How to Create the Perfect Sales Strategy for Real Business Growth

With this in mind, here are our tips to creating a sales strategy that will soon have you bringing in lots of new potential customers.

Set Realistic Goals

The first step in creating a successful sales strategy is to identify your main goals and objectives. This is imperative as it will then allow you to work backwards and figure out the actions you need to take in order to have a hope of reaching those goals.

Choose a handful of goals, and be specific; for example, maybe you're looking to increase traffic to your website, have more engagement on social media, or better rates of customer retention. Whatever they are, make sure they're realistic. Of course you want to be optimistic, but setting goals that are unattainable will ultimately cause your team to become frustrated, and damage their trust in you.

Know Your Market

Having a clear idea of who your target market is will be essential for creating an effective sales plan. Without this knowledge, you'll find it much harder to generate new leads. Knowing your audience allows you to find the best channels to use to reach them, and also things like the type of content that is likely to engage them.

There are a wide range of resources available to help you when it comes to target market research. You can look at your previous customer data, monitor what your competitors are doing, or use a platform that has it all in one place - B2B platform Global Database provides free company data on their UK business database, for example.

Cater to Your Audience

Once you've established who your target market is, and carried out some background research on those types of companies or consumers, you'll be able to work your sales strategy around their needs and preferences. Make sure that you're keeping them in mind at every step of the process; it's them that you need to convince to buy your product or service, so how exactly are you going to do that?

What Makes You Different?

Now is the time to identify what sets you apart from the competition. If you're providing a product or service that is already on the market, you'll need to work harder to get across exactly why customers should choose yours instead. This might involve having to tempt customers away from their tried and tested brands, and this can be a challenge - especially if you're a new brand that doesn't have much of a following yet.

In order to establish what your unique selling point is, take a look at your rivals. Note what they're strengths and weaknesses are, and how you can play off of these. For example, if a company has had some negative reviews regarding the low quality of their products, emphasise the superior quality of yours. Competing on price alone often isn't a good idea for the long-term; you'll end up in a race to the bottom, and your target audience will see you as a sinking ship with sub-par products.

Use the Right Techniques

In order to close as many sales as possible, you need to ensure that your team are using the right methods. You should make sure that all members of the team are trained properly, and have a clear idea of what is expected of them, including the overall goals and objectives that your business is working towards.

This is why it's important to set these out within your sales strategy; it keeps everyone on the same page and ensures that the most effective methods are being used at all times. Whether you've opted to use humour, empathy, similarity, or any other type of closing technique, make sure it's mentioned in your strategy.

Don't Forget Your Previous Customers

While attracting new customers is important for growing a business, so to is ensuring a strong relationship with your previous customers. It's been proven time and time again that those who have already bought from you are more likely to make higher-value purchases, and will also be easier (and cheaper) to convert.

Ensure that you're looking after your current customer base by providing great customer service, providing them with content tailored to their needs and interests, and if you're in B2B in particular, building a genuine rapport. Discounts and loyalty programs can also be very effective at keeping previous purchasers in the fold, but ultimately they just want to feel valued and know that their needs are being met.

Monitor and Adapt

While a sales strategy will usually set out the plans for the next year, that doesn't mean that you should remain completely rigid in the way it's carried out. It's very important that you monitor how well the strategy is working. Determine which KPIs will be most useful for each of your sales goals, and review them regularly.

Then, use these metrics to decide when it may be time to make adjustments to your plan. With this in mind, it's also crucial that you keep a watchful eye over what your competitors are doing, as well as the market in general. Then you'll be able to react accordingly, if for example, your rival is set to launch a new product, or there's a big fluctuation in your niche forecast.

While coming up with an effective sales strategy may seem like a daunting challenge, the process is much easier by breaking it down into different steps. Providing you do your research, and set out exactly how you intend to achieve your (realistic!) goals, you'll have a powerful strategy and a real chance at attracting plenty of new leads to outdo your rivals.