There are plenty of ways to increase sales, however, if you’re looking for advice online you probably won’t find many new ideas. Most online sites provide basic advice like make more sales calls, train your team, and learn stronger people skills.
Chances are, you’ve already implemented every basic sales strategy on the planet and you’re ready for more in-depth ideas to boost your sales. If that’s true, you won’t be disappointed by the following 5 sales strategies.
1. Strengthen your website usability with a store locator
When you think of website usability, you probably picture users navigating your site with ease, finding all the content they’re looking for, and having no complaints about how your site functions. This is part of website usability, but there’s more.
Website usability also includes anything that helps your visitors find what they’re looking for, not just on your website, but in the real world. For example, adding a store locator to your website helps visitors find your products in the real world. A store locator is ten times better than using Google Maps. Google Maps was created to be a map program and although it can be embedded into a website, it’s not user-friendly as a store locator.
One of the most popular store locators for food and beverage items is called Where to Buy. When a business installs Where to Buy on their website, visitors can search for local grocery stores that sell that business’ products.
Don’t leave it up to your customers to figure out where your products are sold. Sure, they can search online and call various stores, but that’s hard work. Make life easy for your customers by helping them find your products in the real world from the convenience of your website.
2. Learn NLP and apply it to your sales letters
Hopefully, you’ve got an expert sales copywriter writing all of your sales letters, landing pages, and emails. If not, you’ll need an expert before you can apply NLP techniques to your sales copy.
NLP – neuro-linguistic programming – is a strategy used in a variety of fields to influence an outcome. For example, therapists use NLP to help their patients warm up to unfamiliar ideas they might normally resist. In sales, NLP is used to persuade prospects to make a purchase by building rapport with them and finding a way to anchor the sale into their emotions. In essence, NLP helps people become more effective communicators with a strong influence over the outcome of the conversation.
It sounds like NLP could be used for sinister purposes, but sometimes people need a little persuasion even to buy beneficial products.
Many say that NLP can’t easily be translated to the written word. That’s only partially true. While NLP is challenging to apply to writing and many fail at it, it’s not impossible, and A-list copywriter Harlan Kilstein has made an entire career out of doing just that. He even teaches others to use NLP in their copywriting endeavors with a high success rate.
Many expert copywriters have had great success using NLP to boost sales. You might be wondering if you’ll see the same success by training your copywriters to use NLP strategies. When you put in the time and effort, you will be amazed.
3. Use advanced email segmentation strategies
If you’re like most businesses, you segment your leads as they arrive into basic categories. Perhaps you have tags for things like gender, age, or income. These are important tags to use, but they’re not all that useful.
The most you can do with a list segmented according to age is send out different emails designed to appeal to a different age group. That’s part of a good segmentation strategy, but it’s not the whole game.
Advanced segmentation, sometimes called marketing automation, works like this. You set up a web form on your website that asks users to answer specific questions pertaining to your products and services. For example, say you’re running a health clinic and you want to get practitioners from a variety of fields to practice in your clinic. Your form would ask users to identify their type of practice, income, level of experience/degree, and how many patients they see every month on average.
In the backend of your email management program, you’d set it up so that every possible answer causes the lead to receive a tag. Each lead might end up with 5 different tags. The more tags, the better. This way, you can market to your leads as specifically as possible. For instance, you can send an email out only to your chiropractors who make $200,000 per year and see an average of 50 patients or less per month.
To take advanced segmentation further, you can embed links in each email that automatically apply even more tags to the lead who clicked the link. In this way, you can send out emails to leads that are designed to get them to tell you more about themselves simply by clicking your links. The more you know about your leads, the easier it is to market your products and services to them.
You can also create multiple email sequences and move your leads in and out of different sequences based on their actions. For example, when a lead makes a purchase, you can remove them from your sales sequence and place them into a sequence designed to nurture them through making a purchase at a higher price point.
4. Send free products to influential YouTubers to review
One of the best ways to boost your sales is to get influential YouTubers to review your products. Unless they’re already a customer, you can’t expect them to buy your products, so you’ll need to send them free samples.
Find some YouTube influencers with a substantial number of subscribers and ask them to review your product on their channel. If they happen to be interested in your product, you’re more likely to get a positive response.
Don’t give up if you get turned down by some YouTubers. Some people don’t like reviewing products and others only like to review products they’ve purchased for themselves. Keep trying and if you get rejected, start looking for influencers who already publish product reviews on a regular basis.
5. Be generous with unhappy customers
One interesting way to make sales is to tip the scales for those who are still questioning by being generous with unhappy customers – publicly.
Anytime a customer posts a complaint online in a space where others can see that complaint, follow up with them quickly and apologize for the inconvenience and ask what you can do to make it right. If they want a refund, give them a refund and let them keep the product. Make sure to let them know in that public space that you’re refunding their purchase and they can keep the product.
You want other potential customers to see how you respond to complaints with generosity because that will show you’re a trustworthy company and you care about your customers.
Outstanding customer service is rare today, and being generous when anyone has a complaint is the best way to provide that long lost customer service and generate customer loyalty.
Keep perfecting your products and services
All of the above strategies are great ways to boost your sales. However, don’t lose sight of perfecting your products and services. Great products don’t sell themselves, but when you have great sales strategies, having a superior product certainly helps.
