More than just calling up leads and hard selling your product/service in order to gain customers, sales should be a strategic and planned process that addresses the consumer’s pain points and align it with the brand’s offerings. To unify your sales team’s effort and increase your chance at success, your company needs to develop a sales strategy early on.

Most financial consultants will agree that sales strategies should be tailor-made for the customers they are intended to reach. Consumer behaviour, the economic market, product perception and countless other factors can affect sales. Here are some tips and tricks that we found to be effective in helping companies reach their goals.

Choose your clients

You can’t please everybody, but you can try. Blinded by the concept of sales quotas and a culture of go-getting, your sales team sometimes won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. While persistence should indeed be a quality every salesperson should have, they should also learn when to stand down. Some leads just aren’t ready to take the next step in the buying process. When it gets to that point, wasting time and resources on them can become counterproductive for the company.

To avoid situations like this, remember your target market and specify where in the sales process your team needs  focus on other leads. Instead of outright giving up, find out how your company can still help them. Don’t always push for the sale; maybe the the lead needs to be nurtured more through your marketing process -- which leads to the next point.

Align your sales and marketing teams

Ultimately, the sales and marketing teams have the same goal: To make the sale. Virtual CFOs understand the need to operationalise processes between the two teams by determining their responsibilities. Assign quotas in terms of marketing leads provided and number of attempts made to make the sale. Scale the metrics for success and open communication lines between them. The success of the sales team can sometimes be related to the marketing strategies employed by your company. Let the marketing team know about the impacts of their initiatives and work with them in finding out what works and what doesn’t.

Set actionable and specific quotas and objectives

Don’t leave your sales team on their own. Your sales strategy should have definite goals and clear steps on how to attain them. Instead of setting vague quotas and creating a culture of competition, find ways to foster collaboration and makes closing deals a concerted effort. Be specific in terms of SOPs, identifying leads and whether they are ready to take the next steps, how to nurture cold leads, how many key people they need to get in touch in within a company, who’s the salesperson assigned to what companies, and many more.

Partner with businesses that offer complementary products/services to yours

While there are many competitors in the market, there are also businesses in the same industry that help consumers in terms of their other pain points. Make a mutually-beneficial partnership with them and share information regarding your consumers. For instance, if you’re in the business of web design and you don’t offer infrastructures and platform, make a soft partnership with a business who does (but doesn’t offer the services that you do). This can help create mutually assured success if done right since it increases your network and contacts.

Find a CRM software that works for you

Take advantage of the available tools and software in the market to help boost your sales team’s performance. While your strategy shouldn’t revolve around just your CRM software and other tools, the right ones can help improve efficiency, create automation and allow you to analyse your sales initiatives all at the same time. Before committing to one, work with your sales team in seeking out one that they can get behind with and consult with experts to learn about their advantages and disadvantages.

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