What is your small business doing wrong? Let’s imagine for a minute that you have an excellent marketing team, management decisions and a great customer service team, but you’re not growing as a business! Frustrating, we know! Is it possible that there is something wrong with your sales strategy? In most cases it is, which is why we’re going to go over sales strategy tips for small businesses in this article.

The goal of every sales organization

Having a great sales strategy is not just for large organizations or multinationals. Small businesses need a great sales strategy as well to stay in the game and win over their competitors.

The goal of every sales organization is to close more deals faster or sell more products or services. In order to accomplish this, every organization needs a strong and effective sales strategy. As a business owner you may not have the time, team or resources which can cause you to lose precious time and money.

By building and developing a solid sales strategy with a professional marketing/digital marketing agency, it will help your business generate the leads you need that can really boost your small business.

In this article we will walk you through the importance of a great sales strategy and how to build one that can help your small business make a real quantifiable growth.

What is a sales strategy?

Let’s jump back to basics for a minute here. What exactly is a sales strategy?

A sales strategy is an approach by an individual or a business to sell their products or services for generating and maximizing revenue. It supports your sales efforts and helps you to achieve desired results.

In other words, a sales strategy involves understanding your unique selling methods, identifying your target market, knowing your competitors, analysing trends and staying organized. A well-defined sales strategy shows you a clear path for achieving desired sales goals quickly.

Why is it important to have a sales strategy?

Having a solid sales strategy is important for the growth of your company. One of the biggest mistakes we often make is forgetting to build a sales strategy. Creating a sales strategy can help you get more customers, build strong customer relationships and sell more products/services.

A well-crafted sales strategy helps you to address the needs of customers at every stage. Doing this allows you to focus on areas that lead to closing more deals and enables you to find the right people for your team.

An efficient sales strategy can benefit your business by providing a clear-cut guide to streamlining your sales and marketing efforts.

Whether you deploy inbound sales or outbound sales, you can have sales strategies that can give you results.

Inbound sales strategy focuses on attracting prospects to your business and building strong relationships. The prospect is already aware of your business and initiates the contact.

One of the most popular ways to attract prospects is to provide best online contents such as blogs, e-books and other insightful information.

Prospects are actively looking for a solution or information regarding their challenge. At this stage, they are almost ready to purchase from you. So, to properly reel them in you need to clearly communicate how your product or service meets their needs. Depending on these interactions, prospects convert into customers.

In outbound sales, the seller actively seeks a potential buyer usually through targeted ads, cold calls, emails and text blasts. Having a good outbound strategy depends on having the right Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) for your business. If you’re not targeting your customers correctly you’re pretty much fishing without bait. 

Once you have your Ideal Customer Profile, you can generate a database of potential leads that match your target profile. Next, you can reach out to those leads to find whether they are interested in your products and services.

You can employ various prospecting methods including social media, digital marketing, cold calling, and text & email to get your prospect’s attention. Once you grab your prospects' attention, you will need to understand their needs to close a deal and build a strong relationship with them.

How to build a sales strategy?

Now that you have a sales strategy plan, next it’s time to put your strategy into action. Here is a 7-step process to build a successful sales strategy:

1. Understand your target audience

We went over this a little above. Remember, the goal here is to attract more customers who have similar challenges as your current customers.

The best way to reach your target audience is to look at your current customers (or your competitors) and understand why they purchased a product / service. Ask yourself…what caused these customers to look for a solution like our product or service? Why did they purchase our product or service instead of a competitors? Why are they purchasing from our competitors and not us?

By creating a customer persona of your actual buyers or your competitors, you’ll be able to achieve consistent sales. 

In addition to understanding general demographics information such as business size and team size, you can collect details like why they ‘approached us’.

For example, you can post a customer survey on social media or through an email or text blast to understand your current customers better.

2. Implementing SWOT analysis

SWOT stands for: Strengths Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threat. This analysis is an important tool to analyze your current situation and consider your business strengths and weaknesses which will help you develop a stronger business strategy.

SWOT also helps you to identify whether you’re able to expand your business further, and this analysis can be performed by anyone familiar with your business processes.

SWOT analysis also highlights your areas of strength which you can use to make the most of the opportunities that you have in the future. It also shows your weakness so that you have the opportunity to address some of them and any threats that your business may have or may face. 

3. Aligning sales and marketing

Aligning your sales and marketing team will play a crucial role in the success of your business. It helps you in understanding customer acquisition and helps to increase your revenue. To properly manage every lead, you need sales and marketing to be united. Hiring a Professional Marketing and sales agency like ModFXMedia, can help you to understand and make sense of all of this so your money and efforts aren’t being wasted. 

Here’s a few ways in which could help for your sales and marketing teams to work better together: 

• Arrange for regular joint meetings for both teams
• Ensure open communication between both the teams
• Facilitate sharing information between both the teams

Once you have aligned both the teams, next you have to produce a consistent message that both teams can use. Now you can send your consistent message to all your prospects for winning more deals.

4. Define a sales process

A sales process is a repeatable set of steps that a sales team can perform to turn potential leads into paying customers. It acts as a roadmap for your sales team so they can know what steps to take next so they can close a deal.

Having an effective sales process shows a clear path for your sales team to follow, and it gives them much more consistency in winning deals.

5. Get the right team

To achieve your sales target, you need the right sales talent. Creating an ideal hiring strategy and using it during the interview process is an excellent way to identify the best candidates.

Another way is to hire a professional marketing agency that has a team already trained in sales culture that can convert your small business with more leads.

6. Action plan

Set up a workflow that involves all tasks involved to achieve your goals. Assign the tasks to the right persons and provide a timeline for the completion of these tasks. Your timeline should be in sync with your revenue goals.

Hire a professional 

Whether you’re a start-up or an established player, building a well-defined sales strategy will help you to achieve your sales goals quickly. At ModFXMedia, we'll help your business set clear priorities, measurable outcomes, strong guidelines and clear goals.

Set up your FREE digital marketing sales strategy with us today by Clicking Here to fill out our contact form on our website. Or, feel free to call us directly at- (904)673-7587.