Increase Sales Revenue NOW! Seven Sales Secrets to Increasing Your Sales Volume, Even in a Recession

Marketing is a Science. After 23 years of recruiting sales people, training sales managers, building businesses, and reading hundreds of books, I have narrowed down the following seven (7) critical areas that need to be mastered, for sustained sales growth:

1. Positioning / Branding / Differentiation:

Effectively answering the most important question in the prospect's mind, "Why should I do business with you (and not your competitor)?" is crucial. So is, a strong "Sales Posture". Salespeople without a Unique Value Proposition (UVP) often have to resort to price cutting. Begging for business is not a viable sales strategy. Remember, the prospect's mind works on the W.I.I.F.M. principle ("What's In It For Me?).

2. Potent Sales Scripts:

Scientifically written, natural sounding and emotionally compelling scripts for Sales Prospecting / Pre-Qualifying, Sales Presentation, Objection Handling, Sales Closing, Following up and FAQs are vital. Good sales scripts will help your salespeople stay on track, ask the right questions, and "sail" into the Close! A written script can also help you train new sales people quickly, and convey a consistently professional image of the company.

3. Cutting Edge Sales Tools:

An "Info Kit" (PDF for emailing, snail-mailing and faxing) is often a must. It should be scientifically designed to push the right Emotional Hot Buttons, and incorporate a strong "Call to Action". Prospect Databases, a good Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, clearly defined "Steps to the Sale" with corresponding "Actions" logged in the CRM are also important. A good website is a big help.

4. Hire the Right Sales People:

Good sales professionals are very rare and often hard to find. The JOY Tests (tm) of Total Sales Ability (tm) from Dan Joy, Inc., can help you hire the best salespeople (Top 2%), retain them longer, as well as grow your sales! They can also help you avoid costly hiring mistakes. In the past, sales assessment tools were used primarily by large companies. Now, the fully integrated online sales assessment testing system of Dan Joy, Inc. has brought these crucial sales assessment tools within the easy reach of small to mid-sized businesses, but large companies can use them too. Dan Joy, Inc. offers 10 Free Sales Assessments to qualified businesses (see the link in the Author's Bio / Resource Box below).

5. Good Sales Leadership:

Selling is one of the hardest things. It is both physically demanding (long hours) and emotionally draining (facing rejection continually). Having your sales team report to someone who has never sold for a living is usually not a good idea. I have seen sales people report to a "non-sales" Plant Manager, CFO, Production Manager, Office Manager, etc., and that is often a recipe for disaster. Regular Sales Meetings (at least once a week), Role Playing (practicing the scripts, objection handling, etc.), Sales Training, Sales Goals expressed in terms of controllable actions (important), ongoing accountability, metrics, reward / correction, motivation / inspiration are all extremely important.

6. Continual Lead Generation:

Your salespeople must always have "several irons in the fire" so they don't pin all their hopes on just one sale coming through (or feeling dejected if it does not). Multiple sales should be "brewing" at all times. A good, consistent, ongoing Leads Generation program should be in place (Direct Mail, eMarketing, Advertising, Press Releases, etc). If you have a good product or service, get the word out proactively, in large numbers.

7. Acuity:

Observing what is working and what is not, and making ongoing course corrections is vital. Not to mention studying the competition, monitoring the markets, and innovating to stay ahead. Retaining good salespeople is sometimes harder than recruiting them, but treating them right and compensating them fairly would go a long way.

Conclusion:

You wanted to know how to increase sales -- this is what it will take. If you want to increase sales or grow a business long term even in a recession or down economy, you must master these seven critical areas. This advice and sales tips can help you increase sales revenue steadily. Growing a business requires hard work in addition to just smart work. The sales growth advice above applies to entrepreneurs, small businesses as well as large companies who wish to grow their sales, even though the scale of implementation might differ.

Businesses may receive 10 Free Sales Assessment Tests from Dan Joy, Inc. Dan Joy (BS Engineering, MBA Marketing) is a Sales and Marketing scientist. Employers may receive 10 Free Sales Assessment Tests at http://www.danjoy.com/

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Critical Skills For Sales Leaders - Sales Performance Planning to Increase Revenue

How do you get your sales team to generate the greatest amount of revenue, consistently, year after year? Most sales managers think the answer lies in being aggressive, doing more sales activity, proactive business development, keeping the pipeline full and increasing the abilities of your salespeople so that they are more effective on the ground.

What about the value of better planning? World-class sales organisations establish aggressive sales objectives to achieve the best possible results. To accomplish these aggressive targets, they develop clear and effective sales strategy and Performance Plans. The Sales Performance Plan guides the sales leader's Sales Performance Coaching efforts, providing both them and the salesperson with a clear track to follow.

An effective Sales-Performance Plan can work to reduce your sales revenue peaks and valleys.

Generally the Sales-Performance Plan is an offshoot of the marketing plan, which is a critical component of the overall company business plan. Simply stated, the marketing plan defines your target market and outlines specific strategies which will attract, promote and sell your product or service. The Sales-Performance Plan details the essential steps that are required in order to retain the existing customer base, along with the specifics of how to reach potential customers and convert them from prospects into paying customers.

These plans should include execution details. Specifically featuring: who is doing what, by when, how and with what resources. The plan may also include details on how to deal with roadblocks and other obstacles. An effective Sales Performance Plan anticipates and create contingency plans against competitive threats, delays, etc

Leading sales managers have a healthy obsession with planning to ensure they reach their targets and better planning is the key to producing consistent and predictable sales numbers. An effective Sales-Performance Plan is made up of a variety of issues depending on your own individual sales environment.

Elements of a Sales-Performance Plan

A well constructed Sales-Performance Plan will not deliver sales results on its own. As with any plan, it must be actioned in order to produce a result. However, a well developed Sales-Performance Plan will direct every sales activity, greatly increasing the likelihood of the salesperson achieving their sales goals. The Sales-Performance Plan details the key objectives and the actions required to achieve the salesperson's goals.

o More effective Sales-Performance Plans will create, build and nurture a healthy sales pipeline.

o A well thought out and well-managed Sales-Performance Plan ensures your salespeople meet revenue goals and attain their sales quotas.

o A good Sales-Performance Plan will also include development and up-skilling objectives that you and your individual salespeople have determined to be lacking in order for them to achieve their sales goals.

The Sales-Performance Plan contains a brief description of the actions required in order to achieve the goals. The Sales-Performance Plan must briefly specify the following:

Who: Who are the individuals responsible for achieving what needs to be done?

What: What is required to be done to achieve the goal?

When: By when must the required actions be done?

Tactics: What tactics will be required to achieve the goal?

Resources: What resources will be required to achieve the goal?

Measures: How will success be measured, by whom and when?

None of your salespeople should ever begin their year, month or sales week without a clearly specified sales plan. The plan must lay out and detail their key objectives and action plans to achieve their desired results. Once the plan is submitted and agreed upon, it needs to be reviewed on a regular basis.

Target elements to plan for may include:

o Increase $ volume

o Increase the % in sales volume year over year

o Increase sales of specific products/services

o Increase average deal size

o Decrease average length of sale

o Increase $ volume by customer

o Opening new accounts targets

o Margin

o Ratio improvement

o Key account increases in existing product purchases

o Key account new product purchases

o Customer retention goals

o New product objectives

The Sales-Performance Plan needs to be split up into 4 X 90 DAY ACTION PLANS with set dates and strategies for their execution. The plan must be simply broken down and laid out for easy reference and follow up by you as the sales leader. Territory Sales-Performance Plans may also include some of the above measures as well as other goals for growing the territory.

Territory Sales-Performance Plans Territory Planning (a mix of customers or key accounts and prospects in a specified geographic location) is the process a sales team uses to analyze and plan around key accounts and opportunities within their assigned sales territory. For a Territory plan to effectively drive revenue, it must include both strategy and tactics and detailed actions for delivery of each objective.

A typical Territory Plan may include:

o Analysis and objective setting around the company's products and services, market segments, competition, trends, and profiles of key accounts.

o Specific key objectives

o Opportunity/threat analysis

o Account identification and estimates of account potential

o Account situational analysis and account strategy

o Detail on territory/account tactics - What to sell, for what price and by when?

o Key account increases in existing product purchases

o Key account new product purchases

o Customer retention goals

o Channel development

o Deeper key account penetration

o Re-establishing abandoned customers

Developing, reviewing and regularly updating your Sales Plan is critical to consistent sales success.

As one of Australia's leading authorities and coaches in sales management, Ian Segail has been involved in the coaching, training and development of sales managers and salespeople for over two decades.

Drawing on 25 years of experience in sales, sales management and leading an HR and training team, Ian brings a strong dose of fiscal reality and practicality to his works as a Sales Performance Coach.

Engaging directly with business owners and both novice and experienced sales managers alike, across a wide variety of industries and selling disciplines, the focus of Ian's work is to transform sales results for companies by improving sales management practices.

Ian is the author of "Bulletproof Your Sales Team The 5 Keys To Turbo Boosting Your Sales Team's Results" and a number of business articles, business reports and white papers including "The fish stinks from the head!" and "Why Sales Training Doesn't Work."

Ian has an insatiable hunger for studying selling and people management and has passionately pursued answers to the question "How come some people can sell and most can't?"

Access great tools and resources produced by Ian at http://www.salestutor.com.au/Content_Common/pg-tools-and-resources.seo

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Executive Briefing - How Sales Process Improvement Can Help to Increase Margins and Revenue Growth

I find it useful to remember, everyone lives by selling something.

Robert Louis Stevenson

We never lead with product; we lead with need.

Zig Ziglar

My creativity strikes at the heart of sales - it's focused on building relationships, improving presentations, and closing a sale.

Sidney Friedman

"Nothing happens until somebody sells something."

Unknown

Introduction

In the rapidly changing landscape of business, competition is stiff. Customers are more sophisticated and demanding in the face of better available options. A sales opportunity can become clouded or loose momentum with the constant requirements on the part of businesses to add more customers, crunch the sales numbers, and boost profits.

To achieve aggressive revenue targets and meet customer needs businesses have to make organized and systematic approaches. Sales form a formidable part of such approaches. Robust sales along with other factors such as: better products or services, attention grabbing advertising, and reliable customer service help businesses successfully in attracting and retaining customers, generating more revenue, and pushing profit levels higher.

A better product or service may not necessarily translate into higher revenues. How the product or service is launched in a specific market can determine revenue. Selling is widely regarded as an art form. Those born with innate talents for a career in sales can succeed, but success can be elusive for the most seasoned sales professional if they do not follow a process. Academicians however, stress that a sales genius may have inborn talents for the trade, but with adequate training any average interested person can turn out to be an outstanding salesman. The topic still remains as the Holy Grail. However, each business has its own sales force using a unique selling model. And all successful businesses have some common sales methods.

Underscoring the Importance of a Sales Process

Having touched upon the weight of sales in business processes it will be necessary to note that robust selling is based on a sturdy and effective sales process. If you are saying, "we do not have the time to work on the process, we have numbers to meet" - your approach may not be right and you might want to reconsider it. To reach the destination, the path should be right and the journey should be enjoyable. Many salespeople are so caught up with the numbers (targets and quotas) that they do not enjoy the process. They do not realize that if the process is correct and executed properly that will take care of the numbers. In fact, true and successful sales professionals work the process thoroughly and enjoy each phase of the exciting sales process that finally ends with stellar sales figures. Being process driven is the mantra. The results will follow naturally.

A sales process is not a panacea, but many organizations are increasingly realizing that it's an indispensable tool that no business can do without. Having a sales methodology in place by firms increased to 84% in 2007 from 42% in 2004 (Source: CSO Insight). Analysis of all successful businesses shows that they all adhere to and execute against a well-defined sales process. Though the exact structure and methodology of operation of their sales processes may differ, they all serve the purpose of boosting sales. An effective sales process is the strong edifice on which the entire structure of sales stands. A weak and ineffective sales process will produce poor sales results and hamper growth as a strong and effective sales process can boost sales and help to increase margins. It is imperative for businesses to have a fail-safe, well-defined and solid sales process in place.

Sales process and sales staff complement each other to take a company to the desired level of growth. One cannot work without the other. A persuasive and experienced sales staff may not be able to perform at its optimum level when the sales process of a company is not efficient. But when the combinations are right the results can be astounding.

About the Author

Doug Dvorak helps companies and professionals achieve results through customized, creative and non-traditional sales training systems that are "one size fits one" and developed to the unique business needs and "sales pain points" of each client. He is available to speak on these topics.

For more information visit http://www.salescoach.us or call 847-359-6969

Permission is granted to reprint this article in print or on your web site as long as the paragraph above is included and contact information is provided

Copyright 2008 The Sales Coaching Institute, Inc.
Sales Skills Training l Strategic Sales Coaching
Chicago, IL l 847-359-6969 l doug@dougdvorak.com
http://www.salescoach.us

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