Every business owner worries more about how to drive more sales than virtually everything else.

Since sales and operations are the backbones of any business model, making sure that you have a predictable, consistent, and growing sales engine should be your top priority.

This guide will show you 5 simple tips to drive more sales in your business.

Note: If you want to learn how to sell your products and predict sales!

1. Focus + upsell
2. Keep an eye on the competition
3. Cultivate value
4. Niche down and expand
5. Price your product right

This tip is arguably twofold: focusing on your customers and upselling them.

Focus

Focusing on your customers means understanding them completely. Understanding their needs, goals, the value that your product/service provides to them, and finding a way to increase this. The most successful businesses are the ones that are collaborative with their customers. Once you become an extended arm of another business, you become indispensable to their success. This is the best way to increase customer loyalty and ensure the future success of your own business.

Upsell

The reason why focusing on your clients is so important is because it allows you to upsell them. While many businesses focus on having a steady stream of new customers regularly, keeping the ones you already have is even more important. This is because selling to existing customers is so much easier! In fact, research has shown that the success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60-70%. While the success rate of selling to a new customer is 5-20%.

Moreover, selling to customers who already know your business and your value offering provides more sales for less work. It’s a win-win!

The most fatal mistake any business owner can make is by ignoring their competition. Many businesses have been made obsolete by lagging behind their competition in terms of innovation. In economics, this idea is known as ‘creative destruction ‘. Analyse your competitors offers and learn new techniques. Keep an eye on your competitors weaknesses and use these to maximize your strengths. Having an accurate understanding of your placement in the market allows you to identify niches that can drive more sales.

Business is ultimately a value exchange. You provide value in exchange for money or something of similar value. The best way to drive more sales in your business is to cultivate more value. This creates a chain reaction of increasing value. An example of how to cultivate value is by investing in staff training. Better trained staff provide more value to customers. Happier customers provide referrals. And so the chain reaction begins. An atmosphere of value setting creates and retains more clients.

Another example of cultivating value is to improve customer service. Positive word of mouth from a happy customer is more valuable to your business than any other marketing strategy out there. This is one of the reasons why referral marketing is so powerful.

Many business owners make the mistake of trying to cast a wide net in order to bring in as many customers as possible. This ‘whack a mole’ business strategy means that you appeal to everyone and serve no one. Think about this: if you were a dentist and needed an accountant, would you choose an accountant who works regularly with cleaners or dentists? The latter, right? In reality, the accountant you choose wouldn’t make a huge difference either way. However, there is comfort in knowing that the person you would be working with has experience with people in a similar field of work. The same principle applies to businesses with an identifiable niche.

Niche down, dominate that niche and expand. You will build more credibility for your business and become a household name within your niche.

When pricing products, most businesses only focus on profit margins. They want to know how much money they can expect in their pockets every month.

However, this is often a very narrow-minded and short-sighted strategy. Profit should be one of four factors that are taken into consideration when pricing your products.

The other three factors which should be taken into consideration are:

• Market research: you need to understand the market and the various price points which you are up against. The three price points in the market (low end, mid-market, and high end) should be very clear to you before you set your price. Understand the various value offerings which correspond with these price points in order to make sure that your forecasts and expectations are accurate.
• Understanding customers: It is imperative to understand what your customers are willing to pay. However, it is also more important to understand what your customers can afford. Customers that are willing to pay more will often have differing needs to customers that want to pay less. Make sure that your pricing correlates to what your customers can and are willing to spend.
• Keeping on brand: once you have identified your price point and positioning within the market, make sure that your pricing reflects your brand. There is a reason why Chanel and Louis Vuitton never go on sale. Trying to appeal to customers with a lower price point would be quite literally suicidal for up-market brands. In the same way, Tesco products don’t reflect the same pricing strategy as Waitrose for a reason. In short, make sure that you understand your positioning in the market and price your products/services accordingly.

Implement these 5 tips and never worry about your business’s sales pipeline ever again. Outdo your competition and drive even more sales!

Cleartone is the provider of choice for thousands of new and small businesses that want to work smarter. Cleartone provides new formations and SME´s with clever telecoms; helping owners and staff better control and manage their time, communications, and work/life balance. Get Business calls on your mobile, record them, transfer, screen them, live a better business owner’s lifestyle! Get in contact today.