Depending on your experience, when someone asks what your sales strategy is, what do you say? Do you focus on how you will win more? How you are going to grow more? What you are going to do differently than what you have been doing? There can be many different answers. Here is how to improve your sales strategy.
A sales strategy helps you identify where your next level of growth will come from, define your best set of prospects, establish true differentiation, and determine the right size and structure for your company strategy.
The most critical component of choosing and exacting your sales strategy is your customer. For this reason, a sales strategy shouldn't be one-size-fits-all – every customer and company is different. Therefore, various organizations should draw up and implement different sales strategies. There are four areas on which you should focus your sales strategy.
According to Harvard Business Review, by focusing on your product and audience, you can grow four main areas.
You are offering the current products to the existing customers. Focusing your time here is ultimately making you sell more. You can either sell more of your product or service or increase prices.
You are offering new products to the current customers. By finding new products to meet current client requests, you will sell more.
You are offering the current products to new customers. Finding new clients to sell to means you will increase your market share.
You are offering new products to new customers. This helps to expand your opportunities to a new market.
Once you've picked one quadrant you want to focus on, it's time to make it real for your team. Start with your sales initiatives.
Sales initiatives are the few significant objectives that lead to your desired revenue results and drive your critical sales activities where “getting to the numbers any way possible” is not the best or preferred method. Often sales initiatives include two or three key areas of growth, a defined plan, and measurable outcomes.
They provide critical direction for how you will win. Again, focusing more on the "how you got there the right way" and less on just "getting to the revenue any which way."
Sit down with your salespeople and decide on two or three sales initiatives to aid you in your chosen quadrant.
You’ve chosen your quadrant, you’ve defined your sales goals, and you've established your sales initiatives, so now you need to determine who your ideal audience is.
According to data gathered from Spotio, "71.4% of their survey respondents said that 50% or less of their sales prospects end up being a good fit for what they're selling."
Rather than chasing every shiny new opportunity that comes your way, take some time to analyze the people or companies with whom you currently conduct business.
Look at their size, industry, location, business model, and culture. This can quickly provide a good overview of who your ideal client may be.
Knowing your ideal client allows you to build your entire business, message, products, services, support, and sales to attract and serve this narrowly defined group.
Based on how the sales strategy is used and your ambitions, a company can choose one of these strategies. This choice significantly depends on a company's products and market approach. The sales strategy and initiative alignment allow for salespeople to meet their goals and do their best work.
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