Ideas For Boosting Sales

Every business owner’s goal is to have a lot of profit as much as possible. But earning a lot of money is not easy. It needs a lot of hard work, determination and a good marketing strategy.

So if a business owner wants to increase his sales would a brochure do?

Typically brochures are not used as a final sales tool. But because it serves as an introduction to potential customers, it is important that your brochures are interesting and attractive as possible. And how could you possibly do that? As always, you have to have a good design, great color choices and good content. You can also add some gimmicks to make it more interesting. Getting testimonials from current customers can also add spice to your brochure. Testimonials helps build trust with target customers and it gives a clearer picture to your potential customers of how your products and services can help them.

Consider these factors when getting started with your own brochure: collect several brochures from hotel lobbies or offices. Then decide which brochures catch your eye and which one you want to pick up. And ask these questions: what made you pick them up? Was it the headline? Was it because of the ink, color, typeface or visual design? Did you find something interesting in it that caught your eye? After you have answered these questions, it’s your turn to decide what will make your own brochure striking and interesting.

Then again let’s say you are deciding whether to present your brochure in a logical or emotional manner. Consider this situation; you bought a shirt just because of the color and design of it. It doesn’t matter if it’s a bit large for your size you’ll grow into it anyway. What’s important is you like the color and the design is too cute to pass for. In advertising, logic and emotion often come in conflict. So if you create a brochure for a particular product based on logic and your competitor present the same product based on emotion, you might want to hold on to your seat because more or less your competitor will be able to entice more customers than you. Remember that in situations like this emotion is more likely to win.

Keep in mind that your brochure represents who you really are. It will tell customers whether you offer good service or if you take your customers for granted. It will present your image when you are not there. So show your customers who you really are and make those brochures beef up profits for you.

Sales Marketing

Without an effective sales marketing strategy, most businesses would fail within a very short period of time. By simply putting a product or service on the market without the proper research and planning, the chances of finding success are almost nonexistent. While there are isolated cases of success with very little sales marketing preparation and practice, any business that wants to be successful understands the importance of sales marketing. Even products that have already undergone an initial sales marketing effort can begin to see improvement with the consistent introduction of new sales marketing ideas and techniques.

One of the most common ways a business can begin looking at how to come up with effective sales marketing strategy is to look at the words that make up sales marketing separately- marketing and sales. By taking these two words and then proceeding to produce itemized lists that indicate areas that need improvement can make a manageable foundation on which to build new sales marketing strategies.

Begin with the market that a product or service is geared towards and reassess the information that is currently known about that particular market. It might be necessary to hire independent research firms in order to learn more about a target market in order to get new information for new sales marketing ideas. Make a point to note what products or services are being purchased and how effective the current sales marketing plan is working for those products. Those ideas might be applicable to other areas that aren’t as successful. For the products that are already producing reasonable or exceptional sales, consider what can be done to sell even more of these items to existing and new customers. Consider markets aside from retail that may not have been previously looked at like corporate, industrial, bulk and institutional markets.

Next it is time to consider what sales marketing strategies are being used by the competition and how effective they are for them. Think about how to expand the current market of a product in order to make it more profitable. Consider joining forces by packing a product with another company’s product if they could complement each other and be an irresistible package to the consumer. For example, if a photographer wants to generate more business, a new sales marketing strategy might be to join forces with a florist where both benefit from making referrals to each other. A floral and photo package might be just the niche most couples are looking for in order to have the kind of wedding they want at a price they can afford. A look at the supply chain and a business’s position in relation to the overall market in order to assess where change is needed and for ideas on new sales marketing strategies.

After looking at the factors that affect the sales marketing of a product, it is time to consider key factors for a new sales marketing strategy. Consider new promotional ideas for each product or service, think about if the price of the product or service should be made more competitive, maybe the service or delivery of a product needs to be addressed and unique new ways in which to build a loyal customer base.

The Need For Sales Training

Sometimes we forget the basics, what are we really trying to achieve by training the sales force? What are the issues we are trying to address, and how do we see sales training bridging the gap between where we are now and where we want to be?

We believe there are probably four main stakeholders involved in sales training:

For the company executves - listed below are some of the common issues we hear from executives regarding the issues they see with managing the sales team

* Business predictability - how can we improve the accuracy of forecasts for orders, revenue and margin.

* Higher level customer engagement - why can't we get higher to the customer's executives, and focus on value not price.

* Consistent performance - how do we reduce the variance at both team and individual level.

* Product and services mix - how can we get the sales team to sell the optimum product and services mix.

* Raising the amount of customer selling time by reducing the time taken on administration and emails.

* Consistent customer experience - how do we get this across the team.

* Winning of new customers and getting existing customers to take a wider range of products and services.

For the customer - have you ever put yourself in your customers' shoes? What attributes would you like to see in people you do business with? Again, the ideas below is based on our experience, and they happen to form a memorable acronym IKEA

* Integrity - does this sales person display the level of honesty and reliability that gives me confidence to buy from them.

* Knowledge - do they possess the knowledge expected of them in the following areas:

o Their company - history, philosophy, culture, strategy, processes, people.

o The market - general market and business drivers, my company's specific vertical market issues.

o Their products/services - high level benefits linked to my own company's business drivers and issues.

o The competitive landscape.

o My company - see empathy.

o Technology - not at a detailed technical level, but a broad understanding of technologies from a business perspective.

* Empathy - "before I care how much you know, I want to know how much you care." Does this sales person see me as unique, and have they taken the time to do the research

* Authority - when things go wrong with the project, since they normally do, will this person have the authority within their company to get the problems sorted out quickly.

For the sales people - having looked at the company's and customer's perspective on sales training, what about the sales people themselves? Try answering these questions

* Who decides what training the sales person needs?
* Is the training part of a long term, structured individual development plan?
* Has the need for the training been explained together with the expected outcomes?
* Are similar courses repeated year after year that everyone attends?
* What are the expected outcomes and changes in behaviour? * Who measures the success of the program?

Key reasons for training from a sales person's perspective should be:

* Professional improvement, looking as sales as a worthwhile career.
* The training will help meet my objectives/targets and hence earn me money.
* All training looks good on a CV.
* Its interesting to have time to reflect and gain a different perspective.

Too often sales training seems to be undertaken with little communication with the sales force to explain why they are there, what the benefit of being there will be and what is expected to change after the training.

For the sales managers - most sales managers have between 6 and 12 sales people working for them. How do they know what they are saying to customers, and how they are positioning the company? They cannot be at every face to face call or on the phone at each customer contact. We recommend the introduction of a structured sales process that is repeatable, and can be analysed and individual performance measured at each step.

By being able to use the same structure for each sales person, the sales manager will be able to identify areas that individuals need help in, and coach them accordingly. Conversely, if everyone is using there own system, it is very difficult to analyse where a person is in the sale, and what measures they need to take to get back on course.

Myths of Sales Management

I just had a phone conversation with a client who had a familiar story to tell. He had built his business on the model of an entrepreneurial sales force. Give them a territory, pay them straight commission, and tell them they are in business for themselves, free to develop the customers they chose with the products they wanted.

And for a couple decades it had worked well. The business grew and expanded. More entrepreneurial sales people were added, and the model was duplicated over and over again.

So far so good. But then the growth in sales began to slow down. Three flat or declining years in a row has caused this company president to question the status quo. Not only is business flat, but he's unable to get his sales force to promote the lines that he wants to promote, he's unable to get them to use some of the new technology that the company wants them to use, and he's unable to get them to prospect for new customers. Now he's faced with an experienced sales force, who for the most part, are unmanageable.

The culprit? A sales model that was built on the concept of the entrepreneurial salesperson. There was a time when this model was effective, but in today's competitive economy, there are serious difficulties with the entrepreneurial model.

This model works best when the market is growing. As long as there is more and more business out there to be had, the focus of most companies is to grab as much as they can, without caring a whole lot as to which customers and which products make up the business. Employing a group of entrepreneurial salespeople reduces the demands on sales management so that the company's executives can focus on building the infrastructure necessary to keep up with the consistent growth.

As we all know, this was the case for most of the previous decade. By shifting the responsibility for sales management unto the salespeople, however, you give up much of your management influence. In effect, you cede management of the sales force to the salespeople. And they generally make decisions that are in their own self interest, not yours. The very concept of an entrepreneurial salesperson is that he/she will manage himself. By definition, you abdicate your managerial role and cede management to the salesperson.

Is it any wonder that you can't direct the salesperson?

As long as business was consistently growing, this wasn't an issue. But now it is a concern. Most distributors have experienced a reduction in sales volume over the last few years. Many have come to the conclusion that they have to initiate significant changes in their sales organizations if they are going to be profitable and growing.

Now, instead of just more business, progressive distributors want to expand the business in target accounts, emphasize key product lines, and acquire new accounts. In other words, they want to direct the sales force more precisely, to focus them on the behaviors that further the company's strategic objectives.

At just the time that they want to more precisely focus the sales force, they are faced with a group of experienced salespeople who have become satisfied and content.

These sales people would rather not move out of their comfort zones of established customers and established products. They have no desire to do the hard work of prospecting for new accounts. And many are content with the diminished incomes of the past few years.

The culprit in this difficult situation is the entrepreneurial model. This is not to say that there are no entrepreneurial salespeople. Certainly a certain percentage of every large group of sales people will turn out to be highly motivated, constantly improving, driven to succeed and willing to accept your direction. From my experience, this is about one of 20 sales people. The chances of your entire group fitting this mold are slight. The issue is not the occasional exception to the rule; the issue is the model that no longer supports your strategic interests.

Retail Management

Stick with me here for minute – its not hard math.

There are five retail KPI’s worth tracking at the individual Salesperson level: Sales per hour; items per sale; average sale; conversion rate; wage to sales ratio.

If you add them all up (individually) and divide by the number of staff you get the ‘store average’ of each KPI.

You can now compare each Salesperson’s five KPI’s to the ‘store average KPI’ instantly revealing the MOST deficient statistic or undersupplied KPI for each individual Salesperson.

Why is it important?
Well you are now able to say with perfect clarity that:

HAD (employee’s) average sale of say $69 been at the store average of $114, (employee) would have sold $2803.

HAD (employee’s) "Items per sale" of 1.68 been at the store average of 3.02 (employee) would have sold $3471.

HAD (employee’s) "Sales per hour" of $129 been at the store average of $169, (employee) would have sold $1355.

And so on…

Thus, $3471 is the greatest sales increase (employee) could have achieved - the deficient statistic - or undersupplied KPI - being Items per sale.

This deduction gives us great insight into what behavior to coach first. In this case it’s ‘items per sale’ and the associated behavior correction is either a) (employee) is not adding on, or b) (employee) does not have enough product knowledge to sell companion products. The point is that managers who want to help their Salespeople perform better now know exactly which area of expertise to focus on to achieve the maximum possible performance improvement result.

In the case of ‘sales per hour’ (employee) may be slow at attending customers or taking to long with others. For ‘average sale’ (employee) probably doesn’t have enough product knowledge or does not know how to sell more expensive items.

By first looking at the deficient KPI, and then sorting through memorable observations about (employee’s) behaviors during the week, managers can quickly home in on corrective behavior, in its most appropriate or truthful form.

If you track these statistics each week at the individual staff level – which implies comparing each Salesperson to the store average – you would increase each Salesperson’s chances of succeeding within their own specific area of need and thereby create an opportunity to increase individual sales by as much as thirty percent.

Short Sales Are Possible

Short sales are real estate deals that happen when a home owner is in foreclosure, usually three payments behind, and you, the buyer, offer the bank less on the mortgage than is actually owed. And hopefully, the bank accepts.

Short sales take longer to get an agreement on a purchase price than a sale involving only the seller, but it is possible to get deep discounts from the bank when you buy a property before it goes to the sheriff’s sale.

You must be patient with short sales because extra people have to agree on the purchase price. However, the payoff is a higher profit with much nicer houses being bought and sold.

For instance, my first short sale involved a lot of patience, a lot of effort and a lot of positive thinking.

I was buying a wholesale deal from another investor/friend. It was a short sale he was working on with the bank. I told him I wanted to go with him when he talked to the seller. I asked for copies of all the paperwork that he and the buyer signed. The investor did all the talking with the bank.

It was therefore up to the investor to get the bank to agree to this deal. He knew I had to get it closed by a certain date as I was buying the house via a 1031 tax exchange.

That meant that there was a deadline--a government deadline--to get the bank to agree to the deal in order for me to get my tax exemption. If I missed it, I’d pay tax on the sale price of the house I’d sold six months earlier.

As you can imagine, my motivation was high to get this deal done on time. Fortunately, I had responsible, dependable people on my house-buying team. I knew I could count on them to come through for me in a crunch.

And I did what I needed to do. I got copies of all the paperwork. I noted all the important phrases that needed to be included for the future short sales I wanted to do. Then I waited. Without much patience.

I called the investor. He was working fast and hard, but he didn’t have an answer. The bank was slowing things down, not him. Even so, I reminded him of my deadline for the tax exchange. I also made sure he was communicating with the bank.

In the meantime, I kept working. I called the exchange company to let them know the tight time table. I prepared my title company and had them do a title search prior to the deal being accepted. I called the insurance company to get hazard insurance on the property.

And I got money from my private lender to close the deal.

With time running out, I had all the pieces and players in place. Then, with just a day and a half left to close, the bank finally agreed on a good purchase price. Now the only remaining detail was to get the seller, Joe, to sign the closing documents.

Joe had been helpful throughout the process, but he was working a double shift and couldn’t get away. So I got creative. I asked if we could come to him. He said we could.

The women from the title company and I met Joe at his place of employment at 11:30pm on the final day of my tax exchange.

We had thirty minutes to get the papers signed or my tax exchange expired, costing me my tax deferment.

We pushed. And made it happen with nineteen minutes to spare.

Joe, now relieved of all his home owner duties, had the biggest smile of all.

Short sales are truly a win-win for all involved. It was stressful but exciting. This became the first of many short sales in my new career.

Keep Sales Simple

For those of us working in the exciting world of sales, we are all too familiar with the pressures of meeting our daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly goals. This pressure can sometimes cause us to loose focus on the simple things that made us successful to begin with.

When we make a sales presentation, it is all too essential to look and sound the part. A professional appearance and product knowledge are to very important ingredients involved in sales.

But don’t ever loose sight of the fact that sales is supposed to be fun!

A personal story...

I can remember a time a few years back, when I was managing a bank branch inside a supermarket, otherwise known as In-Store banking.

At that time, we had daily goals that we were required to meet, and those goals were unit and dollar driven. It was a fast paced environment and every technique we could think of was incorporated into our sales. Nothing was taken for granted.

Including the simple stuff.

One particular afternoon I received a phone call from a woman who informed me that she was new to the area, and she was shopping around for a bank.

We had a pleasant conversation, and I explained to her all of our products starting with our free checking, and ending with our more exclusive products.

Once the conversation was over, she thanked me and told me she would consider us.

I thanked her as well, and ended by telling her my name again, and that she could ask for me, if she decided to come in.

The next day, that same woman walked into my branch and asked for me, she reminded me of the conversation we had the day before, and than proceeded to tell me that she came in because I was so nice on the telephone.

The fact is, I was really nice on the telephone, I knew I had a potential customer on the phone and I killed her with kindness. Not because I was being slick, but because it was easy, it was simple, and I had fun doing it. And it worked.

There was no selling involved in that conversation. I was just being a nice person.

Salesmanship is important, but people want kindness to.

My point is, take some of the pressure off of yourself and start having fun! Be nice, smile. It is not always necessary to act and speak so professionally, it can come off fake, and worst of all boring. So starting tomorrow, take a load off, roll up your sleeves, smile, laugh out loud, and most of all have fun and keep it simple!