The question of how to increase sales is relevant for every business. For example, let’s say you are the founder of a fast-growing car hire company looking to increase revenue. How to do it? You can try to stand out from the competition by providing such unique services as under 21 car hire, one-way car hire, or unlimited miles. However, there are more universal ways that are available through financial planning.
So we offer you some actionable tips to improve sales in the company, regardless of the type and field of your activity.
Set Financial Goals
Entrepreneurs often start small businesses and rely on luck. According to statistics, about 30% of startups end their existence due to a banal lack of money. Thus, you need financial goals to increase sales and not lose business immediately after opening.
You can calculate the target income based on the following indicators:
- Percentage increase in sales revenue compared to the previous year.
- Team performance, that is, the expected income based on your resources.
- Zero-based budget.
- Sales standards.
When you have set goals according to realistic opportunities, you can determine how to achieve them and plan a further business strategy.
Check Prices
Is raising prices enough to increase revenue? Not always. The price of a product or service doesn’t equal revenue. So, raising prices can cause losing some customers to the company. As a result, total revenue will decrease instead of increasing income. Conversely, a lower markup can help increase sales and hence revenue growth.
How to set the price in such a way as to increase sales and maintain profitability? Just take into account a number of aspects when changing the price:
- The target audience for which you design the product.
- The amount that potential customers are really willing to pay.
- The pricing method that was used before.
- Price limits in the market.
- The costs incurred by the business.
Consider Marketing Ways to Increase Sales
How does a business attract customers? Where do they come from? Which channel brings more buyers? Customer preferences change and you need to analyze all these indicators in order to increase sales.
So, it’s important to test the main marketing channels and use at least several of them:
- Traditional and PR Marketing. This is a great way to tell about yourself offline, using flyers, outdoor advertising, and so on.
- E-mail marketing. A popular tool for attracting new customers and keeping in touch with existing ones.
- SEO and content marketing. A high position in search results is a way to get a lot of traffic to your website, so use it to your advantage.
- SMM. More and more people are choosing social networks to search for and buy goods and services. Similarly to e-mail newsletters, Facebook, Instagram, and other social networks are also a great way to find new customers.
- Paid advertising. The main advantage of this method is the ability to attract customers as quickly as possible and make as many sales as the advertising budget allows.
Yes, this is not a complete list of marketing channels, and there are many subtleties and tricks for each of them. However, good marketing is one of the pillars of continuous sales growth.
Invest in your team
People are what make sales in any company. It depends on them how successful the final result is. Yes, saving on the team is the strategy of one-day companies. At the same time, prosperous businesses take care of the training, motivation, and working conditions of employees.
So, you can increase sales efficiency by analyzing and correcting mistakes that managers make. Also, there’s another side to the management of the sales department – this is the work organization. Indeed, if the team doesn’t have clear goals or works according to unrealistic KPIs, its effectiveness is reduced.
Use digital management tools
In the same way, it’s not possible to increase sales when the sales department doesn’t have a well-defined scheme of work. A business often starts in a notebook or an Excel spreadsheet. However, as sales increase, it becomes more and more difficult to process information in this way. Data is easy to lose and confuse, but even more difficult to analyze and draw conclusions. Thus, your business may need a suitable CRM system in this case.
Build trusting relationships with clients
In many areas of business activity, regular customers make up to 95% of sales. Yes, word of mouth is one of the most effective and profitable channels for attracting customers. Loyalty built through a friend’s recommendation is a truly valuable thing. On the other hand, acquiring a new customer is often more expensive than retaining an existing one.
That is why one of the most important points on how to increase sales is to build relationships with customers so that they come back to buy again. If the business has even a small customer database, it probably already has a great resource to increase sales!
Generally, there are many ways to increase sales, but you can’t build a successful development plan without a high-quality product. At the same time, a sales strategy relies on the right financial planning, high-quality marketing and management, and customer relationship building.
