7 Small Business Sales Strategies that Work
Nowadays more and more people work on different side gigs while working their day job or while working from home as a freelancer or a remote employee. And some even go the extra mile to actually start their own online or offline business.
And though there are tons of various problems you would face with as a newbie in business, the most vital question every entrepreneur would love to receive an answer to is “how to increase sales and what to do to bring clients to my business”.
So here is my top 7 advice on the best sales techniques for small business owners, if you are just starting out, or struggling with finding clients for your business.
So here is my practical advice on what a small business owner — or one who would like to represent himself/herself as a professional that stands out of the crowd, should do to grow his or her business:
Focus on one or two strategies. If you get scattered in your business and sales strategies, neither would work. This is the reason why all marketers would advise you to narrow down your niche to grow faster, to grow organically, and this same principle works in terms of a sales process.
If you have an online business and you want to sell your service or your product more, do not go to every single marketplace to promote or sell directly. Instead, focus on several, preferably two or three, channels where you feel you get the most response from.
If 80% of your sales go through business networks like LinkedIn, it might make more sense to invest your limited time to that platform, to that channel, instead of losing time shaping up your accounts on dozens of other platforms — and find out their pitfalls later on the way. Of course, you cannot rely on one channel only — one is a dangerous number in business — but you do not want to get scattered at the same time. Your time as a SMB owner is limited, and so are your resources, so direct those resources to places that actually bring you clients.
Second comes out of the first, and that is
Prioritize your efforts. As a small business owner, you might do a lot of work by yourself only, and you might not have the resources to hire a lot of people to do the work that would have been beneficial for your business in the long run. So my advice is, do not mind the “long run” activities unless you have your short term goals fulfilled.
I will explain. I have met with a frequent mistake when a new entrepreneur invests a lot of his or her time into pointless social media posts and activities. While social media is something one can not ignore — it’s a huge source of traffic — BUT you must understand what VALUE does this traffic bring, and you must plan your content and your effort in social media accordingly, so that nothing is spent in vain.
If you have your clients from LinkedIn — your target audience on LinkedIn — posting on Instragram makes absolutely NO sense. Besides, you have to post different type of content for different social media accounts, right? This might take a lot of time — to no avail.
If you are struggling with getting clients to your business, forget about building a brand for it or any other less significant activities for the time being, because, it might turn into a soap bubble: much ado about nothing. Instead, invest that time to social accounts that work for you — you’ll have to define your target audience to that end — and focus on those one or two channels.
All the rest — can wait. Until you have your both feet on the floor.
Constantly improve your approach in those chosen sales channels. This includes the bespoken A/B testing of cold outreach messages you send, of your ads texts, of the keywords with which you optimize your blog or site, etc etc. It took me a couple of years to actually understand my type of client, my sales channels and the type of messages that always get answered.
Your path might take as long or hopefully less, but this is something that everyone should do, because the world changes, and we have to consider those changes and shape up our approach accordingly. I’ve been surprised at how basic most sales approaches and messages are, for example on LinkedIn, and from US based salespeople, where sales people get trained for their profession. So do not fall into a trap that you have already been trained, because new techniques appear all the time, so make sure they won’t make your approach outdated.
Consider the easy path. If you can get clients by recommendations or personal acquaintance, this is actually the first thing you should do. I’ve seen business built on two major clients who have been a personal acquaintance of the CEO. And the business survived for 40 years! Personal bonds are the strongest, so if you need sales, and fast, — this route is the first to take.
Throw out any proud whispers in your head that you won’t turn to your cousin who happens to be a CIO in a tech company that you’d like to pitch. Actually, this is your advantage, so just go and make your offer.
Fifth comes out of the fourth: if you already acquired a client,
DO the up-sells to that same client. He already knows you, and given that you provide a quality service, he will buy from you again should you approach him the second and the third time. Don’t lose this perfect opportunity to up-sell your product or your service. Your current clients are your golden mine and your ambassadors, so tip #6 would be:
Ask for references and recommendations. And my advice is, ask for them at the beginning of your cooperation with the client and not at the end. Because sometimes things might go wrong between you, not necessarily because of you or any obvious reason, but people sometimes just do not get along. So before anything of this sort happens, make sure you receive your references from that client and make use of them.
Now seventh — and I will not be re-inventing the wheel here — is to
Find your niche or narrow down your business or make a unique offer that will open a path into a bigger sale or cooperation. Simply put — stand out from the crowd and be the best and only best in your niche. You might like to read “Blue Ocean Strategy” or “Crossing the Chasm” books to get a better understanding of what I talking about.
For example, if you are opening an IT service business, focus on one or two technologies or directions that your company helps to deal with. Like, if you are a design studio, C++ or C# developers should not be your core expertise list, and if you’re helping vendors and clients with Big Data and Data warehousing, developing WordPress websites should not be something on your list of primary services.
Provide a unique offer, for example, free estimates or dedicated account manager who’s available 24/7, etc. Same relates to a product: trials and free limited versions of your software will open a path to a customer’s heart — given that the product is good.
For those who are into consultancy business: your unique offer might be a textbook, or a free guide, or any other ebook. You can give some online course of yours for free, for example, part 1 of a Marketing course, and then people will buy part 2 of the course from you if they like it.
There are other examples how you can stand out. Those methods are pretty simple, but they still work — so use this to your advantage and as another effective sales technique for your business.
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