It doesn’t matter whether you’re a budding entrepreneur, seasoned business owner or freelancer, finding ways to make more sales is the first key to create a sustainable level of growth that will drive your business.
Regardless of the fact that a number of new businesses are experiencing real time success, millions of many new businesses are falling apart due to uncertainties, volatile policies and poor planning.
As a business that aims to make increased sales in a steeply competitive economy, the only way forward is to find your growth path and implement top notch strategies that will get you to your goals. Unfortunately, this is the area that most businesses are struggling with.
As an entrepreneur, I once found myself struggling with this too at our early days. In this guide, I’ll be sharing with you some of the key strategies that led to our growth in the following paragraphs.
Find a Goal
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It is not enough to have intentions to make more sales. One of your first steps to actually increase your sales as a business is to have a clear sales goal.
So, start with finding out the actual number of sales you want to make in a particular year or period of time. This is very crucial.
It doesn’t matter that you already have a goal about making more sales in your head, to really actualize it, has to become a part of your goal.
So, you have to find out, how much sales do we really plan to make as a business in this year? This is one of the key steps that we took at a time our business was falling apart at the early stages.
Having a clear sales goal brings into perspective exactly what you want. And when you know what you want specifically, you’re one step ahead in finding ways to get it. This is non-negotiable.
Unfortunately, many business entrepreneurs are operating without clear goals. So many others that tend to think they have identified their sales goals are actually working with a vague idea of what’s meant to form their sales goal or absolutely unrealistic goals.
To make more sales as a small business, you don’t just need a goal, you need a specific and very realistic goal that will steer you towards success.
Create a Plan
Now that you know exactly what you want or how much sales you plan to make with your business, your next line of action is to create a plan that will get you to actualize that goal.
Let’s put it into perspective… supposing you want to make an “X” number of sales in 2024, to achieve this, you must identify the number of clients that can get you to make that much sales and then find steps you can get to reach them.
So if you’re running a digital agency for example, you have to break it down by identifying the volume of sales you plan to make in graphics design, content marketing or social media management. And all of this must collectively sum up to your overall sales goal.
After this is done, you can now list out the collective steps you want to take to arrive here. From identifying the right kind of clients that will lead you to this, finding the steps you’ll use in reaching out to them as well as the number of times you’ll take these steps to actually reach them.
Regardless of whatever goals you have, planning and implementation are the two easy steps to achieve them. So, after identifying your goals, and mapping out your plans, you have to actually go out there and implement the plan. This is very crucial.
Planning should lead you to breaking down your goals into sub goals and easily implementable steps that will get you to achieve the overall goal.
Know your Audience Thoroughly
You can’t make more sales without your audience. They are the reason you exist as a business. and to actually experience increased sales, you have to know who they are and offer them exactly what they are ready to buy.
If you’ve already been in business for many years, you may be saying things like oh I already know my audience. Thing is, there’s always the potential for a wider audience base.
For example, as at when we started many years ago, we had just about two offers. We had capacity to do far more but we didn’t really explore the number of other services we could offer our clients in most cases because we were struggling with even the ones we had at hand.
The moment we realized that our audience was in need of more than what we were offering at the time, we started thinking about these new offers and as soon as we did, we experienced a boom like never before.
Of course, you don’t necessarily have to wait until your audience asks for more. You want to go out there and find out what they could potentially be interested in. and there are many ways to do this.
From looking out for their search history using tools like Google search trends, Keywords tools, competition websites etc., you will find some clues on the things that matter to your audience.
Also, you want to listen to your audience, find their pain points and areas of needs, either through their comments, call in requests or forum questions. There are so many ways to get access to knowing your audience and their needs.
Evolve a Strong Value Proposition
One of the salient ways to make more sales as a small business is to evolve a strong value proposition that will separate you from other competing businesses in your industry.
By value proposition, I am not referring to the few lines of words you splash on your website. We’re talking about real actual value that will make a potential client choose your business over the other person.
For us, one of our core value propositions was our availability to clients at anywhere and anytime. Unlike most other bigger businesses in the industry, we were mostly available and easily accessible. This is one of the reasons clients will offer on why they chose us over others.
There are a number of businesses that place their value proposition over very competitive prices. For starters, you can as well make this as one of your defining value propositions. But, while at it, do not sacrifice quality over quantity, it might come back to hurt your brand.
Before setting your value proposition, you want to pay attention to areas or value that is currently lacking in your industry, focus on majoring in those areas.
Alternatively, you can identify a need or a sub set of audience in your industry whose needs are yet to be met and then go ahead in filling in the gap.
For example as a digital agency, instead of just catering to anyone, you can decide to offer your business strictly to other tech related businesses in a way that’s custom made for such businesses.
Create an Online Presence
In this digital age and time, getting an online presence is nonnegotiable for any business aiming to make more sales or drive improved sales.
So outside any other step you’ve taken to actually increase your sales, you need an online presence. And by online presence I’m not referring to just some social media handles. You need a website, engaging content and social media handles with content.
You may be worried that you already have a website yet your business is dying but, having a website is not a full proof way to make more sales, to experience a boost in visibility and sales, your website has to be optimized.
So, where you already have a business website, your next growth step is to think about ways you can optimize it with SEO, get it ready for improved visibility, traffic and new leads, if you really want to drive sales.
Outside getting a website, you also need some social media presence. You can achieve this by identifying the top social media platforms frequented by your target audience, creating a profile on this platform and engaging with your audience using your posts.
With this approach and good storytelling abilities, your social media fans can become some of your most vocal supporters and clients.
Leverage Strategic Content Marketing
Content marketing is one of the easiest ways to gain visibility, experience improved traffic and ultimately, drive more sales, using online channels.
As a business, it is not enough to own a digital platform; you have to leverage content creation to attract visibility, traffic and sales.
Considering that you already know your goals and you also have a decent knowledge about your audience and their needs, you want to leverage all of this to create content that will attract your target audience, based on their needs.
What this does for you is that it exposes your brand to your audience, creates visibility and traffic for your business. As your content continues to solve the problems of your audience, overtime they get to create this connection that gets them to liking and trusting your brand.
The more your audience like and trust your brand, the more easily it gets for them to patronize you as well as place you on a pedestal as thought leader in your niche.
As part of strategic content marketing effort, you have to use great storytelling to illustrate the things that makes you stand out, your achievements as a brand and why clients should choose you over your competition.
Listen & Measure Insights
It is not enough to plan to make more sales as a business, to actually achieve this goal, you want to listen to customer feedback, industry growth track and measure business insights.
For example, from time to time you’ll be getting feedback about your business as well as products or services. So, at regular intervals you have to put these feedbacks together and find ways to fix them to garner better results.
Outside clients given feedback, there are other essential things you’ll get to observe about your business as well. Beyond just observing, you need to evaluate and review these observations so you can take accurate steps as needed.
Also, to increase your sales as a business, there’s needed to listen to where the industry is headed. Find out, the changes in demand you might have to adapt to as well as the steps you have to take.
And finally, measure your business insights and use this to understand the impact of whatever measures you’re taken as regards your overall goals of making more sales.
Offer Social Proofs & Incentives
One of the first questions clients ask us is who and who have you worked with and what was the results you created?
This is quite understandable because business is a risk. Most people want to patronize businesses they can count on. So, one of the best ways to show your potential clients that they can count on you is to show them the number of other businesses you’ve successfully worked with in the past.
So, here’s where you’ll show off your testimonials, good customer reviews and feedback. From your website down to your social media platforms, be sure that these social proofs are clearly visible for people to see.
Outside social proofs, work on offering potential clients incentives like discounts, reduced price or other extra added services that will make them prefer you over other businesses.
Promote your Business
After all is said and done, one of the most successful ways to make more sales as a business is to promote your business.
This you can do by using paid advertising, PPC ads, social media advertising or by patronizing other advertising options.
Regardless of your preferred choice, you want don’t want to use promotion as your primary strategy to drive increased sales. This should be used as a way of supporting your sales and growth strategy to drive faster results.
Final Words
Mastering or finding ways to increase your sales as a small business involves the use of a combination of strategies that will get you to achieving your goals.
The strategies you just learned about today are not just practical, they are strategies that have worked for many other businesses and using them could also mark a strategic turning point for your business but one thing you must keep in mind is to evolve them to fit with your own needs.
Of course you don’t have to get on the lonely journey of business building by yourself. You can always find support groups or reach out to our experts for more support here.
Now, it’s your turn. What are your struggles when it comes to making more sales as a small business? Drop your comments below.
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