How to Boost Your Company's Sales
In today's struggling economy, maintaining strong sales growth can pose a big challenge. Here are six tips to help grow your sales using resources you already have.
Wed, February 04, 2009
PC World — In today's struggling economy, maintaining strong sales growth can pose a big challenge. It's OK to sulk for a little while, but you'll soon have to take action. One of the most efficient and least expensive solutions to this problem is to focus on creating better processes and leverage the existing tools you already have. Here are six tips to help grow your sales using resources you already have.
Be More Organized
Know who your current customers are, who your prospects are and how you became aware of them. Keep all information regarding customers and prospects up-to-date so that you have accurate data available when needed. If you are an Outlook user, you can be more organized by leveraging Outlook's contact, calendar and tasks features. You can also keep an Excel spreadsheet of contact information, but maintaining that list that can get arduous if you have many contacts.
Focus on the Funnel
At any given time, your sales cycle will include various deals at different stages of completion. Tracking where specific clients are in this sales cycle is vital to ensuring that none of your deals fall through the cracks. To keep track of your sales pipeline, you should develop a list of milestones that you would like your sales team to achieve.
The milestones will be different for every business, but should include three to five decision or contact points. For example, some points might be the initial contact, a follow-up, a verbal agreement and a written contract.
Again, you can create a spreadsheet listing each individual sale, where each deal is in the sales process, and the estimated date of closure. If you have many opportunities, or want to share the information, getting a CRM application makes sense.
Track Who Your Evangelists Are and Thank Them
It is important to keep track of your customers, but it is also essential to maintain relationships with your referral sources. By noting which sources have referred the majority of your sales, you can begin to see which of them are providing the most sales opportunities and focus your attention more directly on them. If you are using a CRM solution, you should see if it has the capability to tie referral information to sales in the pipeline.
Another good practice: Every time someone refers a customer to you, thank them immediately with a handwritten note or a quick email. This is a common courtesy that many are guilty of neglecting.
