It may be surprising, but the simple key to increasing your business revenue is to sell more. But ask any entrepreneur or sales rep, and they’ll tell you, it’s not that easy.
An estimated 400,000 businesses go under each year, and poor revenue is almost always to blame. The reality is that no matter what business you are in, there is a buying audience but putting yourself in a position to be rejected is a challenge, even for the most veteran sales professionals. The difference between those who succeed and those who don’t is what you believe about what it takes to be successful at sales.
These three strategies will get you thinking differently about sales to ensure that you and your employees stay committed to driving your sales efforts.
Remember why you got into business.
Businesses founded to provide practical solutions to their customer’s pain points are generally enjoying long, sustained growth. This is simply because it’s rather easy to make a phone call or send that sales email when you genuinely believe that your product will make the buyer’s life and business better.
When sales reps, in small business settings, the founder loses sight of the fact that your offering is a healing salve on your customer’s festering boil. Calling, emailing, or even mentioning your offering begins to feel like an imposition. Remembering the ways your offering can practically help your customer out of their struggle is a quick way to reduce anxiety about interrupting your prospects, coming across as too pushy, or fears of rejection.
Quite believing you have to be self-oriented.
At one point or another, we’ve all encountered the typical hard-driving,fast-talking, won’t-take-no-for-an-answer type of salesperson. When we encounter professional salespeople behaving in this way, it’s easy to buy into the subtle belief that if you want to be successful in growing your revenue, then that’s how you should do it. Thankfully that is a false belief.
A study of sales reps representing companies of all sizes in all kinds of industries demonstrated that in every case, the top 20% of performers were disproportionally focused on the buyer’s needs-even willing to recommend a competitor when it was clear that’s what would be best for the buyer.
To quickly improve your sales, get curious about your buyer and, at every turn, see yourself as their advocate and do everything you can to help them find the solution that’s right for them.
Stop looking at the dollar signs.
Counterintuitive as it may seem, focusing on the revenue coming through the door is a poor indication of your sales success. Yes, every business needs to make sure that there’s more cash flowing into the business than out of it. Still, if that’s the only thing you measure, you’re more prone to spinning your wheels chasing the next new thing and bailing too early on initiatives that could become cash cows with a little time and focused attention.
Revenue is a symptom of value created for a customer. The more value you can create, the more revenue will flow in. A key place to start is determining what steps and activities you can perform to create value for your prospective customer. Ramp up effort on these activities and measure both the increase over time and each activity’s outcome. You’ll need to make adjustments over time, but as long as your key activities are consistent, you’ll find customers will move from cold prospect to hot lead.
When you apply these three strategies to your efforts, you create an environment where it’s easy to show up energized and excited to get out there in front of your prospects since you know it will actually help to improve their lives. And with consistency over time, you will see a lift in your revenue.
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