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Seven Innovative Ways to Drive Strategic Growth

The lifeblood of any company is its ability to grow and expand. Without growth, a company will eventually stagnate and die. This can be difficult for business owners, as it requires creativity and innovation. This blog post will discuss seven innovative ideas for company growth. Some of these may be familiar to you, while others may be new concepts entirely.

Diversification

Renew and update your business model

Voice of Customer Research

Focus on Customer retention

Invest in technology

Expand your Marketing Efforts

Sales Training and Coaching

1) Diversification.

One way to ensure growth for your company is to diversify your products and services. This can be done by expanding into new markets or developing new products that appeal to a broader customer base. By doing this, you are not putting all your eggs in one basket, so to speak, and therefore reducing the risk of stagnation.

Diversification can be difficult as it requires detailed market research and a thorough understanding of your target audience. However, if done correctly, it can lead to significant growth for your company.

Some ideas for diversification include:

  • Expanding into new markets
  • Developing new products or services
  • Offering customized solutions
  • Focusing on niche markets
  • Expanding your business through Franchise Direct to reach and increase your customer base

2) Review and Update Your Business Model.

Another way to spur growth for your company is to review your business model. This means taking a close look at the way you do business and seeing if there are any areas that could be improved. This could involve anything from streamlining your processes to changing the way you market your products or services.

Reviewing your business model can identify areas where you may be losing money or customers. Once these areas have been identified, you can then take steps to rectify them, leading to increased growth for your company.

What should you keep doing?

What should you start doing?

What should you stop doing?

3) Capture the Voice of Your Customers:

Think about all the changes businesses have gone through during and post pandemic. How much has your business changed? Market leading organizations are conducting voice of customer research to better understand how buyers buy, what criteria they are using today to make buying decisions and understand your customers overall satisfaction. We recommend having a third party conduct this research to remove the concerns with bias. However, we recognize some clients cannot afford to engage our firm, so we wrote an eBook to help you Leverage the Voice of your Customers to increase revenue.

4) Focus on Customer Retention.

Acquiring new customers is important for any business, but it’s also important to focus on retaining the customers you already have. This can be done by providing excellent customer service and developing long-term relationships with your clients.

In one study 89% of CEOs shared having strong relationships with their clients is key to their success but sadly only 24% of those CEOs provided sales skills training on how to build business relationships.

Focusing on customer retention can ensure that your current customers remain loyal to your brand. This loyalty will lead to word-of-mouth marketing, which is one of the most effective forms of marketing. In turn, this can lead to increased growth for your company.

Some ideas for focusing on Customer Retention:

  • Developing long-term relationships with clients
  • Offering excellent customer service
  • Focusing on customer satisfaction
  • Building a solid brand identity
  • Leverage data and build win-win
  • Build multiple relationships with key account decision makers

5) Invest in Technology.

Technology is always changing, and it’s important to stay ahead of the curve. Investing in new technology can improve your products and services, making them more efficient and effective. This can lead to increased growth as your customers will be more satisfied with your offerings.

It’s important to note that you don’t need to invest in the latest and greatest technology; sometimes, simply investing in updating your current technology can be enough to spur growth.

Some ideas for investing in technology:

  • Audit your current sales tech stack
  • Updating your current technology
  • Investing in new software or hardware
  • Automating processes
  • Improving website design

6) Expand Your Marketing Efforts.

Another way to encourage growth for your company is to expand your marketing efforts. This could involve anything from increasing your budget to launching a new marketing campaign. By developing your marketing, you will reach a wider audience and generate more leads, which can lead to increased sales and growth for your company.

Some ideas for expanding your marketing efforts:

  • Increasing your advertising budget
  • Update your value message by business persona
  • Launching a new marketing campaign
  • Investing in digital marketing
  • Developing a social media strategy
  • Speak in the language of your customers
  • Market solutions not products

7) Sales Training and Coaching

Buyers have spoken and 33% chose not to work with salespeople today and the numbers are growing. In one study 85% of buyers shared they expect a salesperson to connect the dots between what they sell and how it can impact the buyers bottom-line. Sadly, less than 15% of salespeople do this today. In a one-hour meeting with the average sales rep how many minutes were valuable to the buyer and or decisionmaker? SIX! Only six minutes because salespeople show up, throw up and they pitch slap their customers when they should be having conversations that lead to revenue.

Some ideas to train your salespeople

  • Complete a sales effectiveness assessment
  • Identify sales skills gaps
  • Train salespeople to close gaps
  • Equip sales managers to coach the new sales skills

In conclusion, there are many ways to encourage growth for your company. By implementing some of the ideas listed above, you can take your business to the next level. So, what are you waiting for? Get started today and see the results for yourself!

As always if your tea needs help let’s schedule a tie to chat.

 

 

Leverage Video to Grow New Opportunities and Revenue

The results are in, and top sales performers are growing their skills with technology like creating personalized videos and social selling. Is your SEO producing the leads your team needs to hit its goals? If not, you may want to consider adding videos to your website and business development campaigns. Video marketing is proven to increase your online engagement and conversions. The Google algorithms like video help your rank. This article explores ways video can improve your incoming leads and revenue.

 

Improved SEO

 

Let’s face it, we are swamped, and few people read anymore. People regularly search for short videos that answer problems they are facing. Countless surveys show that people are more engaged with video content than written content; video content is a little more passive; it requires less engagement from your target audience, which helps to deliver a message more effectively. It’s one way to improve your site’s SEO.

 

Of course, video marketing is not the only SEO strategy you need; you must have researched effective keywords, optimized your on-page SEO for a better user experience, and created content that provides genuine value to your target audience. But video promotion helps.

 

When building your video content strategy, use the data you have gathered from SEO research on keywords and phrases, top words and phrases your competitors use, and so on.

Working with clients, we often build a content map for the next three to six months based on the word, phrases, and problems clients are searching for.

 

Better Engagement

 

Video content allows your users to engage with the website for longer and increases the chances of converting customers. It also conveys your culture and how to you help customers in a way the written word cannot. The key is to be authentically you, and your content must educate and have the worthy intent to help others watching it.

 

People buy for two reasons: competence and trust. A video content strategy will build trust, and if you map your content strategy strategically will demonstrate competence and your experience.

 

Brand Engagement

 

Videos require less thought and, therefore, more engagement for users. Although written content can be designed to capture the audience’s attention and deliver a call to action, video content is far more effective. Years ago, I shared a short video on where CEOs turn when they have a business problem.

So many business leaders shared this short video my discovery calls were full for 60 days, and many of those calls turned into clients.

 

Of course, you don’t want to be too promotional regarding your brand message; you want to provide your customers and prospects with a value-added service that offers high-quality content relating to your brand without promoting brand identification.

 

More Conversions

 

Make no mistake; conversions increase with video promotions on your website. People love to see someone promoting a product or service they are already interested in. If you have their interest to this point, chances are you can move them over the line with video. I shared this short video about how “sales reps” must evolve to be trusted advisors.

 

The secret is to have a clear video cut in all the right places to increase the punch of the message. Like conventional selling, you want to keep the target audience engaged with the product without overwhelming them with a sales pitch. Always offer additional value with video.

 

Better Shares

 

Video content is very sharable. These days there are many platforms people use for personal and commercial sharing. If you want to make your brand more visible in digital spaces, get in front of the camera and start creating video content. It engages viewers more quickly, helps to build your brand, and is more shareable than conventional written marketing formats.

 

If you want our help strategically designing your video content and messaging strategy, please call us, and we will be happy to help you.

 

 

 

How To Improve Your Sales Training: 5 Top Methods

man standing in front of people sitting beside table with laptop computers

Every company needs to ensure its sales team works as effectively as possible. That means ensuring everyone’s highly trained in all aspects of the sales process, products, systems, and tools. Sometimes, sales training does not deliver the desired results.

Why?

  • You train salespeople on all products and skills, not knowing the ones they need
  • Death by PowerPoint, no interaction
  • One and done, one training and no reinforcement or applications
  • No skills assessment to guide needed training
  • Wrong delivery mode
  • No peer-to-peer learning
  • No new behavior changes

If that’s the case, you’ll need to know how to improve your sales training.

You can do this in multiple ways, some of which might be more practical and effective than others. Five of these stand out, as they’ll impact your training process more than others.

They’ll have your sales team closing more deals before you know it.

1. Assess the Skills, Motivations, and Beliefs of the Sales team

How effective is your sales team? How much more effective could they be? What if you identified sales skills goals and closed them? What would be the impact on your net income to increase the sales effectiveness of your team?

These are all great questions a strong sales assessment instrument will answer.

The instrument we use reviews 21 sales competencies while identifying motivations and beliefs.

Once we review the team sales effectiveness and improvement analysis report, we can prescribe specific sales skills training, coaching, systems improvements, and needed sales tools.

2. Make It Flexible

Your employees will naturally be busy. If they’re already on the job, they’ll likely have customers to see and deals to close. You’ll need to be flexible with your sales training to ensure you can work it around their schedule.

We recommend you prescribe blended, stacked sales training programs that leverage asynchronous online learning, live virtual training, instructor-led training, content quizzes, and application exercises.

For example, employees won’t be able to learn effectively if they’re worried about the sales presentation they’re missing out on. By building flexibility into your sales training, you also give them the time they need to learn in a way that best suits them.

It also makes the training more convenient for everyone involved.

3. Provide the Right Resources

Employees will need a certain number of resources to learn how to sell. You wouldn’t get into investing without trading guides, so why expect your employees to sell without selling guides? They must learn how to sell with your company by giving them the resources. You make things much easier.

That goes beyond giving them an employee manual and expecting them to make some sales. Learning materials, guides, software, and similar resources will all be vital.

That makes their training much easier while giving them something to rely on long-term.

We often use the application exercises after each training module to build sales playbooks and battle cards.

4. Offer Cross-Department Training

While the training should primarily be sales-focused, your employees must understand how they fit into the rest of the company. They mightn’t be able to do that without knowing how the other roles work and what other employees do.

By offering cross-department training, you can help them with this. You give them more empathy for their colleagues while building team spirit. You also let them understand that everyone’s working toward shared goals.

5. Good sales skills training facilitates peer-to-peer learning

Every sales team has recent employees, employees who have been in their role for 5-10 years, and seasoned salespeople with over 20 years of sales experience.

Leading sales training facilitates the exchange among salespeople to learn best practices and how to handle common objections.

Often, we find that veteran salespeople with over 20 years of experience have knowledge not captured anywhere, and we must capture it and teach our entire teams how to use it.

Other benefits include:

  • Increasing employee skill sets
  • Avoiding skills gaps
  • Improving communication between departments
  • Increased sales
  • Increased market share
  • Increased profits

The advantages of cross-department training make it more than worth it.

How To Improve Your Sales Training: Wrapping Up

You could reach a plateau with your team if you don’t know how to improve your sales training. They mightn’t convert as many customers as you want them to, so you’ll miss out on a noticeable amount of revenue. This is revenue you could have and should have won if your salesperson was trained in selling skills. Over 50% of salespeople today have not been trained in selling skills. Their training was focused on products and systems.

By offering cross-department training, making it flexible, and providing the right resources, you’ll be much closer to increasing your sales and creating a more effective sales team. You’ll see more revenue in time, making your business more profitable and successful.

 

The training sticks when sales training is delivered in different modes based on the skills the salespeople have and need, coupled with application exercises and times to practice their skills.

 

Would you like to assess how effective your sales team is today?

 

Would you like to close skills gaps that are costing your sales team sales today, like closing skills, negotiations, and discovery skills?

 

Let’s schedule a call to chat about your sales training program and how we can improve your sales team’s results in a shorter amount of time.

Common Online Sales Problems and How to Fix Them

There are numerous online sales problems you’ll face as your site grows. Fortunately, most are easily fixed with some time and patience. Here are some of the most common.

Inadequate Communication

Communication is vital in business. And the same applies to your customers and clients. Not being able to reach services means a customer is unlikely to return and may leave a bad review. This is a shame because it’s easier than ever to communicate with customers online these days. Some of the best options include email, forms, and live chat. Live chat is an expected feature, and some of the best live chat for small business includes Click4Assistance.

People Can’t Find You

Over 90% of people search online for a service before deciding to use one. But what if you aren’t showing up in those searches? That’s where you must form an SEO and marketing plan. SEO helps with your search result ranking. You can boost it with blogging, keyword-rich category pages, and image alt descriptions. Additionally, on-page changes such as headings and titles will make it easier for search engine crawlers to identify your website content.

Online Sales Problems Include Cart Abandonment

Shopping cart abandonment reportedly costs online retail $18 billion per year. That’s a staggering amount, and your business could be losing out. Here’s how to prevent it:

  • Be upfront about shipping costs long before the final checkout stage.
  • Offer the option to complete a quick sale without registering first. 
  • Use analytics software to identify your key abandonment areas.
  • Always be clear about the total cost of a current purchase throughout the sales process.
  • Use standard checkout forms with secure certificates such as SSL servers.
  • Use a sidebar that shows all items currently in the shopping cart, with editing options.
  • Offer multiple delivery options that suit the customer’s time and date needs.

Misinformed or sudden shipping costs are one of the main reasons people cancel a sale. So always be honest about shipping as early in the checkout process as possible.

Poor User Experience

User experience has become an essential part of online business. You must ensure that the entire process is as smooth as possible. From finding your site in the first place, to secure checkout, everything must be as simple as possible, so customers feel valued and impressed. Streamlining the UX includes providing the same accessibility experience for all users, a click-depth of three, and adequately organized categories for all products and services.

Cybersecurity and Hacking

A significant problem with modern business is cybersecurity. Hacking affects all types of business, regardless of size and prominence. In fact, being a smaller business makes you a bigger target since hackers don’t expect a solid defense. So don’t let them win by using a solid cybersecurity plan or outsourcing. Additionally, ensure you use a reputable payment processor to keep your customer data safe. And never store sensitive data such as card numbers.

Summary

Some of the most common online sales problems are easily rectified with dedication. These include being more communicative, reducing cart abandonment, and cybersecurity.

 

Tips to Engage with New Customers

two men facing each other while shake hands and smiling

As a business owner, it’s important for you to be constantly working on the development of your company. Part of the development is continuously bringing new customers to your business through referrals, social media, direct traffic to your website, or your organic reach. By doing so, you’ll find your profit increases, allowing you to spend this revenue on other areas of your business, such as your marketing team or developing your sales team.

 

In simple terms, sales is an art and a science. The art is in having conversations that lead to revenue. The science is data-driven sales. What does the data tell you about your ideal new customer? What have you seen help a buyer on their journey to becoming a customer? The more customers who visit your site or contact your sales team, the more likely you will make a sale as long as they match your ideal customer profile. So how do you reach new customers? From improving your website to entering new markets and using conference translation software to help you with this, we have put together our guide on tips for reaching new customers.

Improve your website

When was the last time you performed a digital footprint audit of your website? Your website is one of the most important sales tools you have. If it’s not modernized, then you may need a new one. If it is, then using a UX/UI expert could help you spot potential opportunities within your website and any errors that could reduce the number of new customers reaching out to you. Your website is essentially a shop floor but through the web. Every day customers could search for your services, but if your website is not up to scratch, they could be landing on your site but leaving instantly – just like you would if you walked into a store only to notice it looks a little run down.

Engage with customers leveraging social media 

One trait all top-performing salespeople have in common is they are active in social selling. They reach out to customers on various social platforms to complement their efforts by cold calling, attending conferences and trade shows, as well as their email campaigns.

Ask for referrals

Do you ask your sales team to ask for referrals? It’s a simple tip but can work extremely well. Whenever they complete a sale, and they feel the customer is happy with the service they provided, simply ask them if they know of anyone who could benefit from your services. You could ask them to reach out to you or ask them if you can reach out on their behalf. It’s a well-known fact that referrals convert to sales a lot quicker than any other technique. Plus, you can add a referral scheme to entice people to refer even when you haven’t asked, increasing your referrals even more.

 

When one association interviewed customers, they found over 80% would refer a salesperson if they were asked to do so, but sadly, less than 15% of salespeople ask for referrals

 

What tips do you have for reaching new customers?

Are there any tips from the above that you found particularly helpful?

Let us know in the comment box below.

 

Would you like to chat about how to engage with more new customers? Please send me a message or give me a call.

 

 

How Top-Performing Salespeople Leverage Social Selling 

Let’s face it, how we sell today differs from how we sold even five years ago.

Salespeople are finding it harder and harder to engage with decision-makers.

Why?

What are some reasons, and what can sales and marketing people do about it?

Five years ago, we saw 2-5 decision-makers involved in a buying decision.

Today, when we conduct voice of customer research, we find as many as 6-10+ people involved in the buying decision.

Decision makers are busy.

Most teams have been run very lean since the pandemic, with fewer people being asked to do more.

We also see the impact of technology.

Companies once could make a high net income serving customers in their region of the country.

However, the IoT has changed the game.

When you might have had 2-3 local competitors in your region, today, you are competing with thousands just two clicks away.

Finally, a big reason salespeople are having a more challenging time connecting with decision makers is what I refer to as …

Salespeople Behaving Badly.

Just over 50% of salespeople have never received sales skills training. They have the product, applications, and company systems training, but they lack sales skills like having conversations that lead to revenue.

Salespeople who have never been trained in sales skills call decision-makers and give them a terrible experience.

Florida State did a study with buyers, and they asked buyers in a 60-minute meeting with a salesperson how many minutes were valuable to them.

Are you ready for it? They said 6!

Only 6 minutes.

A new study relaced last month shared that 33% of buyers chose not to engage with a salesperson.

How do we market and sell in this new digital world?

That’s what this post is about.

Social media marketing is one of the most effective ways to grow your business. If you are a new business and haven’t been utilizing social media, you may not know how to navigate this sometimes complicated road.

The good news is that your social media marketing will be on autopilot once you get the hang of it. Here are some things you need to remember to ensure that your social media marketing is effective.

Reduce Your Sales Pitch

Since your ultimate goal is you are trying to sell more, you should not sell on social media. It may seem strange not to include a sales pitch in every post. However, selling every time is the last thing you should do. You need to make sure that you balance your content.

Your content should educate, entertain, and sell to your audience. Make sure you do more educating and entertaining than selling.

This is the best way to ensure that your content is well-balanced. When you give people a lot of free valuable information, they are more likely to purchase from you when it is time to sell them something.

People are on social media because they want to connect with their friends and family and be relaxed. Bear this in mind when you try to sell.

Focus on Brand Awareness

Another thing you should focus on is brand awareness. People must get to recognize your brand through frequent postings.

They will also share your most popular posts with your friends and family, which will help increase your brand awareness. Make sure that you brand your content on social media with your logo and website URL so that when your posts are shared, people can go to your website if they want to find out more about your products and services.

You can run ads to sell your products on social media, but you can also run ads solely for brand awareness. While you may not make a sale immediately from brand awareness campaigns, when you run these ads, you are putting your business in front of a receptive audience interested in what you provide.

In the future, if they ever need a service, your business may be the first one that pops into their head.

Choose Platforms Wisely

When it comes to social media, your business must be everywhere. However, with this being said, you need to ensure that the people you want to buy your products and services are on these platforms.

When you’re a new business or even a more seasoned business just getting into social media, you will need to look at what your competitors are doing.

Chances are if your competitors are active on social media, they already know what it takes to drive engagement. Look at their platforms and the type of posts they use to generate interest.

You can incorporate this into your style in a unique way that matches your brand.

Be Consistent

What’s Omnichannel marketing, and what do you need to know?

Omnichannel marketing is about having your message in many places, both inbound and outbound.

The key to Omnichannel marketing success is that each message says the same and feels the same to the decision maker.

One thing that you must do on social media is to be consistent. Even if you only post once a week, you must ensure you get it done. Although, if you want to grow faster, it is always best to post more often, especially when dealing with a platform such as Instagram.

Your posts on Instagram do not last as long as they would on platforms such as Pinterest or YouTube. You always need to keep your content fresh to satisfy your fans.

Remember that short-form video content is viral right now. Instagram promotes reels more than any other post type, so if you want to grow your social media following, it is always best to consistently do reels on Instagram.

When I post a short video on LinkedIn, for example, I receive 5-10 times the views, comments, likes, and shares of an article. YouTube now has shorts, and Pinterest has idea pins. This means you can make one short-form video and cross-promote it on all these platforms.

Conquer Social Selling

Over 70% of the top-performing salespeople leverage social selling in their sales process.

Conquering social selling is a must if you want to be of the top-performing salespeople today. You need to engage with your audience as most of them will be on social media.

Try several things on social media to see which strategy works for you. Once you find a strategy that works, the best thing you can do is rinse and repeat. This will give you the most success.

If you sell B2B products, you will find Linkedin a great way to identify and connect with new prospects.

We developed some short training and coaching courses to help salespeople adapt and sell in a digital world.

To be one of the top producing salespeople on your team, you will need to develop your skills in social selling.

If your team needs help adapting to the digital world, give us a call.

 

 

4 Steps to Marketing Your Business More Effectively

 

For over 30 years, we have helped small to mid-sized businesses experience what we refer to as “explosive” sales growth. One company grew from $30 million to $78 million in 18 months, another grew from $14 million- and six years later was sold for over $90 million.

As a business owner, it’s your sole responsibility to sell your products and services to your clients and potential customers as effectively as possible. Making it your priority to market your business effectively will communicate a clear message to your potential clients and make them aware of your existence. We must identify and message your top three decision-making personas to your ideal customers. Once the broader market acknowledges your products and services, your marketing efforts begin to establish a foundation of growth for your business.

With a strong foundation, you can begin strategizing to engage customers, fulfill demand, and stand up against the competition in your marketplace. As you build brand recognition, you position your business to reap the benefits of a consistent client base. With that said, here are four steps to marketing your small business more effectively.

Having a solid brand as a business owner will put you at a place of advantage over your competitors. In my book: Branding Backward, we teach companies to brand with intent and not to brand by default.

Strive to make your brand a household name so you can improve your level of sales in the long run. When your business brand becomes reliable and trustworthy, customers will love to associate with it and may choose you over others in your industry. As this momentum builds, it is magic for your business regarding future growth. If you decide to expand into new physical premises, your financial buoyancy will open more financing options for your business. For example, you may be well-positioned to request a commercial mortgage from your local bank. Your application is more likely to succeed once your brand has established a clear record of financial success. When considering commercial mortgages, be sure to seek expert advice from reliable mortgage brokers familiar with the locale you operate.

The power of social media can never be underestimated in promoting a brand. It’s a platform that allows you to showcase your business to a massive audience. It’s also highly effective for collecting reviews from previous customers and creating offers and rewards for both old and new customers. Therefore, promoting your business on such platforms is advisable to give your business the needed mileage. It can also help you build customer loyalty. Ensure you have solid knowledge about your industry to achieve tremendous results online.

  • Partner with local businesses

 

Since many business elements can become complex and require a significant number of human resources, it will be prudent to partner with local businesses and liaise with them while working on a specific project. This is particularly the case when mutual benefits can be obtained from such projects. For instance, you can partner with some procurement officers to help you purchase the right tools and equipment for an ongoing project. This makes it easier for your business and helps create a rapport to buy products at affordable prices.

  • Ask for referrals

At every step oolong your marketing plan, it’s important to seek referrals from your clients and customers. This allows potential clients to feel comfortable and build trust with your brand. Remember that you can only ask for referrals when you provide a quality service for your clients and are genuine and polite while dealing with them. Doing this gives you an upper hand in business.

When surveyed, over 85% of business leaders said they would provide a referral if someone asked but sadly, in the case of salespeople, less than 15% ask today.

How do we ask for a referral on LinkedIn?

If your team would like help experiencing “explosive growth,” let’s schedule a time to talk.

 

 

Seven Innovative Ways to Drive Strategic Growth

The lifeblood of any company is its ability to grow and expand. Without growth, a company will eventually stagnate and die. This can be difficult for business owners, as it requires creativity and innovation. This blog post will discuss seven innovative ideas for company growth. Some of these may be familiar to you, while others may be new concepts entirely.

Diversification

Renew and update your business model

Voice of Customer Research

Focus on Customer retention

Invest in technology

Expand your Marketing Efforts

Sales Training and Coaching

1) Diversification.

One way to ensure growth for your company is to diversify your products and services. This can be done by expanding into new markets or developing new products that appeal to a broader customer base. By doing this, you are not putting all your eggs in one basket, so to speak, and therefore reducing the risk of stagnation.

Diversification can be difficult as it requires detailed market research and a thorough understanding of your target audience. However, if done correctly, it can lead to significant growth for your company.

Some ideas for diversification include:

  • Expanding into new markets
  • Developing new products or services
  • Offering customized solutions
  • Focusing on niche markets
  • Expanding your business through Franchise Direct to reach and increase your customer base

2) Review and Update Your Business Model.

Another way to spur growth for your company is to review your business model. This means taking a close look at the way you do business and seeing if there are any areas that could be improved. This could involve anything from streamlining your processes to changing the way you market your products or services.

Reviewing your business model can identify areas where you may be losing money or customers. Once these areas have been identified, you can then take steps to rectify them, leading to increased growth for your company.

What should you keep doing?

What should you start doing?

What should you stop doing?

3) Capture the Voice of Your Customers:

Think about all the changes businesses have gone through during and post pandemic. How much has your business changed? Market leading organizations are conducting voice of customer research to better understand how buyers buy, what criteria they are using today to make buying decisions and understand your customers overall satisfaction. We recommend having a third party conduct this research to remove the concerns with bias. However, we recognize some clients cannot afford to engage our firm, so we wrote an eBook to help you Leverage the Voice of your Customers to increase revenue.

4) Focus on Customer Retention.

Acquiring new customers is important for any business, but it’s also important to focus on retaining the customers you already have. This can be done by providing excellent customer service and developing long-term relationships with your clients.

In one study 89% of CEOs shared having strong relationships with their clients is key to their success but sadly only 24% of those CEOs provided sales skills training on how to build business relationships.

Focusing on customer retention can ensure that your current customers remain loyal to your brand. This loyalty will lead to word-of-mouth marketing, which is one of the most effective forms of marketing. In turn, this can lead to increased growth for your company.

Some ideas for focusing on Customer Retention:

  • Developing long-term relationships with clients
  • Offering excellent customer service
  • Focusing on customer satisfaction
  • Building a solid brand identity
  • Leverage data and build win-win
  • Build multiple relationships with key account decision makers

5) Invest in Technology.

Technology is always changing, and it’s important to stay ahead of the curve. Investing in new technology can improve your products and services, making them more efficient and effective. This can lead to increased growth as your customers will be more satisfied with your offerings.

It’s important to note that you don’t need to invest in the latest and greatest technology; sometimes, simply investing in updating your current technology can be enough to spur growth.

Some ideas for investing in technology:

  • Audit your current sales tech stack
  • Updating your current technology
  • Investing in new software or hardware
  • Automating processes
  • Improving website design

6) Expand Your Marketing Efforts.

Another way to encourage growth for your company is to expand your marketing efforts. This could involve anything from increasing your budget to launching a new marketing campaign. By developing your marketing, you will reach a wider audience and generate more leads, which can lead to increased sales and growth for your company.

Some ideas for expanding your marketing efforts:

  • Increasing your advertising budget
  • Update your value message by business persona
  • Launching a new marketing campaign
  • Investing in digital marketing
  • Developing a social media strategy
  • Speak in the language of your customers
  • Market solutions not products

7) Sales Training and Coaching

Buyers have spoken and 33% chose not to work with salespeople today and the numbers are growing. In one study 85% of buyers shared they expect a salesperson to connect the dots between what they sell and how it can impact the buyers bottom-line. Sadly, less than 15% of salespeople do this today. In a one-hour meeting with the average sales rep how many minutes were valuable to the buyer and or decisionmaker? SIX! Only six minutes because salespeople show up, throw up and they pitch slap their customers when they should be having conversations that lead to revenue.

Some ideas to train your salespeople

  • Complete a sales effectiveness assessment
  • Identify sales skills gaps
  • Train salespeople to close gaps
  • Equip sales managers to coach the new sales skills

In conclusion, there are many ways to encourage growth for your company. By implementing some of the ideas listed above, you can take your business to the next level. So, what are you waiting for? Get started today and see the results for yourself!

As always if your tea needs help let’s schedule a tie to chat.

 

 

Social Selling in a Digital World

Let’s face it, times are changing.

Salespeople are finding it harder and harder to engage with decision-makers.

Why?

What are some of the reasons, and what can sales and marketing people do about it?

Five years ago, we saw 2-5 decision-makers involved in a buying decision.

Today, when we conduct voice of customer research, we find as many as 6-10+ people involved in the buying decision.

Decision makers are busy.

Most teams have been run very lean since the pandemic, with fewer people being asked to do more.

We also see the impact of technology.

Companies once could make a strong net income serving customers in their region of the country.

However, the IoT has changed the game.

When you might have had 2-3 local competitors in your region, today, you are competing with thousands just two clicks away.

Finally, a big reason salespeople are having a more challenging time connecting with decision makers is what I refer to as …Salespeople Behaving Badly.

Just over 50% of salespeople have never received sales skills training. They have product , applications and company systems training but they lack sales skills like having conversations that lead to revenue.

Salespeople who have never been trained in sales skills call decision-makers and give them a terrible experience.

Florida State did a study with buyers, and they asked buyers in a 60-minute meeting with a salesperson how many minutes were valuable to them.

Are you ready for it? They said 6!

Only 6 minutes.

A new study relaced last month shared that 33% of buyers chose not to engage with a salesperson.

How do we market and sell in this new digital world?

That’s what this post is about.

Social media marketing is one of the most effective ways to grow your business. If you are a new business and haven’t been utilizing social media, you may not know how to navigate this sometimes complicated road.

The good news is that your social media marketing will be on autopilot once you get the hang of it. Here are some things you need to remember to ensure that your social media marketing is effective.

Reduce Your Sales Pitch

Since you’re trying to sell on social media, it may seem strange not to include a sales pitch in every post. However, selling every time is the last thing you should do. You need to make sure that you balance your content.

Your content should educate, entertain, and sell to your audience. Make sure you do more educating and entertaining than selling.

This is the best way to ensure that your content is well-balanced. When you give people a lot of free valuable information, they are more likely to purchase from you when it is time to sell them something.

People are on social media because they want to connect with their friends and family and be relaxed. Bear this in mind when you try to sell.

Focus on Brand Awareness

Another thing you should focus on is brand awareness. People must get to recognize your brand through frequent postings.

They will also be sharing your most popular posts with your friends and family, which will help increase your brand awareness. Make sure that you brand your content on social media with your logo and website URL so that when your posts are shared, people can go to your website if they want to find out more about your products and services.

You can run ads to sell your products on social media, but you can also run ads solely for brand awareness. While you may not make a sale immediately from brand awareness campaigns, when you run these ads, you are putting your business in front of a receptive audience interested in what you provide.

In the future, if they ever need a service, your business may be the first one that pops into their head.

Choose Platforms Wisely

When it comes to social media, your business must be everywhere. However, with this being said, you need to ensure that the people you want to buy your products and services are actually on these platforms.

When you’re a new business or even a more seasoned business just getting into social media, you will need to look at what your competitors are doing.

Chances are if your competitors are active on social media, they already know what it takes to drive engagement. Take a look at the platforms they are on and the type of posts they use to generate interest.

You can incorporate this into your style in a unique way that matches your brand.

Be Consistent

What’s Omnichannel marketing, and what do you need to know?

Omnichannel marketing is about having your message in many places, both inbound and outbound.

The key to Omnichannel marketing success is that each message says the same thing and feels the same to the decision maker.

One thing that you must do on social media is to be consistent. Even if you only post once a week, you must ensure you get it done. Although, if you want to grow faster, it is always best to post more often, especially when dealing with a platform such as Instagram.

Your posts on Instagram do not last as long as they would on platforms such as Pinterest or YouTube. This means that you always need to keep your content fresh to satisfy your fans.

Remember that short-form video content is viral right now. Instagram promotes reels more than any other post type, so if you want to grow your social media following, it is always best to consistently do reels on Instagram.

When I post a short video on LinkedIn, for example, I receive 5-10 times the views, comments, likes, and shares of an article. YouTube now has shorts, and Pinterest has idea pins. This means you can make one short-form video and cross-promote it on all these platforms.

Conquer Social Selling

Over 70% of the top-performing salespeople leverage social selling in their sales process.

Conquering social selling is a must if you want to grow your business. You need to engage with your audience as most of them will be on social media.

Try several things on social media to see which strategy works for you. Once you find a strategy that works, the best thing you can do is rinse and repeat. This will give you the most success.

If your team needs help adapting to the digital world, give us a call.

We developed some short training and coaching courses to help salespeople sell in a digital world.

 

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