Sales strategy : Propel your business

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Are you a tactician who wants to know all the tips for implementing a good sales strategy? Then stay with us, it’s time to start. It’s important to have different concepts about strategies in mind. We’re going to explain everything there is to know about online sales strategies 😁.

How do you set up a good sales strategy?

Before we embark on the heart ❤️ of this article, we’re going to look at the essential steps before setting up a good sales strategy. Where to start? We’ll try to answer that right now.

#1 Identify your target

If you’ve been following the Waalaxy blog more and more, you know that we can’t miss the famous persona.

We don’t intend to skip this essential step. Knowing your persona well, and therefore your target, is to succeed in selling better 💰 your product or your service afterwards. So let’s start at the beginning. We’ll summarize the information you need to create a great persona. For all the details of a complete persona, check out this little 👉 article. To do this, you’ll need to know:

  • First and last name.
  • The age.
  • Location.
  • Level of education.
  • The salary.
  • Marital status 💍.
  • Her need (or needs).
  • Her pain points or frustration.

Of course, it’s up to you to add elements that will complete your persona. The more complete your persona is, the more you will be able to bring solutions to their problem and therefore sell. Of course, when identifying your targets, there is a lot of segmentation work to be done.

You do not sell to a single typical customer. In fact, you will have a typology of customers. You will therefore have to segment them.

#2 Identify the needs

There are two ways to identify the needs of your audience. You can very well decide to have a product and understand the pain points of your targets but you can also start without having a product. In these cases, you go directly to your potential customers and ask them what they need. Once you have clearly identified a need, go on your solution always keeping a close eye 👁️ on the developments of your targets. Don’t hesitate to ask yourself questions like:

  • What are the problems my clients may have?
  • How do I respond to them?
  • What relationship do I want to have with them?

The more research you do up front, the easier it is to implement your strategy.

#3 Analyze the market

When you are asked toanalyze the market, it’s not necessarily about whether it’s saturated or not (go for it even if it seems complicated).

In fact, it’s more about analyzing your competitors. What are they doing to successfully sell their product or solution? When you go to do your prospecting, it’s also about using competitive techniques that work but also not repeating the mistakes you can see 👀. That’s why you do market analysis: to understand and better respond to your customers.

You may also very well sell your products or services in multiple regions or markets. It is very important to understand 🧠 the habits of your consumers so that you can best meet their need. Through these analyses, you can know if your product is more in demand in one region or another. You will then have the opportunity to optimize it based on the feedback you may have. But that’s not all, you also need to know the different reasons that drive the consumer to buy.

#4 Use the different channels to your advantage

When you are going to decide to implement your marketing strategy, you are also going to think about all the channels you can use to spread your message 📩. Think about unifying them so that you can be understood. Putting together a strategy requires you to use different channels so that you can reach as many people as possible. The tools you have at your disposal are:

  • LinkedIn (of course).
  • Facebook.
  • Twitter.
  • Instagram.

Through these different media, you have the opportunity to reach customers 💰 on different platforms, and more chances for you to be recognized because you’ve been seen elsewhere. Two birds with one stone.

#5 Analyze the actions implemented

Obviously, you’re also going to need to surround yourself with good analytics tools to understand what you’re doing 🙂 . You can’t make strategy adjustments if you don’t analyze the data you’ve collected.

The ads you put up, how much traffic did they bring in? How many new people? How many customers? How many leads? How many products did you sell? Analyzing your data will allow you to answer these questions. How do you know if you are growing and getting a good ROI if you don’t measure your data? If you’re wondering how to set up a data tracking document, it’s quite simple. You have several choices:

  • Go as simple as possible on an EXCEL sheet.
  • Use project management tools.
  • Use the tools available on the different platforms.

#6 Adjust the strategy

And yes, the last two steps don’t go without each other ❌.

In order to adjust your strategy, it is imperative that you know the results of your analysis. This will allow you to know if the market is changing, if your customers’ behaviors are also changing (which may lead to a product change or improvement, a change in communication…). Thanks to this, you will also know if the channel you used is relevant to your target. When you notice that a campaign is not successful, you can rectify the situation or simply suspend the campaign. When you analyze, you then have the power to take actions that can only boost your strategy.

The skills of a salesperson

When you are a marketer, a salesperson or an entrepreneur, if you want to sell a product, you must also have some essential skills to carry out your activity. If you want to be the master of these skills, we advise you to check out this 👉 article. Okay, so what are these different skills?

  • Trust. Yes, if you don’t inspire confidence in your target, there is little chance they will buy from you. By the way, this is also why you set up your LinkedIn profile when you sell on LinkedIn.
  • Likeability is hard to measure. You will never know if someone likes you or not. However, you can make sure that you are found by not talking about yourself too much, smiling 😁, being sincere and empathetic.
  • Adaptability: you’re also going to need to know how to turn a no into a yes (in some cases it will work, in others it won’t).
  • Observation and listening skills. If you don’t have it, how will you meet your customers’ needs?
  • Problem solving. If your prospect has a pain point, you will be able to answer it and be able to offer him exactly what he wants.

These are the 5 we wanted to introduce to you today. Of course, there are others that can only benefit your marketing business.

Sales strategies: The kings of your strategy

The product and/or service

In almost any situation, you’re likely to have a competitor in your way 🤨. So to stand out, you’re going to need your product to be flawless.

You need to offer the best product possible. To do this, don’t hesitate to ask the opinion of your friends and family and, above all, ask yourself if you, being in the shoes of your customers, would be able to buy it. If you already answer no, there is a problem, you will have to start from the beginning.

Your offer must be a baby 👶, the one you cherish, the more attractive it seems to you, the more attractive it will be in the eyes of your targets.

Of course, when you are in the early stages of your business, you are not going to have a long list of customers, this is precisely the time to pay even more attention to those who will come to buy for the first time from you. When you offer a product to your prospect that is different from your competition and when you have implemented a good after-sales service, you can start to make room for yourself in the coveted market.

The asset is the customer

You have two options for approaching a potential customer:

  • Offer your product directly to your lead.
  • Ask your lead what interests him, his pain points…

To convince a customer, you’ll need to be confident. Usually, the traditional methods are the most used but they are not necessarily the most effective ones ✅.

In general, people prefer to buy with someone they trust with someone who inspires them. That’s why selling on LinkedIn is a major asset in gaining trust with your audience. We will come back later on to selling on LinkedIn to acquire new customers and also to keep them. To please ❤️ the customer, you’re going to have to set up an action plan in which you’re going to dissect your strengths and weaknesses. In the B2b environment, being in touch with your audience will only help your sales. To do this, you will have to think about :

  • Favour authentic exchanges with your prospects or customers.
  • Talk about your product with expertise.
  • Create a relationship of trust by answering your prospects or customers when they ask you questions.

Digital at the heart of sales

We said a little earlier that traditional methods were a bit outdated 🤨.

In fact, it’s quite simple, according to statistics, we know that 93% of the beginning of the sales process starts with an internet search. So we’re going to look to prioritize the use of digital. What interests your buyers the most is the added value of your product.

Will it bring them additional knowledge, does it have an additional advantage over the competition? Finally, if you talk to your customers directly, you have more chances to “close” the transaction. You have a 20% higher chance of closing the deal. So don’t skimp on the means to keep in touch with your prospects.

Google Adwords

To achieve your goals, there is an extremely powerful tool, it is Google Adwords. If you do not know what it is, we will explain what it is.

google-ads

It is not at all a novelty from Google. In fact, Google Ads is simply the advertising network of the giant Google. You will be able to set up advertising campaigns through a system of ads and display them in search results based on keywords typed by Internet users.

For example, if you sell car tires, you can put ads on Google Shopping or simply in “Search”. The search is the link that you will see at the beginning of the results page. You will then click on this link to answer your request. So how does it appear? We show you this on the image below.

ads-google-search

Here we have searched for an SEO agency, those who appear first are those who have passed on Google Ads. It works with a bidding system. Typically, you type in your keyword and if you bid higher than the first one, then you’ll come first. Simple, basic.

So you can use Google’s ad network to your advantage for your business. You will redirect your users to your website and you will also have the opportunity to track all the data you can receive.

Sales strategies: LinkedIn

Here we come to the part we love the most: LinkedIn. We love this social network when it comes to prospecting. Do you know why? Because LinkedIn is the largest BtoB database in the world. And the icing 🍒 on the cake is that this same database updates automatically without you having to lift a finger… Truly amazing 😱. To get started, we’re going to give you the guide to selling on LinkedIn right 👉 here. But that’s not all, as we’re going to talk about it right now so you can propel your strategy on LinkedIn. Let’s start at the beginning.

You can’t start anything until you have established a persona. We are always adamant on this subject, it is the base, the ABC, the foundations, finally you will have understood, you can not move forward if you do not give importance to it 😶. We already gave you the main information you need to know a little earlier in this article, feel free to refer to it.

Second step, make your LinkedIn profile, a showcase. Your prospects are going to see who is behind the product or service you are selling, so it is imperative to spend a little time on it so that you can make your sales take off on LinkedIn.

You will have to create a professional profile and this professional page will serve as your landing page, it will be your sales page. It is thanks to this page that you will be able to advertise your services (or your products). On the other hand, LinkedIn is an excellent platform to automate your prospecting. Let’s explain it right now with Waalaxy.

Automate your prospecting with Waalaxy

Once you are familiar with sales and LinkedIn, you can take your prospecting to the next level and thus into autopilot mode.

waalaxy-tableau-de-bord

Using a good prospecting software is an integral part of a good sales strategy and here we have a great tool to offer you: Waalaxy.

Discover Waalaxy 🪐

This is a little chrome extension that will allow you to import the searches you’ve done on LinkedIn.

You can then send them messages, emails or simply invitations with or without notes. It’s the perfect tool 🔨 to accompany you in your prospecting on LinkedIn thanks to automation. What Waalaxy can do is:

  • Help you find your prospects.
  • Automate your prospecting.
  • Contact them by email (when it is filled in).
  • Set up sequences (which means that you can set up an invitation and then one or more follow-up messages, or go for other scenarios depending on where you are with your prospecting funnel).
  • Integrate your leads in a CRM.

And you can even use it with your sales teams so you can stay together on your sales strategies.

Sales Strategies: The 5Ws Method

Okay, at first glance, we don’t feel much like knowing about this method 🤢. First of all,we don’t know what it means… Don’t panic, we’ll break it down together to make it easier. You should already know that this is a sales method that you can apply to set up a strategy. In this method, it is about answering various questions so that you can be in touch with your customers. This little method will allow you to implement a sales strategy in 5 steps.

Let’s take a look at it now. These 5 steps, we will classify them into 5 categories of questions. It is to ask you the right questions to define your effective business strategy. We start right away with the first question.

Who?

We go back to the basics, of course. Who is your solution aimed at? Of course, we must not be so vague. So we’ll ask the questions:

  • Who are the customers (new or existing?)
  • Who will make these sales (You? Your sales people?).

When?

This may seem strange, but we must also define the when. So here is what we might ask:

  • When are we going to make these different sales? (Is the market seasonal?)
  • Have you noticed any periods where demand is higher than another 🤨? And conversely if demand drops drastically at one time of the year?
  • Are you driving the demand?
  • How will you organize your sales schedule?

Where?

We are interested here in the notion of place, for example:

  • Where are you going to sell the products (what are the channels you are going to use).
  • Where are you going to set up the sales force? (We are talking about potential geographical areas).

What?

The second to last question that can help you in your sales strategies. Here you will ask yourself questions about your product:

  • What are you going to sell?
  • If you have multiple products or services, what will you highlight?
  • What will you be able to attract your potential leads with? (What is your positioning?).

Why?

Now we come to the last question to perfect your strategy. This question is important because it allows you to know the heart of your project. So we ask ourselves the following questions:

  • Why did you choose this solution?
  • Why implement this strategy rather than another?
  • Why these choices? (What are the strengths of your strategy?)
  • Why should your customers buy your product or service (what is/are your differentiating feature(s) compared to the competition?
  • Why respond to a customer in a certain way?

These questions are important so that you leave confident in your sales pitch and leave nothing to chance. If you manage to answer all these questions, you will only be better armed in front of your customers ⚔️.

Conclusion of the article: Sales strategies

As you can see, your sales techniques are going to be a little different depending on your goals. You can sell 💲 on LinkedIn, or go for a sale exclusively from your website and use Google Ads to your advantage. You can also combine all the channels available to you and eliminate the ones that perform the least as you go along. Keep only the best levers, do A/B tests.

FAQ of the article : Sales strategies

It’s almost the end of this article on sales strategies, so we’ll try to show you some notions that could help you to set up your different sales strategies.

Think about customer loyalty

We often tend to think about customer acquisition, but we must not forget those who have already bought from you. Constantly targeting new customers won’t help you with retention, so we think about a loyalty strategy 💍. Already, you should know that customer acquisition will always cost you more than a retention strategy, so don’t go without. What can you put in place to build customer loyalty? For example, at Waalaxy, we have set up ambassador programs.

You can also provide them with exclusive offers. This way, they will feel privileged and will hesitate less before buying from you. The customer relationship is essential in all sales strategies.

What are the 3 main marketing strategies?

There are a few smaller strategies in marketing. For example, you have the strategy of cost domination, differentiation and focus.

Cost Domination Strategy

Nothing to do with fantasies that we shouldn’t talk about. Here, the important thing is that the company makes sure to get low costs for maximum quality. It’s a strategy of being extremely competitive. You are going to lower costs like fixed costs and variable costs. This strategy doesn’t just focus on cost reduction, it focuses on cost and volume.

Differentiation Strategy

Here you will only focus on the product. It is on the advertising that you will make the difference. It is particularly effective on small businesses since it has the advantage of extending to other user segments. The differentiation strategy will require a lot of analysis of the competition since you will have to find the element that makes your product better than another one from the competitor.

Focus strategy

With this strategy, you have to focus only on a specific market and avoid confrontation with your competitors. You must therefore imperatively know what makes your strengths ✅ and weaknesses ❌. Do not hesitate to use the SWOT matrix to perfect this strategy. You are going to rely solely on a market segment that for the blow, is going to be very targeted but unfortunately reduced. Defining a strategic plan based on what is going to differentiate you from the competition is going to be key.

Bringing the customer to you: Inbound Marketing

Carrying out a marketing strategy can be done throughinbound marketing. It is the fact of bringing the customer directly to you rather than going to look for him. You can do this through :

  • Podcasts.
  • Articles (SEO and LinkedIn).
  • Newsletters.
  • Posts.

In short, you will create useful content ❤️ that will bring customers back to you. By the way developing a content strategy on LinkedIn is a great idea and you can even get a little tool like Podawaa to help you with this. Inbound marketing is based on 3 pillars:

  • Attract.
  • Interact.
  • Build loyalty.

If you decide to start creating content on LinkedIn, it will be an opportunity for you to establish your authority in a particular field and show your customers that they can trust you. And we’re at the end of this article, you know all about sales strategies, don’t forget to test 🧪.

Mélisande

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