Do you have a strategy for getting more sales? Small business sales strategies are an essential part of doing business, yet often overlooked. If you’re just working your business and hoping to make sales, it’s time to stop and focus on developing a game plan that will get you some real results.
Define Your Goals
Actionable goals with a time limit are far more effective than simply hoping to sell. Your sales goals should have specific amounts to sell, or a fixed monetary goal by a certain date. Once you have this locked down, break the goal down by month, week, and day. This will give you exactly how many units you need to sell on a daily basis.
Once you know exactly what you have to sell each day, you can focus on meeting this goal. It’s far easier than planning to earn a million dollars in a year.
Plan for Growth
You may have been in business for a while now and if you’ve been making steady progress on your goals, it’s time to step things up a notch. It’s a good idea to create a plan for the next step. What happens when your customers want to buy, but you don’t have enough product? You need to take the business up a level and make sure that your providers can provide.
Doing this last minute means scrambling while your customers are waiting, so set up triggers along the way. When you hit a certain level of sales, before it’s overwhelming, hire help. Get a new provider or take any other measures that will keep your business running smoothly.
Tweak Your Sales Materials as Needed
Nothing is perfect on the first try and as you build your business, you’ll notice that there are areas that can be improved. Your sales copy, the sales funnel, email copy, etc. can all be adjusted and tweaked over time to perform better.
The best salespeople never stop trying to improve. Instead, they are always messing with their copy, testing new concepts and carrying out split tests to see which method works better. Once they find something that works, however, they will continue to test and make adjustments. The method helps increase sales over time.
Follow Up On Clients
After someone buys from you, what happens? Do they disappear or do you stay in touch with them and offer incentives for coming back? If you’re not doing the latter, you should add it to your list of strategies.
The problem with not having a system in place for those who buy from you is that they’ll forget you exist. It’s best to capture their email with a lead magnet and then follow up on those sales. If they’re happy with their purchase, they’ll come back and often, share with their friends.
Don’t Get Complacent
Follow up is part of working on your own business. It’s easy to think things are going well, so you can take it easy. Unfortunately, that’s how businesses get stuck in a rut.
Focus on your customers and watch for changes in your audience. Tracking and analyzing visitors and sales will let you spot trends before they become an issue and can also alert you to any changes you may need to make to your products or sales methods.
Small business sales can be slow to start out with, simply because smaller businesses don’t have the huge advertising budget that larger corporations do. That doesn’t mean you can’t see results, it just means you’ll need to work a little harder and have a bit more patience.
