by Karen Wessles | Jan 18, 2018 | Branding, Sales, Social Media
Why you are failing at sales
Oh the dreaded word for most people. That lingering bad aftertaste associated with this noun is as bad as asking most people to speak in public. They quiver at the thought!
I love sales, dearly. It’s been a close companion of mine over the years, and even though we’ve had a love hate relationship we do have conversations on a daily basis. Sales has been good to me. Sales has taught me to be tenacious, to be persistent, to grow resilience and best of all, how to engage with others.
Sales should be seen as a great communication tool above all else.
How can improved sales skills make your business better?
Communication tool
Well for one, having sales skills means that you enjoy people and you are great at communicating. Wait! Surely that isn’t the definition of sales?
To be honest, over the years sales has been given a bad rep. Now’s the time to improve its reputation and perhaps even place it on a pedestal.
There are too many businesses, particularly start-ups that fail and my belief is that one of the reasons this tends to happen is that they don’t hunt sales. They don’t have a sales plan or budget in place. Yes it’s great to have a marketing plan, but what’s the point of getting all these great leads, creating brand awareness and a digital footprint if you don’t close the deal?
It’s time to start using sales as a great communication tool.
Perception
We need to actively start viewing sales in a better light. Our perception of what sales is and how it works needs to change. We need to embrace the power of this little noun. Without sales your business is dead. I know that sounds harsh, however, don’t fool yourself. Your lovely business that you’ve been focussing on for the last 5 years is not going to grow if you don’t have a sales plan in place. Start changing your perception of sales and see your bottom line grow.
Risk taking
Sales does involve taking certain risks. You need to be comfortable putting yourself out there, presenting on a daily basis, possibly even facing rejection at every turn.
But isn’t this what makes us stronger? Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Learn to take risks. Place yourself in “danger”, in the sales zone. Growth only happens outside of your comfort zone.
Now turn off those voices in your head and go out & sell! You’ll thank me for the constant adrenaline rush!
by Karen Wessles | Jan 18, 2018 | Branding, Sales, Social Media
Why Outsourcing Is The Hottest Trend For Business Success
Thanks to the increase in technology, apps, devices and innovative thinking, the way we run business now is streets away from how it was done just a decade ago.
Outsourcing is fast becoming the norm and stats indicate that by 2020 more than 65% of work will be outsourced to remote workers.
I know that there are still business owners who struggle with the idea of outsourcing work to anyone who is not physically located at their office.
And then there are those who run an entire business on an outsourced model.
The idea behind this article is to show you what you can outsource, so let’s get you comfortable with the idea of what you can outsource and to whom.
1. All things admin
Whether you are a solopreneur, or run a medium sized business, you can take advantage of outsourcing admin tasks. This can be anything from a full-time PA to a client liaison who responds to online inquiries on your behalf.
Who can do this for you? An experienced Virtual Assistant. Scour the internet to understand the business behind a Virtual Assistant and soon you’ll discover that there is a world of possibilities waiting for you.
Finding a reputable Virtual Assistant is pretty easy and I would recommend starting your search on LinkedIn. If you’re not sure of the calibre of the VA or her capacity, ask to do an hour trial run for instance. Trust me, you’re going to thank me for this! Do more of what you love and outsource the rest of the admin tasks to your trusted Virtual Assistant.
2. Marketing campaigns
What is the one thing that is usually cut when a business owner starts feeling the pinch? Marketing of course! And yet, without marketing you cannot fill a decent sales pipeline. Granted, there are quite a few marketing activities you can do on your own. With a reputable marketing agency not only will you save time, but you also get to hire a team who understands how to leverage marketing to convert website visitors and the like into quality leads.
Interview a few marketing agencies, ask for sample work and client testimonials. Look beyond the pretty marketing collateral and listen to your gut on this one.
3. Certain Sales functions
Do you love sales? If not, then you need a sales team! And if you aren’t particularly keen on hiring a sales division, outsource this function. But know this, the best way for your business to grow is to have sales. Referrals and walk-ins will only last so long, and then? If you’re not particularly comfortable with selling or it’s a task that you just don’t enjoy, outsource this sales function to a lead generation company.
Again, do a lot of research, as there are a ton of lead generation companies out there. Ask the following questions:
- Do they specialise in my industry or are they generalists?
- How long have they been around? (In other words, what kind of experience do they have?)
- What kind of results have they achieved for their other clients?
- Can you find your shortlist on the internet? (If they have an amazing web presence, then you can rest assured they have created a great web presence for their clients).
The list of what you can outsource is pretty much endless, from graphic design work to tech support and everything in between. The trick is to find an agency that aligns with your vision and has a culture that you can work with and enjoy.
Happy hunting for great outsourced companies and enjoy the freedom that comes with outsourcing certain business functions!
by Karen Wessles | Jan 18, 2018 | Branding, Sales, Social Media, Web Design
Why Marketing is so essential to the success of your Sales goals
We’ve all heard it before, how the marketing department just cannot see eye-to-eye with the sales department. And how the sales department thinks the campaigns designed by the marketing department is never going to work.
It’s 2017 – time to set aside those differences and truly understand how these two departments are quintessential to the growth of any business.
Yes it can be done. It is absolutely possible for these two divisions to work together harmoniously. And this is the year to do it.
Why? If we can better understand how important a great marketing campaign is, we can better utilise it in growing our sales, month-on-month.
The best way to do this is to get these two silos’ to speak with each other. It doesn’t matter if you’re a corporate or a solopreneur, the bottom line is, marketing complements sales. Simple.
7 Steps to understanding Marketing
- Business Vision– What is your business vision? That is, do you know your business? Why did you build your business? Does your vision align with your strategy? First and foremost, by having a clear vision of what you want, then how you’re going to achieve it will follow automatically.
- Determine Target Market– In order to design a great marketing strategy you truly need to understand who you are speaking to. What does your ideal customer look like? Where are they located? What are their interests? Where do they hang out in the social media realm? By understanding the buying persona (or client avatar), you’ve just made your strategy building so much easier.
- Look At Your Competitors– Chances are there is already a business doing what you’re doing. But never fear! Now is the time to understand what differentiates you from your competitors and make that your slogan, your driving force. Look at what they are doing and do it better.
- Act Like A Media Company– You absolutely need to commit in creating as much great content as possible. There are numerous articles available on the web describing where buyer attention is focussed. Find out where in your niche they are and cater to them. In other words, if you’re selling beauty products then it makes sense to share gorgeous editorial pics on Instagram, to do how to videos on YouTube and to share daily cleansing tips for instance with live feed on Facebook. Get creative and keep churning out quality content.
- Set Out Marketing Goals– Take the needed time to set out your marketing goals for the year to come and break them down into achievable monthly milestones. The better your goals are outlined and adhered to, the easier the sales process becomes.
- Create A Marketing Calendar– Create a workable marketing calendar for the rest of the year. Look at ways to launch new products or services, create monthly themes and weekly action steps. Become creative with your posts, however, do cater to your target market and keep in mind the medium that you’re sharing on. Look at the time of day and the day of the week that you’re sharing content to ensure that you maximise engagement and convert those leads into sales.
- Put A Budget In Place– There are times that you’re going to spend money to make money and marketing is one of those places. The beauty of social media and blogging is that you can grow your audience organically and create a loyal following without spending a cent. Other times it is essential to throw a bit of budget behind your marketing campaigns to ensure that your conversion rate is high and attainable. You want to see tangible results from your marketing campaign, so make sure that the right people are seeing your content at the right time.
by Karen Wessles | Jan 18, 2018 | Branding, Sales, Social Media
Why a Virtual Assistant is an entrepreneur’s best friend
“Grow your business without growing your staff” – now wouldn’t that be the ideal way to build and grow your amazing start-up.
And the best part? With the help of a Virtual Assistant or as we are more fondly known as, VA’s, it is now completely possible and within reach.
Your VA should be your next best friend! Here is someone who doesn’t need to be micromanaged, will get tasks done to your exact requirements and treat your business as if it were her own. A Virtual Assistant is a gift that each and every entrepreneur should have.
Fill gaps where start-ups fall short
Just because you started this business and have been running it for a year or two doesn’t mean that you have all the skills to fulfil each role. In fact, you more than likely excel in a specific field and try to make up the short fall. With a professional VA by your side you can now focus on what you are good at, namely growing the business, and she can take care of the other areas that you’re not so brilliant at. You know like paying the accounts, or taking care of the admin, filtering emails or organising your diary.
Get more time
Your focus should be working on your business, growing your client base and ensuring that your service offering is perfected. For this to take place you need time. How do you find more time? By outsourcing all the tasks that don’t require your specialist skill to your new best friend, your VA!
One point of contact with access to a pool of skills
By working with a VA agency for instance you have access to a myriad of skills with a single point of contact. You delegate your tasks to your VA and she will take care of the rest by assigning tasks to a Virtual Assistant who has those specific skill sets within her team. You can now carry on with your creative projects safe in the knowledge that your business is being run smoothly and professionally by a team of experts.
Extension of your team
A VA really is a team member and even though she works from a remote location, she forms an extension of your business and is therefore a valuable asset. With her dedication to getting things done she will align with your start-up’s vision and ensure that you are able to keep driving your business forward.
We as entrepreneurs are so fortunate to have access to a lot of amazing people and skills. Take action and grow your business with your new best friend!
by Karen Wessles | Jan 18, 2018 | Branding, Sales, Social Media
Why a Sales Strategy Workshop can help your Business
Over the course of the last few years I’ve had the honour and privilege of hosting several Sales Masterclasses and Sales Strategy Workshops.
Why are they so effective?
As entrepreneurs, founders, businesspeople, we are always looking for new ways to grow and develop. We are knowledge seekers looking for new and amazing ways to do business, improved ways to increase our skillsets and to better our service offering.
So the best place to have access to information like this is at networking events, workshops, masterclasses and the like. Here you get the opportunity to rub shoulders with likeminded people and to learn from the best.
It’s effective because the course material has been tailored to you. You walk away feeling that you have gained so much benefit and you are now armed with an actionable sales strategy for your business.
Why should you host a sales strategy workshop?
What better way than to get an expert to teach and train you and your staff on better ways of doing business? You can get the trainer to completely tailor the workshop to accommodate the industry you work in, your sales cycles, the needs and objections faced by your clients, your staff capabilities in terms of delivering services in time, etc.
By hosting your own sales strategy workshop you determine exactly the quality and quantity of information your staff receives, the duration and whether this will be an ongoing exercise.
If you are looking at ways to develop your sales and service teams, a workshop can do the following:
Ø Understanding the business vision and mission, and how to align this with the staff’s vision and input
Ø Getting to grips with the pains your clients experience and how to marry your solution to their pain
Ø Building confidence within the team so that everyone becomes your Brand Ambassador
Ø How to stand out from your competitors
Ø Objection handling, presentation planning and development, closing the deal
These are just a few ideas of topics to be discussed in your Sales Strategy Workshop.
Get the ball rolling today, develop your team and they will help you grow your business.
by Karen Wessles | Jan 18, 2018 | Branding, Sales, Social Media
The power of a Virtual Meeting and how to make it part of your Business
We have come such a long way from those notorious hour long boardroom meetings and booking physical meeting rooms. Nowadays we have the luxury of hosting a meeting anywhere in the world at any time, as long as we have our laptop or mobile phone with us, we’re good to go!
And this is what I absolutely love about running remote teams. Wherever I find my laptop and mobile phone, that’s where my office is for the day.
I want to show you some platforms that you can use to host a Virtual meeting on and then take you through the benefits of conducting meetings this way.
Here’s a list of virtual meeting room apps
Some of the virtual meeting rooms you’ll be familiar with.
1. Skype :
This is hands down the best known app for virtual chats and meetings. It easy to use and is free.
2. Zoom :
My favourite virtual meeting app to date. We use this for all our virtual meetings. It’s reliable, stable, can host multiple users, record your meetings and you can screen share. You can also use this app on both mobile phone and laptop.
3. Webex :
WebEx is a Cisco service and allows you to have unlimited online meetings with up to three people absolutely free. You can record meetings and use the app on your mobile phone and laptop.
4. JoinMe :
You can use this app for both online meetings, screen sharing and it allows you to switch control of the screen among meeting participants.
5. Google Hangouts :
In order to activate a Google Hangouts meeting all you need is a Gmail address. You can do a video call and at the same time view and collaborate on Google docs.
The benefits of meeting virtually?
- You have the flexibility to meet at any time, no matter where you are, as long as you can access either your mobile phone or laptop.
- It saves time. Now you don’t have to sit in traffic and drive to a meeting.
- You can host 15min meetings one after the other and in this way fit more in your day.
- You can record the meeting and start building a client meeting audio library for you and your team to refer back to.
- If you’re running a remote team, it’s an easy way for everyone to join the meeting.
I do understand that in South Africa our culture is a bit different and we want to meet in person, especially for the first meeting. We love the human touch and granted virtual meetings don’t always offer that.
So why not compromise and meet with your prospective client for the first time in person and arrange to meet virtually thereafter?
Make virtual meetings a part of your business and watch your productivity soar!
by Karen Wessles | Jan 18, 2018 | Branding, Sales, Social Media
Networking – the easy way to grow your business
How do we go about attracting, converting and retaining a prospect into a valued long-term client?
When you first start your business (and we’re all guilty of this) you’re not too concerned about who your clients are, what they do or the kind of support they need.
As your business grows, your client base increases and things start stabilising, you’ll start to realise the type of client you prefer working with. The tasks you enjoy doing and those that you would rather outsource.
Now that you’re established and found your feet, it’s time to get out there and seriously start networking!
One Way to Grow Your Business
Networking you may ask? Well, yes, what better place than to have a captured audience to “pitch” your business to in just 40 seconds?
Most networking events give the guests a slot to introduce themselves and add value to the group. Until you’ve done it a couple of times, it can be rather daunting to speak in front of a room full of people.
Make sure you choose the right networking event that is a great match for you and your business.
Perfect your Pitch
This is the ideal time to perfect your elevator pitch. An elevator pitch typically has an introduction, a short splurb on what you do (identify the “pain” experienced by others) and most importantly how you can be of service to the person you’re speaking to (that is, solve the “pain” you’ve identified).
In your introduction remember to give your name, as well as your company name!
Basics, yet small things that we tend to forget. During your pitch you want the audience to sit up, take note and think, hey I can relate to that. You want a call-to-action, so you definitely want to be remembered and more importantly for prospective clients to speak to you after the formalities of the networking session has taken place.
At the end of the pitch you should always repeat your name and your company name. And make sure you have enough business cards at hand!
What’s next?
Prepare your 40-second presentation, and practice it as often as you can. In the mornings when you’re showering, on your way to work in the car, every moment you get, practice, practice, practice until it flows.
Your confidence will ooze as you speak about your passion and in this way you’ll create an excellent first impression.
Good luck!
by Karen Wessles | Jan 18, 2018 | Branding, Sales, Social Media
Mastering the art of Listening can lead to improved Sales
“Learn to listen, opportunity sometimes knocks very softly.”
There is a major difference between listening to answer and actively listening. When you are actively listening it means you’re putting in the effort to really understand what your client is telling you. This activity also involves reading and listening to non-verbal communication like body language.
To be a highly successful salesperson you need to learn the art of actively listening. So how do you do this?
Avoid wanting to hog the conversation : Try not to dominate the conversation especially when it’s a topic you know a lot about. Remain open minded and be willing to be receptive to new ideas or a different perspective. Allow your client to finish speaking before you give your input. Let them make their point and follow the conversation from there.
Don’t feign attention : You may think that what your client is saying is boring or you’ve heard this a million times before, however, be an attentive listener at all times and keep eye contact. Convey interest with simple gestures like nodding or leaning forward or interject with “That sounds interesting, please tell me more”. This shows genuine interest, that you truly are involved in the conversation and reassures your client that you are actively listening.
Pay attention to non-verbal language : Not only should you be listening to what your client is saying but also understand the gestures and motivation behind their words. Understand the tone of voice, posture, conviction of verbalised words. Often a whole lot is being said without it actually being said and if you are an active listener not only will you pick up on this but you can also use it to help swing the deal.
Be quick witted : There are times that you may get frustrated or impatient with your client’s way of speaking, you may find it to be too slow for your liking. Why not use the time to silently review their main points so that when he is finished speaking you re-iterate these points and ask them whether you understood correctly what was said. This is a great way to avoid any possible misunderstandings going forward.
Being an active listener in a sales meeting means that you can hear the client’s objections and questions, you won’t miss it when they say yes and finally, you won’t have the opportunity of speaking yourself out of the sale. Listen and listen well.
by Karen Wessles | Jan 18, 2018 | Branding, Sales, Social Media
How to Develop Your 2018 Sales and Marketing Strategy
In this post I’ll take you through 5 steps that you can implement right now to help you get your sales and marketing strategy on track for 2017.
1) Analyze Your 2017 Sales Trends
Take a look at where your sales and revenue come from in 2017. Did your company revenue come mostly from new or existing customers? How long is your average sales cycle? What were your best sources for new leads? Did you closing rate improve over time? Did you lose customers and do you know why?
Document the lessons learned and start strategizing on how you can improve them this year.
2) Analyze Your 2017 Marketing Trends
Do you know how much traffic your website received in 2017 on a daily and monthly basis? How many leads were converted, both online and offline? Did you notice whether certain blogs performed better than others?
These insights will help you define your “client avator”. This also indicates who your target market is and what appeals to them so that you can start sharing more of that kind of content.
3) Define Your Business Vision for the next year
What is your vision for your business for the next year? Where do you want to be financially? Write a one-pager of what things will look like 12months from now, be very specific and then reverse engineer how you’re going to achieve those results.
4) Set Your Business Priorities and Goals for 2018
Is there anything standing in your way of achieving your business goals? Were there projects outstanding from last year that are still lingering? If so, then you need to look at what setbacks you experienced and why. Look at how you will measure key metrics this year and what goals you want to achieve in the first quarter of 2017. Then put an action plan together to start achieving this!
5) Review and Update Your Ideal Customer Profile and Personas
Look back at your best customers and make sure you identify the characteristics that make them profitable and enjoyable to work with. Make sure your ideal customer profile and buyer personas are accurate and reflect the kinds of customers who will help you reach your growth goals.
These are just a few steps that you can start actioning now to ensure great sales and marketing success for 2018!
by Karen Wessles | Jan 18, 2018 | Sales, Social Media
Future plans – a blueprint for a successful future
There’s a wonderful saying ‘Where there’s life, there’s hope’. It also works this way: ‘Where there’s hope, there’s life.’
Planning for the future does just that: it gives one hope and hope enables one to endure during the tough times in life.
Plans can sometimes change due to unforeseen events therefore we need to be flexible and resilient.
Plans are simply the tools one uses to implement one’s purpose in life. So the vital questions to ask yourself are: What gives your life meaning; what is your passion or calling; what is it you would do if you were never paid for doing it?
There’s a spiritual element to asking these serious questions. Your life is valuable and worthwhile and deserving of self-respect. I know I would like to look back at my life and know that it was a full, abundant, glorious life, lived to the best of my ability.
So give it the time it needs. Ask friends, family, colleagues, ex-teachers what they think your gifts, talents or strengths are.
Find a life coach or a counselling psychologist and do personality and interests’ tests. Get to know yourself. Go to a retreat centre or a place you can be alone, with no distractions. Take a notebook and pen with you and write down what you feel about yourself, including your limitations and what you’d really hate to do or be in the future. Look at your past and the choices you made that got you to your present. Ask yourself ‘Who do I want to be and what do I want to be in my future?’ ‘What do I want to say about my life when I’m really old?’
Once you’ve figured out what your life’s purpose is, set your plan in motion as incremental goals with specific deadlines.
Encourage yourself with notes and inspirational sayings. Perhaps copy them and set them as diary reminders at random times during the week?
Save your money towards your plans as, not only will it be useful to achieve your goals, but it will give you a sense of accomplishment right now.
Prepare to sacrifice immediate gratification for later rewards. This takes self-discipline.
Be mindful – pay attention to the small things in your life; a bird, a tree, the clouds. You may come to some realisations through them that continue to give you hope.
Live in reality but keep the dreams for your future and your plans alive by not allowing anyone to criticize, dismiss or invalidate you.
Your inner voice is far more important to you than others’ negativity. Your inner intuitive feelings usually know what’s best for you. Follow your heart!
What I’ve written about here can easily be applied as a blueprint for your business. Sit down, think about what you would like to achieve with your business, where you are headed and how you plan on getting there.
There are a myriad of helpful tools on the internet today. Or you can simply ask someone in the know. If it is a specific business you’ve been thinking about starting, take the leap, contact someone you know who is in a similar field, and ask for advice and handy tips!
It’s a new year – time for a new future, time to assess your life.
‘Til next time!
by Karen Wessles | Jan 18, 2017 | Branding, Sales, Social Media
Building sales confidence with a winning mindset
Being an entrepreneur automatically means that you keep learning. You keep developing your skillsets, understanding new ways of doing business and applying new methods to make your business better.
The same principles are applied to sales. If you want to be a better salesperson, with the understanding that all entrepreneurs are salespeople, then you need to keep honing your skills and developing your mindset to have a winning attitude in sales.
How do you do this?
Well, I want to share some surprising ways that you can boost your sales confidence to achieve in business what you’ve always dreamed of achieving.
1. Exercise – generally a great way to unclutter the mind
2. Have fun – remember that from your childhood? Don’t ever lose it.
3. Smile – it automatically gives you a mental boost and makes everyone around you feel good
4. Take a walk – taking a walk changes the chemicals in your brain and encourages more creative ways to deal with problems
5. Compliment – they say you should give 5 genuine compliments a day. When last did you compliment someone on their shoes or the way they handled a certain situation?
Then there are other ways to create a superstar sales mindset :
· Stay hungry. Every entrepreneur I know is driven. They have a high work ethic and high energy levels. In the face of rejection or economic downturn, these are the people who keep going, no matter what.
· Be prepared. With every sales call that you make or sales meeting you attend, make sure you’ve done your research on the prospective client, understand what they do and how your service or product will benefit them.
· Be your authentic self. People buy from people, and people buy from people they like. In sales likability does matter for a sustainable business relationship. Bottom line, be yourself!
· Believe in your product. Your passion should always shine through, whether you have a product or service based business, let your clients see your passion, let them experience it. The confidence you have in your products and services is a motivation for your clients to continue buying from you and ultimately become your Brand Ambassador who will shout from the rooftops about your amazing business.
Telling is not selling. Develop your mindset to really understand the problems your clients are experiencing in their business and how best your product or service will solve that particular problem. At the end of the day, a great sales transaction is the collaboration between two businesses that mutually benefit each other.
People love authenticity and passion, so let that shine through with every sales interaction. Be yourself, be confident and have a great mindset about everything in life!
by WP-Dev | Jan 12, 2017 | Branding, Sales, Social Media, Web Design
How Sales People can sell better to CEO’s
There may come a time that you’ll need to sell to the C-Suite, the high-ranking executives of a business. These are the likes of CEO’s, CFO’s and CIO’s. Or perhaps, like Salesforce your entire sales strategy is based around selling only to CEO’s. Whatever the case may be, let’s help you get more prepared for that sales meeting. How to win over executive buyers? You need to enter their mind set and be absolutely prepared at all times. In order to get this right you need to:
Do your homework on the prospect
Scan the prospect’s website, scour the internet to find what you can on that particular CEO. Really understand the kind of content the CEO likes to share on social media and know where they hang out digitally.
How well do you know the prospective company?
Do you as a highly effective and successful salesperson take the time to go to LinkedIn and Facebook and do in-depth analysis on this company that you want to pitch to? Take the time to understand how well their business is doing, the pain their business is solving. Do as much research as possible.
Have an agenda
As we all know time is money and C-levels are exceptionally busy. So don’t go into a sales meeting wasting their time. Come prepared with an agenda, account for every minute in that boardroom. Arm yourself with relevant case studies and testimonials. Try to think of any objections the CEO may throw your way and come up with solutions prior to the meeting. Be agile on your feet as you will be thrown a curveball. Be an active listener and really understand how your solution will fit into the prospective company’s vision.
The magic of sales lies in the follow up
What happens after the meeting is just as important as what transpired during the sales meeting. Remember to follow up, this responsibility lies with you. Make sure you have a game plan in place for your follow up. Remember that more than likely these CEO’s are hounded on a daily basis by other salespeople vying for their attention. You need to do your homework, show up and definitely ensure that you stand out from the crowd. And above all else, listen to what is being said and also to what is not being said. The most successful salespeople have learned the art of listening.
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by WP-Dev | Jan 12, 2017 | Branding, Sales, Social Media, Web Design
Accelerate the Growth of your Business with a winning Sales Process
You may run a highly successful sales division for a corporate company or you could be an early stage start up, wearing multiple hats. Either way, you are fully aware that sales is core to the success of your business. Here are a few tips on how to put together a basic yet winning sales process.
1. Begin client outreach right now
Gather all your wits about you and start calling. Yes, pick up the phone! I promise you, the phone will not bite you. Don’t feel alone though as most people dread speaking with complete strangers on the phone. What I can tell you is that the more you do it the more confidence you’ll gain. This method is the best way to field objections, understand business challenges and even get feedback on your offering, all in real time.
2. Start Role playing
Walk through the sales process right until close of sale with a colleague or business partner. Once you start feeling more comfortable with going through the whole sales pitch start role playing with someone out of your organisation. These scenarios can give you better insight on how to identify possible gaps, whether it’s in your approach or your product / service.
3. Establish your qualifying criteria
By establishing a list of sorts to pre-qualify your clients you will better understand what pain your product / service solves, whether you are a good match or not for a potential client, if they can afford you and so forth. This is vital information to have as it could prevent your sales cycle from being lengthened unnecessarily or possibly mismatching your offering with a prospective client.
4. Build a sales conversion funnel
You need to learn to reverse engineer, not only in business, but also within your sales process. So begin with the end in mind and then reverse the process until you get to where you currently are in order to better understand where you want to go and how you are going to get there. For example, when we speak of a sales conversion funnel, we typically refer to a sequence of events, like first do a cold call, then send a follow up email, do another outreach activity, then pre-qualify the prospect and close the deal. Ask yourself how many deals you would like to close in one month, then break that down to how many prospects you should have in your pipeline, the number of quotes you should have out, your daily number of cold calls and include your marketing strategy into the mix. This will help with understanding your desired conversion rate and what your sales pipeline should look like on a monthly basis in order to achieve the close rate you’re looking for.
5. Keep going, keep growing
If it this process is showing results work hard on developing it. It may be working now however it is imperative to keep testing your process to find better ways of doing things. As the founder of the business or sales leader it is important that you are actively involved in developing the company’s sales process. There’s a great quote from Steli Efti :
“Lack of iteration is what prevents companies from making a good sales process great!”
Keep moving forward and looking for a winning repeatable process.
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by WP-Dev | Jan 12, 2017 | Branding, Sales, Social Media, Web Design
Why Marketing is so essential to the success of your Sales goals
We’ve all heard it before, how the marketing department just cannot see eye-to-eye with the sales department. And how the sales department thinks the campaigns designed by the marketing department is never going to work. It’s 2017 – time to set aside those differences and truly understand how these two departments are quintessential to the growth of any business. Yes it can be done. It is absolutely possible for these two divisions to work together harmoniously. And this is the year to do it. Why? If we can better understand how important a great marketing campaign is, we can better utilise it in growing our sales, month-on-month. The best way to do this is to get these two silos’ to speak with each other. It doesn’t matter if you’re a corporate or a solopreneur, the bottom line is, marketing complements sales. Simple.
7 Steps to understanding Marketing
- Business Vision – What is your business vision? That is, do you know your business? Why did you build your business? Does your vision align with your strategy? First and foremost, by having a clear vision of what you want, then how you’re going to achieve it will follow automatically.
- Determine Target Market – In order to design a great marketing strategy you truly need to understand who you are speaking to. What does your ideal customer look like? Where are they located? What are their interests? Where do they hang out in the social media realm? By understanding the buying persona (or client avatar), you’ve just made your strategy building so much easier.
- Look At Your Competitors – Chances are there is already a business doing what you’re doing. But never fear! Now is the time to understand what differentiates you from your competitors and make that your slogan, your driving force. Look at what they are doing and do it better.
- Act Like A Media Company – You absolutely need to commit in creating as much great content as possible. There are numerous articles available on the web describing where buyer attention is focussed. Find out where in your niche they are and cater to them. In other words, if you’re selling beauty products then it makes sense to share gorgeous editorial pics on Instagram, to do how to videos on YouTube and to share daily cleansing tips for instance with live feed on Facebook. Get creative and keep churning out quality content.
- Set Out Marketing Goals – Take the needed time to set out your marketing goals for the year to come and break them down into achievable monthly milestones. The better your goals are outlined and adhered to, the easier the sales process becomes.
- Create A Marketing Calendar – Create a workable marketing calendar for the rest of the year. Look at ways to launch new products or services, create monthly themes and weekly action steps. Become creative with your posts, however, do cater to your target market and keep in mind the medium that you’re sharing on. Look at the time of day and the day of the week that you’re sharing content to ensure that you maximise engagement and convert those leads into sales.
- Put A Budget In Place – There are times that you’re going to spend money to make money and marketing is one of those places. The beauty of social media and blogging is that you can grow your audience organically and create a loyal following without spending a cent. Other times it is essential to throw a bit of budget behind your marketing campaigns to ensure that your conversion rate is high and attainable. You want to see tangible results from your marketing campaign, so make sure that the right people are seeing your content at the right time.
