to craft your sales message. Your sales message should be tailored to your target market and should resonate with them.
When you are planning your sales strategy, there are a few things that you need to consider. The first is figuring out who your target market is.
You cannot sell to everyone; you must find a specific group of people to sell to. Once you know who your target market is, you need to figure out what your unique selling proposition is.
Once you have your sales message nailed down, it’s time to start building your sales funnel. Your sales funnel should be designed to attract leads and convert them into customers. It’s important to have a good mix of marketing and lead generation techniques in order to attract quality leads.
1. Planning Your Sales Strategy
When planning your sales strategy, you should break down the entire process into sales stages.
Different types of products can require different amounts of effort. So, it’s important to examine the entire sales process to determine if certain products are likely to sell.
Create a Sales Funnel for your business that will help your leads move through the entire sales process.
Generally, there are five stages in the sales funnel.
– Leads
The lead stage includes strategies and methods for generating your sales messages and building awareness about your business or products/services.
– Qualified leads
The qualified lead stage includes evaluating the quality of your leads and teaching them how to become interested in your product or service.
– Interested leads
In this stage, you retrain your qualified leads to become interested leads. The qualified leads in the interested lead stage have already shown interest in your product, but have not yet decided to buy.
Interested leads now have the intention to buy.
– Purchase leads
In this stage, you try to convince interested leads to do business with you—and ultimately purchase your product.
2. Know Your Buyers & The Market
After you have done your research and mapped your customer persona, the next step is to understand your ideal buyer personas. This is a crucial step for understanding your customer segment.
Once you have your ideal buyer personas, it is important to look into the market.
Your ideal client might not be your ideal customer, so it is vital to identify the buyer segment that your ideal customer fits.
The grocery chain may have the same need as the medical device company, but the customer segments are different. Targeting the wrong buyer segment could waste tons of money, so this is a good distinguisher.
Each market has different dynamics. Some markets have more marketers moving around the buyers, while many others may be more diverse.
If you don’t make the effort to understand the market, you risk falling into the same pattern that so many other companies do.
Read Also: How To Streamline the Efficiency of your Small Business
3. Think About Prediction & Enthusiasm
Every business should have formidable sales strategies in place in order to drive sales and grow an effective sales funnel. Your sales strategy should be more focused on reaching as many potential customers as you can by going into areas where you can grab their attention and influence their purchasing behavior and decision-making process.
Before you even ever build a sales funnel, it’s essential to start thinking about the personality types, criteria, and those whose characteristics you’d like to attract. This can give you clarity on which areas you could go into with your sales.
This is a very important part of the development process, as you cannot plan a sales funnel on something that your business doesn’t have.
If you don’t know who your customer base is and what influences them, you have no idea how to attract these people. It could be a rogue tweet or witty text on Facebook that pulls in an awesome customer base.
4. Think Hard About What Story You’re Selling
Once you’ve figured out your target market, you can start your sales message. Can you tell me how to balance marketing and sales storytelling in your sales message?
You’ve to write this as a novel – for every person that signs up prospecting on your website, or any other marketing channel we can assume.
5. Thrill the “Why” in Your Customers
You have to create a compelling reason to satisfy the target market, basically. The “Why,” or “Why do I need this?” are relevant when it comes to buying decisions. You as a salesperson must be able to appeal to the wants and needs of your prospective customers (clients).
Before customers get attracted to your product or service, they frequently do a reality check with questions to themselves such as:
Can I afford it?
• Is it what I need?
• Can I get value for money?
• What stage are they at in their life?
• Why should I buy from them and not someone else?
You can add some customer examples that will work perfectly against these questions.
Also, be sure to illustrate the value of your service or product with an aligned market analysis. Illustrate exactly who is in your market, the benefits of your solutions, and how you provide value.
You can do this either through surveys, testing, or even deep research. Any statistical value in the study is sure to be well received. It’s a good way to out-sell your competitor.
The way to sell is to spin a great story. Let your ads tell these stories and the benefits they can provide.
6. Predict the Future of The Customer
It’s all well and good to know at first that your product will leave the store a day after purchase. But will people be using the device after the first year? Will some of the millennials use it more than teens?
One of the reasons to talk about the needs of potential buyers is so your company can plan for the future of your products or for the needs of your customers.
It’s a good thing to think about when planning your strategy or at the beginning of the product-specific development process, so you delay creating bad products.
Making plans for the future of your products or even for the needs of your customers is not spending too much money.
You do not start the sale of your first project with your biggest marketing budget because you have to be prepared for new services or product upgrades. You take a conservative strategy because you know the market may change.
7. Know Your Buyer
The first step I always take when planning a sales strategy is to understand who my target demographic is. In other words, I have to find out what it is they are willing to buy from me and what I need to do to be of value to them.
Only after I have discovered their somewhat perplexing needs can I begin to plan how I want to handle my business.
On the web, most people have questions before they begin to surf. They’d like to have some results to know if they should continue or not. I use free web analytics to research the questions I have about the market I wish to serve, so I know whether my product or service is effective in answering my target audience’s needs or not.
You can also use qualitative research to help you find qualified potential buyers. This involves shadowing target markets in their “natural habitats”, so you can find out what questions they have and how they should be answered.
However, the ultimate sales and marketing strategy would be based on quantitative research. This involves sending questionnaires with market research subjects to help you turn your customers into advocates.
Sales and marketing are two important pieces of any successful business. Sales is how you bring in money, and marketing is how you bring in customers. If either of those pieces is missing, your business will not be as successful as it could be.
For your sales and marketing needs, get in touch with OpenHub Consulting, Cameroon’s number BTL Company.
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