How to Raise Sales — 25 Tips from the Pros

1. Clearly Define and Continually Refine Your Brand

Mazdak Mohammadi, Owner, blueberrycloud

In my experience as a small business marketing consultant, I bet on new refinement as the best and most effective process to raising sales for small businesses operating for more than three decades. Clearly specify who you are, what you do, what you don’t do, who are your best customers, who your competition is, why folks choose them, and why your customers choose you. Refining your brand helps you leverage your distinctive expertise for a business owner to create focused messaging and communication about you, your products and your services. In reaching brand clarity, you avoid wasting time communicating relevant or irrelevant noise to people who may or may not be your customers. Instead, focused communication lets you cut the crap and give folks what they need to understand in order to create a buying decision or proceed. By getting this attention, you get more customers, more frequently, without using more time or funds to do so.

2. Be Active in Preventing Abandoned Cart Emails

Cory Smith, VP of Mail, Metric Digital

Our company uses email marketing to grow small business and ecommerce businesses that encircle their businesses. We’ve seen 250% to 400% blended return on advertising spend for many clients brands of all different sizes and shapes. 1 such approach is to ship multiple abandon cart mails. Have an online shopping cart? Send a gentle reminder that the customer’s cart remains available. Let them know you have not forgotten about them. This is also a good time to incorporate a marketing. Try to get the sweet spot that compels more conversions without cutting into your margins.

3. Nurture Existing Client Accounts

Louis Gudema, President, revenue + associates

Many companies place too much focus on closing new customers and accounts, and insufficient on keeping and developing existing accounts. Depending on the business, it is 5 to 25 times more expensive to find a new client than to keep and develop an existing one. So companies should remain near their clients, have occasional listening conversations together — rather than always trying to market to them and boost their offerings and service based on that feedback. Clients also want different content compared to prospects, so use email, blogs, and videos to make content that’s helpful for them. Retaining and selling more to current customers is in the center of my”Bullseye advertising Framework” for all these reasons.

4. Start With “Low-Hanging Fruit”

Lois Raats, Founder & Principal Consultant, Ready2Grow Associates

I’m a management consultant who works with specialist support clients. To increase sales, I start with clients'”low-hanging fruit”. By way of instance, many months ago, a bunch of architects came to me in a panic. Their routine markets had been drying up and they were floundering. I asked them who was in their database. They said”What database?” . As soon as they got a little more organized, each partner started calling everyone they knew and going out for coffee. Within six months, they had much business coming in they did not know what to do with it and we had to begin working on a whole different set of issues.

5. Pair Special Promotions with Events

Julia Rohan, Owner, Rover-Time Dog Walking & Pet Sitting

My small business ran a special promotion on”Small Business Saturday”. We offered prepaid”walk packages” in a very slight discount and earned over $10,000 in sales on that day. Our organization is built upon flexibility for the customer, but the bundle we promoted came with stringent terms and conditions that all clients surprisingly preserved and respected in trade for the reduction we provided.

6. Use Gift Certificates and Product Giveaways

Jim Herst, CEO, Perceptive Selling Initiative, Inc..

No one advertising strategy fits all. Pinpointing unique procedures and concretizing the method is the function of a seasoned Guru. Issuing present certificates is a favorite sales construction technique for merchants. Gift certificates can be designed to attain ANY objective and target a specific market, without taking a lot of out of your marketing budget. Most recipients see gift certificates as cash and prefer it over ho-hum discount vouchers. Some companies can build sales by simply cold-calling. But while it is very simple to feel a prospect, it’s also hard, time-wise, to research who to approach or seek an appointment with any business that works on cold-calling should devise and implement a cold call technique that’s easy for any user to master in a matter of days.

An effective sales technique is very specific for each business. A baker would give away product samples . An industrial tool wholesaler can provide a unique advantage such as supplying and maintaining a cutting edge tool inventory at a clients site, eliminating tools ever being inaccessible causing a line shut-down. A cardboard box maker may offer color printing with no additional cost on a brand new user’s three months needs. A number of ways exist and could be uniquely customized.

7. Make It Simple for Customers to Remember How to Attain You

Paul Faust, Vice President, RingBoost.com

1 tool which can help increase such opportunities is to utilize a memorable local or toll free number in their marketing.Too frequently, we see/hear advertising messages but only can’t remember how to get to the business. 1 good example is driving by most billboards or other outdoor media such as an agency vehicle or yard sign. You’ve got seconds to see and recall the message and the way to reach the business, yet they utilize a random seven-digit amount that’s impossible to recall. This rings true for most wireless advertisements. Most company owners carefully selected their name, domain, logo, tagline and most other parts of their enterprise, and then they went to the telephone company, and took the next seven-digit random number away from the heap. Why would a business owner do that if they can choose a number that’s simple to recall and ties in their brand or what they do?

A small business’ telephone number is just one simple, simple to use, and simple to deploy tool which doesn’t require much expertise to use and can increase the amount of calls it receives. Simply — more forecasts equals more swings of the bat and more opportunities to increase sales.

8. Employ Multi-Channel Marketing

Chris Barr, Director of Marketing, Taradel, LLC

Every sale begins with fantastic marketing. And for smaller companies, multi-channel marketing is the key to optimizing sales and ROI. Not many target markets are exclusively on line or are equally tech-savvy, and this strategy lets you achieve your target audience across multiple platforms that can be anything from website to direct email. By way of instance, advertisers who combine direct mail and electronic ads average 30 percent more ROI in comparison with advertisers who only use direct mail.

9. Do Your research

Nicholas Petroski, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Lumo

Effective market research will make the entire sales process simpler. There are a tons of useful programs out there to assist but the very best free sources of information will be the U.S. Bureau of Financial Analysis and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. These two websites are gateways to a wealth of business and employment data that small business owners can use to understand their economic atmosphere. Find the quickly growing industries and focus on them to give your sales a fast jolt.

10. Implement an Influencer Marketing Strategy

Isaac Lekach, CMO and Co-Founder, REP

Influencer marketing is a great and inexpensive way to create brand awareness and ultimately improve earnings. It’s an incredibly powerful ROI — provided, of course, your plan is tight and executed well. Before you hunt for influencers, ensure that your online/social existence is up to snuff. Can you be easily found? Do the materials on your profile/website stimulate intrigue and offer pertinent details like what exactly is it, why can it be stellar, and where is it purchased? Once that is all in place, you’re all set to have others replicate your own message and drive visitors to your profile/website. Based on the product, you can do a number of items: barter (trading products for articles ), giveaways, take-overs, shout outs, contests, etc.. Get creative. Last, and possibly most importantly–recall that this strategy should be continuous. You want user created content to constantly be flowing and reaffirming your brand/product.

11. Partner With Other Businesses and Organizations

Billy Templeton, Glass Restoration Guru, Phoenix Glass Repair

Referrals tend to carry more fat than someone who just sees a organization. Look for other businesses in the industry and work together to pass every other referrals. In Arizona, they have a local business group named Local First Arizona. It’s possible to get fantastic testimonials from these groups. There are different benefits to joining various regional organizations such as workshops, expos, etc. which are designed to assist you succeed. Another fantastic company to join is the local chamber of commerce.

12. Optimize Your Online Selling Opportunities

Carmine Mastropierro, Owner, Mastrodigital

Small business owners can increase their sales by benefiting from an omni-channel strategy. Selling solely in your internet store limits how many potential clients are exposed to your products. By signing up and selling on programs like eBay and Amazon, you quickly broaden your client base. Small business owners may also use social media sales channels including Facebook and Pinterest. Most of these platforms are free to market on which gives omni-channel a very healthy ROI.

13. Use Bluetooth Proximity Marketing

Seth Phillips, President, Gorilla Proximity Marketing

Research indicates that 60% of all smartphones are Android so the marketplace is enormous. Owners may advertise sales or special offerings. They’re also able to carry this small battery operated transmitter around together or even within firm vehicles and market everywhere they go. The company owner places a small (Oreo cookie size) Bluetooth transmitter in their bricks and mortar site. The transmitter can then send a 40 character text message along with an internet connection to the organization’s site to every Android smartphone that arrives within 200 feet of the business location. The client does not need a program; the notification shows up at the Google Neighborhood notifications. The cost ranges from $20 to $30 a month per range per unit. The text message and the web link could be changed as often as the owner wants.

14. Bear in Mind that Timing is Everything

Mikko Honkanen, Co-Founder, Vainu

It’s not enough to rely solely on chance — rather, it is strategic thinking and smart usage of modern technologies and information that will increase the probabilities of landing you at the right place at the right moment. Lead generation platforms allow easy access to myriads of information, providing insights on the latest happenings within the account on your sales pipeline. For instance, one program can notify you in real-time, right when a tracked change happens within a business that fits into your”Ideal Client” profile. Knowing a trigger which will make a business more likely to need your service or product will increase your sales team’s success speed by taking advantage of this element of time. As a result, you improve your odds of acquiring a larger quantity of satisfied customers as you work smarter, not harder.

Where to start to understand which triggers to track? Begin by analyzing your existing clients: what changes happened within those accounts before you inked a deal? Once you’ve identified these signs and activate events to look out for, use automated tools to track these events to make the process a lot more efficient. Make sure to act quickly when you’re alerted of a change that may indicate an chance to sell.

15. Make Use of Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Funnels

Steven Benson, Founder and CEO, Badger Maps

Account-based advertising, or ABM, funnels are a hyper-effective approach to advertise your company and increase sales. Define your main customer groups by name, business, or some other narrow section. Then make content for their specific decision making procedure. Where are you currently looking for answers to their problems? What will interest this specific group about your solution? Think of their specific challenges and how you play a role in solving these. At the conclusion of your funnel, you should incorporate some personal outreach, an email or phone call does wonders for conversions. You should also think of utilizing a revenue routing tool such as Badger Maps that assists outside salespeople and sales groups boost their earnings and revenue.

The program focuses specifically on the type of salesperson who is visiting clients face-to-face — the area or outside salesperson. By doing a great deal of busy work for them and optimizing their schedules, sales reps save time that they can use to get more customer meetings and sales.

16. Take the”Enormous” Out of Big Data

Vaughn Aust, Executive Vice President, MarketStar

To do this, you have to know what data is important. Most companies have more information than they know what to do with. 1 tip would be to utilize predictive analytics to narrow down the data variables that are relevant and predict who will buy. And after that find much better ways to collect and construction those data variables so that you may continually improve how you prioritize leads and identify new prospects.

17. Sell at the Proper Price

Steve Wang, HR Professional and Entrepreneur, Resume Writing Advice

While it’s tempting to go with whatever cost that appears to automatically make sense, this is generally never your best bet. By spending the time to methodically split test various rates and pricing arrangements, I’ve found that often times, I can boost my earnings amounts by 20 to 30 percent without really changing anything about my product. Occasionally, the very best pricing arrangement to go with is also the least intuitive one to consider. Do not be scared to check things out and employ emotional pricing strategies such as the decoy effect, cost anchoring, Weber’s law, and other strong strategies that may take your sales to new heights.

18. Advertise, Advertise, Advertise!

Robert Barrows, President, R.M. Barrows, Inc.. Advertising & Public Relations

For business of any dimension, one of the keys to increasing sales is to advertise, advertise, advertise! Set up a budget. Determine what you would like to say as well as how, when, and where you wish to say it, and maintain advertisements for as long as you live.You might also need to get in touch with several local advertising and PR agencies and also talk about the costs and opportunities for such campaigns.

19. Have a Program for Scheduling Clients

Samantha Hugo, Chief Executive Officer, Hugomatica LLC

In the beauty industry, you concentrate on providing high-quality service to keep customers coming back. However, there are pain points no one in this market is addressing: clients don’t wish to create a telephone call, they do not wish to wait patiently, and they need what they want when they need it. As with Uber and Lyft, potential clients will need to know whether you are available today. Using GoSpa (a free program for Apple cellular devices and coming shortly for Android), you can let prospective new clients know that you are available today by toggling your status to”Available Now”. So now you can grab some out-of-region clients who happened to have dropped their 10-year-old in a baseball practice at 4:00 pm and need a manicure, massage, etc..

This is a game changer for beautician small companies and will enlarge money earning opportunities by incorporating the”side-hustle” notion to the existing company by providing paying clients for empty seats.

20. Leverage Facebook Live

Karina Rabin, Co-Inventor, Hang-o-Matic

My preferred tool now for increasing sales is Facebook LIVE! This is a remarkably powerful tool and every company needs to be using it right now. Facebook’s algorithm varies often and when Facebook users complain that LIVE is getting out of hand and you’ll find too many notifications then guess what, Live will go away just like the visibility of business pages unless you pay to playwith. Research shows that 81% of internet users stream live movies on Facebook compared to the year before. In my view, I think Facebook LIVE helps business engage with their clients, get new customers and allows them to brand their business.

I invite you to take it up a notch and go Facebook LIVE using a customer. This way you can reach your audience AND your customers audience at precisely the exact same time. Interviewing a customer on your Facebook LIVE would allow you to grow credibility of your business, get a LIVE five-star review, and reach a much wider audience.

21. Have Successful Sales Leadership Skills

Chris Lipper, CEO, The Alternative Board — North Central NJ

Effective sales leadership is the key to fostering sales across your business. A few ways to motivate your team to market more include: 1) Hosting within competition and contests. Utilize a visual whiteboard so sales staff can see how they’re faring compared to their peers. 2) Implementing behavioral KPIs. Instead of monetary KPIs (i.e. reach $10,000 per month), create behavioural goals for your team (such as attend four networking occasions month, host two one-on-ones weekly, request 10 referrals, etc). This way, it is possible to determine whether they’re performing the work, even if they aren’t hitting the numbers, and in which there’s room for advancement or who desires training in what regions. 3) Encouraging referrals. Always have your team ask for referrals. It is an affordable way to develop so coach your team with this critical ability.

22. Match Your Skills with the Ideal Tools

Walter Bayliss, CEO, Universal Media Online

If it comes to earnings, I always believed that our skills can always be coupled with the right tools. A sales person can only be successful in his field once their knows what, where and when to invest in. Personally, I use GoJEO. GoJEO is a tool that aids professionals with their companies by getting more customers, and making more revenue while spending less time. As a business owner myself, it is essential for me to track the development of each prospect but there are only so many hours in the day, and I can not do all of them. The matter about GoJEO’s features is that it comes with a visual on how each guide can turn into a sale. I have also answered queries from prospective and current customers from different platforms (Facebook, Skype, site ) throughout a single station under GoJEO’s modules. Using this application, I’ve done a lot more while I am on the go.

23. Have a Fantastic Customer Relationship Management Program In Position

Eric Pinto, CEO/Founder, Mackenzie Consulting Firm

Implementing a fantastic customer relationship management software has been the best way to boost my clients sales amounts. Around any industry, B2B or B2C, any market, finding a way to keep organized notes is a sure fire way to close more sales. I have seen 30% gains in gross revenue from my customers within just six months of CRM instrument implementation. Simple things like remembering that a dog’s title might help foster trust with a client so having a way to take those sorts of notes is priceless. In case your organization doesn’t have a system in place, I guarantee you’re losing sales to someone who does. It may be me you are bidding against.

24. Utilize Content Discovery Networks for Prospecting

Philippe Côté-Léger, Marketing Director, Lab Urbain

Native ad and content discovery network like Outbrain, Taboola or Yahoo Gemini can offer clicks. We can drive cheap traffic to content pieces linked to a product category. Then, if the user spends X quantity of time on that page, we know for certain they’re interested in this product. We can then add them in a remarketing list and retarget them on Facebook or Google. Targeting this audience will increase our interaction speed and therefore increase in potential earnings.

25. Run a Promotion or a Contest

Robyn Mancell, CMO, Girls Gone Forex

When we started Girls Gone Forex, we conducted an internet competition which we chose our first 15 pupils from applications of 100. It caused enthusiasm since they needed to go through a selection process. This did was cause our title to circulate until we really started for paying company. After those women graduated, they couldn’t help but spread the word about a virtually unknown company. Since that time, we’ve continued to build our subsequent with this one social networking website and collaborating with groups that educate financial wellness and education. It has allowed us to create a following where we began and to get a lot less cash. We finally have a model to use in additional advertising venues.