The key to a successful business is generating sales, the more sales, the better the profit margin, and the happier everyone will be. It’s easy to understand exactly why so many businesses focus heavily on professional selling. The trick is to learn what mistakes can trigger a down turn in sales and eat into revenue.
It’s important that whoever happens to be handling the professional selling take the time to learn exactly who makes up the target market. This information is of vital importance. Companies who haven’t taken the time to discover the people who make up their target market, end up focusing on general marketing tactics. By first learning the target market, the company will be able to streamline the process. Not only will this help increase sales, but it also means your business will spend less money and energy on ineffective advertising techniques.
Over the past five years, social media has really taken off. Not only have social media sites helped people stay in touch, but they have also proven to be a very valuable marketing tool. The mistake that many businesses make tends to be the instinct to post nothing but promotional tidbits on their media feed. Yes, you do want to let your followers know about current promotions and products you have available, but you can never lose sight of the fact that the whole reason behind social networking is connection. You have to make an effort to connect to your customers on a personal level.
When you create your sales material, take a second and make sure that every bit of information provided will be useful to your target market. People have busy lives, they don’t have the time to weed through sales copy trying to figure out what’s important and what’s not. A concise, informative advertisement that has a very clear message will generate more sales than a flashy, but confusing advertisement.
Make sure that every person on your sales team knows what their duties are. Too often sales teams find themselves plagued with ambiguity issues. No one knows exactly what they’re supposed to be doing, and as a result some people do too much of one thing, while other areas of your company’s sales program get neglected.
It doesn’t matter if you’re cold calling a customer about a product or service you think they will be interested in, or if you’re about to post a tweet about an upcoming sale, you need to take a minute to make sure you’re prepared. Not only do you need to make sure you’ve perfected your sales pitch, you also need to make sure you know enough to be able to accurately and quickly answer questions and requests for additional information.
If you can avoid making these very common sales mistakes, you will be well on your way to creating a very successful business.
Doug Dvorak relies heavily on his varied background to help businesses train a sales staff who will be able to generate sales while avoiding the pitfalls many businesses experience. Visit their The Sales Coaching Institute for an effective sales training.
