50 Sales Strategy Secrets and Tips from the Top Sales Pros

Sales strategy – how to get the best one for your company. This is one of the toughest questions that every person working in the sales department will face. The reason for this is that there strategy or technique that can be said to be cut-and-dry. That being said the strategy or technique chosen by you must provide your sales representative with both a solid framework and process that they can modify to for their own style. The catch is that these styles must be aligned with the objectives your company wishes to achieve. Remember, CRM software is a tool used in sales operations. It can help form an idea but it cannot alone help you develop a strategy for your team.

Creating a sales strategy for your sales team is a process that is as unique as your company. Since this is a unique process you will not find any clear-cut answers out there. The best you can hope for is some tips or tricks that you can use to make the process a bit easier. These tips and tricks can be classified into four categories – customer retention, goal setting, the art of relationship building and winning customers, Sales Team Training and Motivation, and sales strategy planning.

The most important for any business is customers. So your strategy must contain space for both attracting and retaining them.

The first thing any business must do is attract customers by establishing relationships with them. Here are some of the tips above.

Here are 50 Sales Strategy Secrets and Tips from the Top Sales Pros:

1. Establishing Relationships

1. Never ever try to point out to the customer that they are wrong: Even when the customer says something that is wrong, you should not contradict them. This is because it will make them very defensive and less inclined to agree with you.
2. Applying pressure is art- master it: You can create fear, doubt, and uncertainty in the minds of your customers. There is, however, a catch to this strategy. It must be used sparingly. This is because nobody likes to be pressured into accepting things.
3. Research your clients: Any salesman making a pitch to a company must first do some research about the company. This is will help them create a pitch that is personalized. A personalized pitch will gain the attention of the decision-makers.
4. Customers must understand that they a problem: The best way to get a customer is to make sure that they have the problem. Once you have made them understand the problem, you can start convincing them that you are the best man for the job.
5. Determine what is preventing your customer from achieving their goals: The best way you can gain a customer is to understand what their goals are and what is stopping them from achieving these goals. Once you have figured this out, you should be able to integrate the solution your offering with there goals.
6. Remember in the end, getting the customer to believe most important: There is no point in having the best sales representative if you cannot convince your customer at all.
7. Weaknesses can be turned into strengths if you know-how: A good salesman can turn what many consider to be a weakness into a strength.
8. Grab the attention of the decision-maker by making a compelling statement: The best way to gain the attention of decision-makers is to appeal to what they need. Once you make them believe that you can get what they need, you will have their undivided attention.
9. Remember selling yourself is more important than selling the product: The best thing that gets companies customers is not the product, but the service they provide.
10. Be authentic, that is the best way to sell: It is hard to recover from a conversation if you are following a script. That is not the case if you are being your self.
11. Plan everything out before making sales calls: One of the many reasons why sales are made is that people don’t have a plan when they make sales call. If you have a plan the chances your sales call will succeed is high.
12. Use a story to convince companies and people to buy: The best way to attract customers is to tell a compelling story to your customer. The story must, however, be structured. This will help you sell your pitch.
13. Moment of truths are hard to create, so make maximum use of it: Providing your prospective customers a reason so convincing that they listen to you is not easy. That is why you must make maximum use of it.
14. Friction and pain points -reduce them to the possible extent: Certain customers will buy from you only if you reduce both the friction in the deal and the pain points.
15. Closing strategy and fallback positions are important: Base your closing strategy on what you want to achieve during the meeting. In case the customer rejects your closing strategy, you should have a fallback position.

Retaining customers is as important as getting new customers. Here are some tips to do the same.

2. Getting New Customers:

16. Retaining customers can help your company grow money: Gaining new customers has never been easy, but it is particularly hard today. That is why many companies are doing everything they can to retain them.
17. Find ways to make your existing customers buy more: Even though it is important to search for new clients, you must not forget your old customer.
18. Freemium is a model that is often underestimated, don’t do it: By providing a free version of your product for customers to use and test is one of the best ways to get paying customers.
19. When you lose customers or client, analyze why?: Customers do not leave without a reason. So, when they do, analyze internally why.

3. Sales Strategy Planning

20. Know your targets: Be passionate about a product and promoting it alone can distract you from your targets. Don’t do that. Focus on your targets.
21. Figure out where you are heading by going through revenues and sales of last year: Analyze how you did the previous year and document the mistakes and improve on them.
22. Do proper risk analysis to avoid shareholders telling you what to do: Failing to do proper risk analysis will give shareholders an opening to suggest something that may not be possible.
23. Start small and go to bigger ones only after succeeding in them: Focusing on a small market can help your team by providing them with a limited number of challenges.
24. New strategies and processes must be tested: It is highly advisable to test something new before implementing them.
25. Have a map of your customer’s journey from pre-sales to post-sales: When mapping the way from pre-sales to post-sales, you can identify opportunities you would have missed otherwise.
26. Limit your focus: You should focus on things that can bring you success.
27. Your sales system must be well structured and well defined: Anything that is well structured and has been properly defined can produce the best results.
28. Know your buyers properly: Only if you know what makes your prospective customer tick can you convert them into full customers.
29. Ask for specific referrals: Don’t ask if the people who would buy from you. Make your referral request specific.
30. Concentrate on what is relevant: Give the customer what is relevant to him/her. You should not deliver a one-piece fits all to your customers.
31. Understand your customer’s problem: Attempting to sell to a customer without understanding their needs can break your relationship with them.
32. First, understand what you and your company stand for and then spend time to know your customers: Understanding both yourself and your company is the first thing you should do. The second is to spend time with your customer to understand them.
33. The sales team is not an isolated department: Sales team must communicate with the rest of the company. Only when they communicate can you ensure consistency in customer experience.

4. Goal Setting

34. Ask your representative to spend time prioritizing before starting their day: Only when you prioritize can you be able to make the most of the day.
35. Goals must be clear, specific, and time-bound: Make sure that your goals are clear and specific. Also, set up testing points to see how much you have progressed towards it.
36. Forget about goals that can be easily achieved, go for hard ones: Setting easy goals will serve no purpose.
37. Use results from last year to easily predict the outcome for this year: Properly analyzing the previous year results can help you predict this year.
38. Focus on activity goals: Focusing on target goals can make you feel bad if they are not met. So instead you should focus on activity goals.
39. Start the day by prioritizing: Sale representative who prioritizes the activities will not spend time on wasteful activities.

5. Motivate and Train Your Sales Team

40. Help your sales representative find their weakest skill: Help your representative find the skill they are weak at and improve them.
41. Discover what they need training or motivation: Before investing in training a person, discover what they need – motivation or training. After finding what they need to invest in giving them that.
42. When recruiting try to get the possible talent available: Try to hire the best possible talent and give training to them.
43. Find out make your team tick: Remember money is not the only thing that makes people tick.
44. The sales representative who is committed to their goals is passionate about them: Only when you are committed to achieving targets will be passionate about them.
45. Get your team to trust each other: Trust is the most important thing.
46. Things are valued if they are rare, the same is true for contests: Contests have value only if they are rare.
47. Having mentors is important: Sales representatives like personals in any field can do their best only if they have someone to guide them.
48. Remember not all your representatives are motivated by the same thing: Each member of your team can be motivated by different things.
49. Remember a good sales strategy focus on skills: Formulating a strategy without considering the skill available is a stupid mistake.
50. Developing a sales team is the same as an investment: You do not give every investment the same kind of attention. The same applies to your sales team. Give each member the correct attention.

Conclusion

Forming a sales strategy for your sales team is a daunting task, but when done properly can be the most rewarding thing. Remember having free CRM can help only if a proper strategy is in place.

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