Struggles of working in the sales industry are known far and wide. Prospecting, lead generation, negotiating and closing can all be very overwhelming but, the universe (this post) dishes out a few hacks which could successfully help you to increase sales and make life a little easier. What are these hacks you ask? Good question. You’re probably going to want to write this stuff down.
Salespeople work long hours and get stressed most of the time. This makes ‘time’ one of the most valuable resources available. Often salespeople believe that staying on call for as long as it takes to close a deal is the right thing to do. But that’s always not true. If you’d like to truly increase sales, you want to be able to prioritize your time.
If you intend to speak to your prospects for 30 minutes, then speak to them for 30 minutes and no more. Develop strategies to end calls without rushing the prospect. This is going to give you some really valuable time to take notes post-call and prepare for the next one. This also helps with keeping up with your schedule and refreshing your memory before and after every call.
We are in an age where people use more than a single device to communicate. Use this to your advantage by approaching them on different devices. This technique has proven to increase sales by a big margin. How does it help? Well, you’re approaching them simultaneously on multiple devices, and with the technology craze, it’s a really good strategy to employ.
Not only are you giving the prospect a choice in the mode of communication but also reinforcing you message and in the process giving yourself a better chance at getting a response from them.
Social media is, without a doubt, the most commonly used mode of communication in today's world. With the likes of Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn, the potential to reach out to people is endless. This can be both overwhelming and exciting, but helpful when you’re trying to increase your sales quota.
Would you rather talk to a person you’ve communicated with before or a complete stranger? I think the answer is quite straightforward. Getting in touch with prospects beforehand will definitely help with you ending up in a more productive call.
Using social media to engage with prospects is also a good (read: brilliant) way of building your network and warming up your sales calls. Every prospect you want to get in touch with, more often than not, are on a social media platform like LinkedIn. It’s a great resource to do your research from but make sure you don’t seem too “stalkerish”. The goal here is to increase your sales and you want to be able to do everything possible to make it easier on yourself.
How to know if you’re doing better than last week or the previous month? It’s imperative that you keep a track of certain key parameters. Keeping the goal in mind, define key performance indicators (KPI’s) that would help you define your plan of action.
Some metrics you should be tracking on a monthly basis include;
-Calls being made
-New meetings
-Proposals generated
-Close Rate
and any other metrics you feel are worth tracking to increase sales.
Tracking actionable metrics can be the difference between closing a deal and losing it. Use this information to your advantage and in the process improve your sales strategy.
There are a ton of hacks/strategies out there to help increase sales. It is a stressful and exhausting. Sales is constantly evolving and there is no ‘one’ particular way of doing things. Trying a combination of different strategies and seeing what best fits your goals is probably the best way to find your secret recipe for success.