As a seasoned sales professional you know that first-to-market is no guarantee of sales success. With years of experience you also know that traditional sales tactics aren’t connecting with target audiences as well as they used to. With growth and change in mind, there are 3 ways that you can tweak your sales process to improve sales performance.
3 Sales Process Tweaks for Better Sales Performance
Inbound marketing is a methodology used to attract and retain quality leads, build steady sales growth, and develop relationships with dedicated clients who will refer their network to you. Sales process tweaks making use of inbound marketing are about providing value, creating results, and making a positive impact on your clients’ lives.
1. Get to Know Your Customers
This may seem like a no-brainer, but it's one of the most important parts of your sales process. In order to reach your target clients you need to know as much as possible about them, such as:
- Who they are (age, profession, etc.)
- Where they spend their time
- Their priorities and challenges
If you know what your ideal client values and what their challenges are, you will be well positioned to help them achieve their goals. You can get this client persona information in a variety of ways, and you may even have plenty of info already. Demographic data, like where people live and work may be available through services like Statistics Canada.
Once you have the information, you can build target audience personas, which will allow your sales team to help those specific people. You are essentially starting to add value for your target audience.
Ideally, personas should be stored in a central location that everyone in your sales team can access. Many of your employees may carry persona information in their heads, but getting the information into a database benefits everyone and speeds up the onboarding process for new employees.
With everything in a central repository, like in HubSpot, you’ll be able to start tracking patterns in client purchases, communications, and feedback. Your sales team will be able to pool expertise and come up with solutions for how best to help clients and provide value.
2. Listen to and Engage with Customers
Once you’ve identified your target customers, the next step is to listen to them and start engaging with them. Engaging with your leads doesn’t mean telling them all about how great your company is. Engaging means listening to what they have to say, and meeting them where they are: on facebook, in coffee shops, over phone calls, and through email. In addition, you can survey existing clients to find out what they love about your company, and where you could improve.
Once you know what your customers and leads want to accomplish you can start supporting those goals by producing relevant content that guides them. Inbound marketing positions you as a thought leader in your industry, and by helping your ideal customers and establishing trust in your company, you’ll start to see warm leads coming in.
3. Take Care of Your Customers
Develop systems to take care of your past and current customers in order to nurture long-term relationships, encouraging repeat clients and saving you time and money. Delighting your past customers and keeping in touch will keep you top of mind and promote word-of-mouth referrals.
You can send past customers personalized, relevant, and sincere emails to let them know you care about them. Check in at 6 months or a year after the ale, asking if customers are happy with their product and if they have any feedback.
Improve Sales Performance with Personalization
Implementing the three tweaks to your sales process will not only build a solid foundation of dedicated clients, but it will also empower your sales team to collaborate and take care of the customers at all points through the sales process.
Improve the Sales Process
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