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Closing the Sale: The Secret to Understanding Your Customers

by Rolando Herrera
written by Rolando Herrera

Consider the moment your business was conceptualized, turning you from consumer to entrepreneur; you recognized a need for a product or service and took the steps to fulfill it in ways that haven’t been done before. After your business is formed, more than ever, it is important to remain immersed in your customer’s experience firsthand, in order to continue to grow and maintain your business. To better understand customer behavior, you must become your customer.

Immerse Yourself in Customer Experience

Get a more thorough understanding of your own business by becoming your own customer. Immersing yourself in the experience of utilizing your own business’ products and services allows you to better understand your potential customers’ mindset.

  • Utilize your own services – from end to end, walk through your customer’s experience. From the functionality of your website, to ease of parking at your location, to wait times for customer service via phone, go through each step from the perspective of your customers.
  • Discover where your customers are – Consider precisely where and when you, as a consumer, would need your product or service. No matter how innovative your product or service, if your customers can’t find your business, it doesn’t exist. 
  • Thoroughly analyze your experience – When you immerse yourself in customer experience, you have the opportunity to strengthen your product or service through self-auditing. Don’t become blind to your own shortcomings; now is the time to be your own biggest critic. Through a consumer perspective, recognize flaws in your business model and use this knowledge to your advantage. 

Patronize the Competition

Maintaining the mindset of a consumer, becoming a patron of your competition is a great way to analyze your own business’ shortcomings and find room for improvement. Consider the following when patronizing your competition:

  • What might drive potential customers to choose this business over your own?
  • How easily was your competition found?
  • What was the quality of the product or service provided in comparison to your own?
  • What was the customer service superior to what you provide?
  • What did your competition do to earn your business?

While it may be difficult as a business owner to recognize why potential customers opt to do business elsewhere, it is important to remain as objective as possible when analyzing your experience.

Maintain Customer Outreach

While becoming your own customer is the ultimate market research, it is important to recognize that you will have biases when it comes to analyzing your own business, no matter how objective you try to be. Regularly engaging in customer outreach is key to growing and improving your business. Comparing customer feedback to your own experiences paints a clearer picture of what it’s like to do business with your company, allowing you to grow your business more strategically, rather than simply relying on your own opinions. 

Knowing your customer is the key to acquisition; the key to knowing your customer is to become one. Your success is based on growth, and growth relies on your ability to take on an analytical approach to how you do business.

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BusinessFinancial AdvisorSales

Top 5 Skills that Are Important for Entrepreneurs

by Williams Adebowale
written by Williams Adebowale

If you were part of a top sales team for a leading business corporation, you would attend regular training programs and seminars presented by consultants who would charge you up and build your confidence and skills. If you were an Olympic Athlete, optimistic audiences would cheer you on to great feats. Your coaches and mentors would instill discipline, encourage, and guide you to success.  But if you are one of today’s entrepreneurs, or an aspiring entrepreneur, who cheers you on and gives you the boost you need? Chances are you will have to do most of that yourself.

The skills that are important for entrepreneurs to evolve with time and are different from what might have been most important some years ago. Though there are many business and people skills that a successful entrepreneur will have, the following top 5 skills are the ones that you need to make your business successful:

Communication

Every entrepreneur needs to be an effective communicator. Communication is how you will be able to cultivate loyal employees, and charm customers into coming back time and time again. If an entrepreneur cannot communicate the company’s value, it’s unlikely the company will be successful.

Also, entrepreneurs need to master all forms of communication, including one-on-one and in-person conversations, email or online messages, group conversations, and written communication.

Sales and Marketing

The soft skill of sales and marketing goes hand-in-hand with the communication necessary to be a successful entrepreneur. If an entrepreneur can communicate effectively, they are better equipped to sell their ideas and physical products.
An entrepreneur needs to sell the business idea to potential investors, the product or service to customers, and themselves to employees. It is imperative that entrepreneurs develop a marketing mindset. Having a marketing mindset enables you to adjust your focus from how you do what you do to the benefits of what you do.

Financial Management

Financial management skill helps entrepreneurs control cash flow.  About 29% of all small businesses established between 2014-2018 ran out of cash due to the lack of financial management skill. Entrepreneurs must acquire financial management skill to stay in business, manage, and grow their finances. You might be good at this aspect of running a business, but if you are not, you need to make sure you employ a financial management expert. Depending on the nature of your business, you might wish to expand, open new branches, or invest in developing new products. Whatever your priority, have a plan for getting there and how you are going to fund it.

Discipline and Meditation

As a business owner, persistence in the face of uncertainty, pressure, or the potential of failure, requires a level of discipline. The best way to get started, then, is to find as many things in life that could boost your discipline level. The path to successful entrepreneurship is full of ups and downs, and only disciplined entrepreneurs can stay on track when the going gets tough.
While discipline enables you to stay focused as an entrepreneur,  meditation helps you to get rid of unnecessary tensions and stress so that you can make healthy business decisions. An entrepreneur must include fifteen-thirty minutes of mediation in his or her daily routine for personal and business growth.

Business Strategy

Entrepreneurs need to have a business strategy skill to take their businesses from good to great. Plan out where you expect to be every step of the way in terms of financing, sales, staffing, and any other key aspect of your business. A detailed SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis is an excellent way to get yourself and your team members to start thinking strategically. Also, business strategy skill helps you to keep a narrow focus on paying customers and learn from competitors.
As you move through your beginning months and years in operation, it is always a good idea to revisit your business strategies regularly to make sure they still appropriate based on any changes with your business.

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Sales

4 Tips to Inspire Your Sales Team

by Kyle Blankenship
written by Kyle Blankenship

Nothing benefits a company’s bottom line more than an efficient and productive sales team. When sales employees have a clear mandate, room for growth, and support from senior management, companies can reap big profits from their teams.

But for new executives, it can be difficult to provide a sales team with the tools to succeed and keep them motivated to go above and beyond.

That’s why it’s crucial for businesses to identify which tools sales employees need to do their jobs and how managers can help inspire them to perform at their very best.

Here are four hard-and-fast tips to get the most from your sales team.

1.) Form a Bond with Your Team

Like any class of employee, a sales team is made up of employees looking to work hard and meet individual short- and long-term goals.

The first step in motivating a sales team is understanding employees’ motivations and being open and honest about their expectations. Business managers should invest time early on with their sales members to explain the company mission and how sales fits into that culture.

With a little bit of work forming a professional relationship with a sales team, managers can keep their direct reports on task and working hard toward a common goal.

2.) Set Sales Team Goals

The hardest part of forming a well-oiled sales team, particularly for new businesses, is drafting a comprehensive and reasonable set of short-, middle-, and long-term goals.

When companies first launch, reaping short-term revenue can blind executives to the need for a vision of the company’s future. Sales employees, like their managers, need a sense of long-term stability to keep them on track and aiming for larger contracts.

Regardless of what stage a business is in, managers and executives should be periodically drafting and revising goals for its sales team.

Is it important for a team to spend time working toward bigger and bigger deals? Or should sales reps push for short-term deals?

Those are questions that should be answered during the brainstorming process.

3.) Focus on the Basics

While brainstorming and goal setting is crucial for a sales team’s success, managers should also hammer the fundamentals with their sales team.

If a sales team is adding employees or learning on the go with new products, understanding the fundamental of funnels and the company’s sales structure will help ease employees into the process.

For managers, a clearly defined training process and ongoing education will give employees the foundation to act confidently and nail down more sells.

4.) Reward Success

The sales field tends to draw a certain type of employee that connects their professional value to their success closing a sale.

If companies want to motivate employees who work tirelessly for more and bigger sales, they should provide a compensation and incentive structure that rewards their efforts.

Businesses should build a plan that tiers rewards based on the performance of its sales employees. The idea: More sales lead to more rewards.

With a little bit of effort and thought, companies can motivate employees to give their absolute best every day.

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Content MarketingE-CommerceMarketingSales

Your Online Sales Could Be In Trouble!

by Matthew Henderson
written by Matthew Henderson

Here’s what you can do about it…

The problem could be that you’re not following the “rules”. No, there is no one-size-fits-all rulebook for attracting customers online, but you will certainly benefit from applying some best practices. Online shoppers want efficient, affordable service and are always one click away from looking for it somewhere else.  Creating immediate interest and holding it long enough to gain a customer is tricky and you need to know what you’re doing. Here are a few of the basic “do’s and don’ts” of selling online.

Do…

Get to know your customer base.

Gaining your customer’s trust is not a delivering a monologue, it’s engaging in a dialogue. Seven out of ten consumers say they are more likely to offer their returned business to a company that listens to their concerns, and makes them feel heard by troubleshooting their problems with individual attention. Get a bead on customers by using the channels already at your disposal. Are you set up on the major social media platforms? Does your website provide a forum for customer reviews? Are you displaying your positive testimonials?

Don’t…

Waste their time!

It’s not that your prospective buyers are goldfish, in fact quite the opposite. American consumers are busy people and respecting that in your game plan will lead to better results.  Engaging content, enticing visuals, and smooth, intuitive navigation must all be immediately apparent to visitors. Statistically, you only have about 7 seconds to hook their interest before they jump to another page, so don’t waste it!

Do…

Grow your own leads.

Your new customers won’t be waltzing through your door with a pocketful of cash they plan to spend.  One of the major benefits of shopping online means the ability to perform research and instantly cross-reference your price with that of the competitors.  One survey’s results showed the intention of over 90% of site visits to be browsing, not buying.  Creating a user experience that transforms an aimless visitor into a satisfied customer is the entire goal, hence the term, “conversions”.

Don’t…

Assume that you own your domain name forever!

Remember, you haven’t purchased a plot of land. In essence, you’re renting an online space! If you fail to re-register your domain name when the term expires, it is then up for grabs. Don’t let another brand steal your identity!

Do…

Play with pricing.

There’s no doubt about it, money talks, but the number on the price tag isn’t the only way it can speak to your customers. Try to create other appeals that show why that price is advantageous to the customer. If a particular item is your “best seller”, make sure your audience knows it!  Tags like “high value” or “limited supply” can have a strong impact on the likelihood of purchase.

Don’t…

Assume that launching a website means anyone will ever see it!

An amazing product on a pretty website won’t be enough to establish a solid online sales platform.  Word of mouth won’t get you much farther. You need to drive customers to your site through effective SEO practices. Equipping your site with quality content and effective keyword strategy will put you on the game board by placing you higher on search engine results pages.

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CRMData ManagementSales

Top 7 Ways to Increase Sales with CRM

by Rolando Herrera
written by Rolando Herrera

CRM, or customer relationship management, can help businesses increase sales. It doesn’t matter how large or small the business, CRM is worth the investment.

It is a simple process. You provide quotes to your customers and after providing them with the information, all you need to do is follow up with a phone call. But how do you know who to call? With a CRM, you can implement a process where you set up a system that tracks the quotes and helps you make follow-up calls. Many of those quotes can turn into sales simply by calling the customer or emailing them as a result of the organizational system of the CRM. Opportunities that could have been lost has been addressed and turned into sales.

Tracking every sale that was lost can help a company reassess their approach. A company can find out where there is a need for improvement and what was wrong. Armed with this information they can make adjustments, move forward and earn more/ Without CRM, this information is hard to track.

You can track your sales people’s calls and appointments to measure their productivity and help them in being more efficient. A salesperson can examine how they can make improvements and analyze which clients are worth spending more time on.

Keeping your employees informed of new innovation and also which customer complaints are being handled before any other contact is made with the customer before the issue has been resolved is very useful. It avoids escalation of the dissatisfaction with the customer. When the employee is not informed, he can appear to be foolish but uninformed. Situations like this do not sit well with the customer. Customers prefer to deal with intelligent and competent salespeople and representatives of the company.

CRM tracks the productivity of your service group. You can determine whether to continue business with the customers that call constantly, how service time is wasted, which service issues are not being addressed and notification of when certain procedures are being breached.

Keep your customer’s information in one place and compile the list. Customer data should be kept on one form and that same data can be automatically sent to other systems within the company. Accounting and inventory information can be kept in one system and can be configured by CRM to be viewed. It saves time and you only have to enter information once. You save data entry input time and this frees up time to complete other tasks.

CRM software can help in getting the word out to new and old customers. The more customers you reach means more earnings. CRM automatically sends emails to customers who haven’t made a purchase in a while, customers who have ordered a product and may be interested in a similar product, and it can act as a direct mail system to announce specials. CRM software can also send faxes to customers that allow communication via fax that will alert them to new incentives.

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ConversionsSales

Want More Sales? 3 Proven Ways to Boost Your Site’s Conversion Rate

by Brandon Lee
written by Brandon Lee

From entrepreneurs to Fortune 500 companies, everyone wants to improve their conversion rate. However, to actually be successful at this, you have to actually properly identify the obstacles that are deterring you from converting more consumers and make improvements.

Sounds easy, right?

Well, if you think so, you’d be mistaken. Achieving the perfect conversion rate is the Da Vinci code of internet marketing. It requires a lot of patience and time to optimize your website so it can become the perfect funnel for incoming leads.

Fortunately, I’m going to save you a lot of time by giving you three proven ways you can boost your site’s conversion rate and gradually increase your online revenue.

1. Enhance Your Site’s Personalization

A boring and useless website is. . . well, boring and useless. However, many businesses don’t fully grasp this concept. If your website isn’t personalized specifically for each individual lead, then you’re completely missing the mark.

According to a report from Forrester, 68% of businesses have made personalizing web experiences a top priority. So, what does this exactly mean? Let’s look at one example.

Have you ever visited a website and kept getting pop-ups encouraging you to sign up for their newsletter or buy their product?

I have and this is very frustrating. These pop-ups, at the wrong time, can send your prospects straight to your competitors. However, if you personalize your pop-ups a bit more, they can actually be effective tools for increasing your conversions.

For example, if one of your site visitors attempts to leave your site, you can utilize an exit intent pop-up to retain them and make them more likely to do business with you.

Take a look.

exit popup examples5 - Want More Sales? 3 Proven Ways to Boost Your Site's Conversion Rate

As you can see, this pop-up is more personalized to make a site visitor think twice before leaving your website, and even if they do leave and fill out the form, you’ll still gain their email address to reach back out to them.

2. Perform Regular A/B Tests

Performing experiences reduces the risks of making guesses about your site. If you can conduct an A/B test that proves that a certain landing page layout is more effective at increasing conversions than your original one, then you’re basically on track to capturing more leads.

If you want to begin making your own experiments, here are some areas you should focus your testing on.

  • Pricing – The prices of your products or services may be too high, or even low, to encourage a prospect to make a purchase.
  • Headlines – Your current headline may not be convincing enough. You can try rewriting different versions of your headlines to see a noticeable change in results.
  • Offers – Do your prospects like you talking about your products or services a certain way, or do they prefer purchasing in a bundle. You’ll never know if you don’t test.

3. Remove all Obstacles

If you’re running an online business, then you’re going to just have to accept the fact that your prospects will always be skeptical when doing business with you. This cynicism can stem from them having to give their money to a complete stranger or them having a lot of other options to choose from online.

Whatever the case may be, it’s important for your website to convince your prospects that you hold the keys to the solution to their problem or desire. For example, if a potential customer is worried about the prices you have, create a price comparison chart on your site to show them that your products are ideal for their budget.

If a potential customer is worried that your service won’t work for them, add a testimonials section to your site to show them otherwise. Overall, you’ll need to remove any doubts and obstacles from the minds of your prospects in order to make them feel more comfortable doing business with you – thus increasing your conversion rate.

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