10 steps to a successful sales strategy

♟️Are you a tactician who wants advice on how to implement a successful sales strategy?

Indeed, it’s important to keep different notions in mind. So, let’s explain everything there is to know about online sales strategies 😁.

➡️ On the program:

• What is a sales strategy?
• Why do you need one?
• 10 steps to developing one.
• 2 examples of strategy on sale.

Interested? 🤩 Then stay with us – it all starts now. 🚀

What is a sales strategy?

A sales strategy is a plan devised from A to Z by a company to promote and sell its products or services. 📣

A bit like devising a plan to oust the final boss of a dungeon, you know? 😅

This strategy helps achieve certain business objectives, such as :

• Increasing sales.
• tapping into new markets.
• Building customer loyalty.

🎯 To do this, you need to carry out an in-depth market analysis, including a study of the competition and the market segmentation with different target groups.

But that’s not all, sales strategy also depends on training and developing sales teams, using customer relationship management (CRM) tools, or continuous monitoring to adjust results accordingly. 👀

Don’t worry, we’re going to take a look at each of the sales steps, right now. ⬇️

Why do you need a sales strategy?

A strategy on sale is essential to the growth and success of a company. 🏆

It defines a clear approach to achieving sales objectives and maximizing revenues. 🤑 But also :

• 1️⃣ Provide clear direction for the team, defining sales methods, targets and tactics. This avoids scattered efforts and ensures consistency of strategy.
• 2️⃣ Prioritize sales teams’ efforts on the most promising opportunities, and convert leads into customers more quickly.
• 3️⃣ Analyze customer and market needs, to adapt offers and sales messages to meet specific customer expectations.
• 4️⃣ Differentiate yourself from the competition by highlighting your strengths.
• 5️⃣ Monitor performance, adjust methods and adapt quickly to market changes or new trends.

🔐 In short, an effective sales strategy is the key to measurable results and long-term success.

How do you develop a good sales strategy?

As you’ll see, following these steps will help you👇🏼 :

• Understand your market,
• Target your customers,
• Implement certain actions in your sales strategy to achieve your objectives. 💪🏼

1) Define your sales targets

The first step, and not the least important, is to identify your objectives. 🔎

This is very important because depending on the goals you choose, you’ll be heading in a certain direction. 🧠 They must be “SMART“, which means:

• Specific.
• Measurable.
• Achievable.
• Realistic
• Time-defined.

Here are a few examples of objectives you could include in your sales strategy. 👇🏼

Type of objective	Smart Goal 1	Smart goal 2
Sales	+20%, over the next 12 months.	+500,000 € revenues in the SME segment, by the end of the year.
Customer growth	+100 new customers in the technology sector, over the next six months.	+15% recurring customer base, by the end of the year.
Conversion rate	+25 to 30% conversion rate of qualified prospects, over the next quarter.	+10 to 20% conversion rate of leads generated by content marketing, within six months.
Customer loyalty	-5 to 10% churn rate, over the year.	+80 to 90% customer satisfaction thanks to customer service and after-sales initiatives.
Team performance	100% of the sales team trained in new techniques and products, by the end of the quarter.	+15% sales productivity by automating tasks and optimizing sales processes.

2) Identify your targets

This step involves determining which market segments and types of customer are most likely to buy your products or services. 🤔

To do this, it’s important to analyze your market to understand the needs, behaviors and expectations of potential customers 👤:

• Market research about trends.
• Consumer preferences.
• Consumer demographics.

By doing this, you’ll get a bird’s-eye view of the types of customers that will get your strategy on sale off the ground. 🚀

To take your sales strategy a step further, you’ll segment your market, forming groups that bring together certain criteria, such as:

• 🟣 Age.
• 🔵 Gender.
• 🟣 Geographic location.
• 🔵 Income.
• 🟣 Purchasing behavior.

👉🏼 As you can see, if you clearly identify your targets 🎯, you’ll be able to develop marketing messages and sales offers tailored to you and your business sales.

3) Create your buyer persona

Knowing your persona, and therefore your target, means you’ll be able to sell your product or service more effectively 💰 later on.

So, let’s summarize the information you need to create a great buyer persona ⚡️ :

• First and last name.
• Age.
• Location.
• Level of education.
• Salary.
• Marital status 💍.
• Her need(s).
• Her points of pain or frustration.

The more complete it is, the more you’ll be able to provide solutions to its problem, and therefore build a solid sales strategy. 👀

4) Analyze your market

Does it scare you when you’re asked to analyze the market? 😨

Get started, even if it seems complicated! To analyze your external environment, the easiest approach is to conduct strategic monitoring or use models like the PESTLE analysis. 😎

Next, you’ll need to analyze your competitors to find out exactly what they’re doing to successfully sell their product or solution.

This way, you’ll be able to reuse (in your sales strategy) competitive techniques that are already working, but also avoid repeating certain mistakes 👀.

That’s why we do market analysis to understand and better respond to customer needs (especially if you sell products/services across multiple regions or markets). 🧠

Here’s a summary of the 5 things you need to do to analyze your market:

• 1️⃣ Study the main competitors and assess their strengths and weaknesses, sales strategies, prices and distribution channels.
• 2️⃣ Analyze market trends: changes in consumer preferences, technological innovations, regulatory developments.
• 3️⃣ Segment the market according to precise criteria (demographics, location, buying behavior, customer needs, etc.).
• 4️⃣ Analysis and understanding of customer needs (surveys, interviews, focus groups, etc.).
• 5️⃣ Assessment of opportunities and threats: new competitors or economic changes, using Porter’s 5 forces.

5) Organize your sales team

What would a company be without a good, well-structured and motivated team? Not much. 😅

To begin with, it’s important that you define the roles and responsibilities of each member of the sales team. Let me explain: ⬇️

• Sales Director: oversees and coordinates the team’s activities.
• Sales managers: drive customer relationships (including key accounts 🔑 with account based marketing) and develop new opportunities.
• Sales representatives: carry out day-to-day sales activities and achieve individual sales targets.
• Sales support: offer administrative and technical assistance to the sales team.

Building a great team isn’t enough. You need to motivate them to sell your product and succeed in your sales strategy. 💎 Here are our tips:

• Ongoing training: organize regular sessions to improve skills and update product knowledge.
• Clear objectives: set SMART goals for each member of your team.
• Motivation and recognition: set up reward and recognition systems to celebrate certain victories, such as bonuses or commissions.

6) Adjust your sales offer

To adjust a commercial offer, start by collecting and analyzing customer feedback using surveys, interviews and online comments to look for areas for improvement. 🔎

Next, don’t hesitate to regularly study the competition’s offerings to understand their strengths and weaknesses. ⚙️ Then, modify your product or service by :

• Adding new features.
• Improving quality.
• Adjusting prices.
• Creating more intriguing packages.

Finally, don’t hesitate to tell your community about these changes via marketing campaigns, newsletters and, above all, social networks. 😇

7) Use different acquisition and communication channels

When you decide to implement sales and marketing strategy, you’ll also think about all the channels you can use to spread your message 📩.

Setting up a strategy requires you to use different channels so that you can reach as many people as possible, which are 👇🏼:

• Social networks: LinkedIn for sales team (of course), Facebook, TikTok, Instagram…
• Search engine optimization (SEO).
• Online advertising (Google Ads, Facebook Ads).
• Content marketing.
• LinkedIn and email campaigns.

Thanks to these different strategies, you have the opportunity to reach customers 💰 on different platforms, and more chances of being recognized because you’ve been seen before elsewhere.

Think about unifying them so that people can understand you. It’ll kill two birds with one stone.

8) Generate leads

Do you want to generate leads? 🚀 You can’t test your sales strategy without them.

You can (and it’s even recommended) to cumulate all the acquisition channels mentioned above to reach more people. 💪🏼

For example, you could use :

1. Social networks to attract and engage potential prospects by regularly sharing relevant content and interacting with your audience. 😇
2. You’ll develop this content on a blog (content marketing + SEO), or even advertising.
3. Then you’ll use tools to launch campaigns automatically and grow your business sales faster. 😈

We can’t recommend Waalaxy enough!

It’s a marketing automation tool and CRM, in the form of a Google Chrome extension, that presents itself as the simplest, most intuitive and effective digital solution on the market! 🚀

Waalaxy allows you to obtain/generate unlimited leads, more precisely thanks to ✅ :

• Automatic lead import (from LinkedIn or .csv file),
• Sorting and cleaning filters for your contact lists,
• Automated prospecting campaigns (200 invitations/week).
• Message optimization and personalization (with our Waami AI assistant).
• Monitor responses and engagement with the LinkedIn dashboard and messaging.
• Enrich your lists with AI (Email Finder and AI Prospect Finder to find similar prospects).
• User support with multiple resources (available in 11 languages).
• Integration and compatibility with other tools.

You really don’t want to miss this! 🤩 Test it here! 👇🏼

9) Qualify leads

This is one of the most important steps in the sales strategy. It involves evaluating prospects to identify which ones have the highest conversion potential. 💸

To do this, you first need to qualify your prospect file, and the information on each lead.

All this data will help to segment leads according to their relevance to your product or service.

Next, we advise you to use customer relationship management (CRM) tools, such as Waalaxy, tracking lead engagement and campaign performance. 🤖

10) Adjust your sales strategy

To adjust your strategy on sale, you need to know your performance and/or marketing campaign results. 📊

This will enable you to know if the market is changing, if your customers’ behavior is changing too, and to adjust your offer, product/service or communication accordingly.

That was the last step in a successful sales strategy, and now you’ve got everything you need to make yours a success! 🏆

Successful Sales Strategy Example

But, to finish briefing you and to inspire you, we’ve decided to give you a quick introduction to 2 companies renowned for their successful sales strategy plan : Capgemini and Waalaxy. 🖱️

Waalaxy’s sales strategy

🛸 Since its creation, Waalaxy has rapidly evolved into an essential tool for automated prospecting via LinkedIn (or LinkedIn Lead Generation)

Originally launched in 2019 as ProspectIn, the company initially focused on automating repetitive tasks and generating leads on LinkedIn for salespeople and marketers. 🤖

🦾 The strengths of Waalaxy’s sales strategy then lay in :

• Its SEO acquisition strategy,
• Its presence on LinkedIn,
• Its ability to offer a simple, accessible and affordable solution.

The freemium model enables us to conquer a broad market, allowing users to test basic functionalities for free before upgrading to more advanced, pay-as-you-go packages. 😎

In 2021, the company turned a corner by changing its name and expanding its offering with multichannel functionalities (LinkedIn and Email marketing) but also CRM. 👽

Today, Waalaxy operates on a “self-serve” model. The company doesn’t have sales forces, but instead focuses heavily on various inbound acquisition channels:

• Blog,
• Ads,
• Landing pages,
• Supernova, our multi-channel media (YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook),
• Waalaxy campaigns sent by our team to boost product awareness. 📣

Waalaxy, is designed for sales professionals, marketers, recruiters, agencies, and freelancers who are looking for effective solutions to improve their prospecting.

This diversified approach has strengthened our ability to reach a broader audience while increasing subscription value.

The result? 🔥 Waalaxy gained its first 200 users in just one month. 😃

📍 By 2024, Waalaxy is a market leader, with over 100,000 satisfied users in more than 90 countries. The company generated over €10 million in revenue in 2022. Waalaxy also stands for:

• A mission: Helping everyone grow their network and generate leads efficiently.
• A sales strategy built on accessibility, automation, and ease of use. No need to be an expert – we achieved these results with just 5 minutes of work per day.
• A visible product roadmap so users can track all product updates.
• Continuous diversification in its customer acquisition strategy, consistently enhancing the offering and improving product features (especially with AI).

Capgemini’s sales strategy

♠️ Since its creation, Capgemini has continually adjusted its strategy on sale to adapt to changes in the IT services market.

Initially focused on staff delegation, the Group took a strategic turn with the « Génésis » project, in 1980. 🧬

To better seize global market opportunities, Capgemini reorganized its sales strategy, winning major international contracts, notably in the telecommunications sector 📲 :

• By dividing its operations into « Strategic business activities » (SBA), by sector and country.
• Reducing the proportion of outsourced staff to focus on higher value-added, high-growth services in IT infrastructure management (« facilities management ») and systems integration (Cloud, Data, AI…),
• Launching Gemini Consulting to broaden its offering to include management consulting.

These initiatives contributed to strong growth and a 97% increase in the company’s share price in 1997. 💰

In 2023, Capgemini will continue to adapt its strategy, with sales reaching 22.5 billion euros, with organic growth of 3.9% and an operating margin of 13.3%.

In 2024, Capgemini’s sales strategy confirms its effectiveness despite inflationary pressures, and strengthens its position as a business transformation partner. 🤝

In short, it is based primarily on👇🏼 :

• Targeted acquisitions and investments in strategic digital solutions with high return on investment (ROI),
• Expanding its portfolio with integrated offerings in digital transformation and sustainable development,
• Strengthen operating margins and generate cash flow.

Conclusion about Sales strategies

As you can see, your sales strategies will vary greatly depending on your objectives, your market and your sector of activity. 🤑

👇🏼 Here’s a summary of the 10 steps to developing your sales strategy:

1. Define your sales objectives.
2. Identify your targets.
3. Create your buyer persona.
4. Analyze your market.
5. Build a sales team.
6. Adjust your sales offer.
7. Use acquisition and communication channels.
8. Generate leads.
9. Qualify leads.
10. Adjust your strategy on sale.

By following these steps and drawing on the examples in this article, you can achieve a solid sales strategy from scratch. 🚀

Frequently Asked Question (FAQ)

🏁 To conclude, here are the answers to the most frequently asked questions on the subject. 👀

What are the different types of sales strategies?

🤔 There are several types of sales strategy that companies can use, depending on their objectives and target market:

1. Consultative selling: The emphasis is on listening to customers’ needs and offering a unique value proposition, rather than simply promoting products.
2. Direct selling: This approach involves selling directly to the end customer without intermediaries, often face-to-face or via digital channels.
3. Upselling: Companies use promotions, special offers and discounts to stimulate short-term sales.
4. Value-based selling: Here, the emphasis is on the perceived value of the product or service, often justifying a premium price.
5. Relationship selling: This strategy is based on developing long-term relationships with customers, fostering loyalty through trust.
6. Inbound selling: The company attracts customers through content marketing and interaction on social networks so that they come to it.

These strategies can be combined according to the company’s needs. 🤝

How to improve your sales strategy?

Improving your sales strategy is like developing it from scratch (but with fewer steps). 💎 There are several actions you can take:

1. In-depth customer knowledge: Understanding customer needs, expectations and behaviors enables you to adapt your offer and personalize your approach.
2. Competitive analysis: Studying competitors enables us to identify their strengths and weaknesses, and refine our own value proposition to better differentiate ourselves.
3. Ongoing team training: Regular training of sales staff in new sales techniques and digital tools optimizes their performance.
4. Sales cycle optimization: Reduce unnecessary steps in the sales process to increase efficiency and close faster.
5. Use data: Leverage CRM tools and data analysis to track performance, anticipate needs and adjust tactics in real time.

By applying this process, a company can increase conversions, build customer loyalty and maintain a competitive edge. 🦾

That’s the end of this article, you know all about sales strategy! 🎉

Don’t forget to try out our tips. 🧪 See you soon! 👽