how to increase sales

The only 3 actions you can take to boost your
sales and income

How to increase sales by taking the only 3 actions for sales people looking to get better results.

There are 3 simple actions that professional sales people know and use to sell more, earn more, or grow their business:

1. Contact more prospects. 
   
2. Close more sales from the prospects you contact.
   
3. Increase the average sale value of each customers.

There are no other actions you can take to increase your sales and grow your business.

It sounds too simple, but can you think of any other actions?

Choose the best sales action for you

Select the best action for you, the one that will give you the biggest return on your investment of time on improving your skills and focusing your resources.

Don’t waste your time on actions and sales training that won’t make a difference or that you are already getting good results from. Target the areas of your sales pipeline or process that need attention, this is how to increase sales.

What should you work on to increase sales?

If you’re not making as many sales as you would like, ask yourself the following questions to identify which action you should take first:

Are you talking to enough potential buyers?

Or do you have times when you don't have prospects to contact and sell to?

Are you happy with the number of conversations that convert to closed sales?

Could you increase the value of each sale you close?

If you have a full diary of sales appointments, is it your sales closing skills that need improving to convert more appointments into closed sales?

Have you got a full diary and a good closing ratio? You can still increase your rewards by increasing your average order value.

Answer the above questions and they will give you an indication of which of the 3 actions from how to increase sales you should take now.

HOW TO INCREASE SALES - 3 ACTIONS

Action 1 - Contact more potential customers

Whether you call them prospects, suspects, or leads, these are the potential customers at the start of your sales process. I refer to them as prospects.

Don't get bogged down with terminology and what to call them, it serves no purpose...

Prospects are the people you will have a sales conversation with, a telephone call or a sales appointment. To increse your sales you need:

• A regular supply of leads to fill your pipeline.
• A way to qualify the leads as potential customers.
• The skills to convert them to sales opportunities.

Your supply of leads will come from your marketing activity. Once you have the leads you take the fisrt steps in the sales process.

Contact more prospects, make more sales appointments, calls, or online meetings. Have more sale conversations with prospects, continue to convert prospects into paying customers at the same rate, and you will close more sales and earn a greater income.

How to increase sales at this early stage of the selling process

Do you have an effective process for converting prospects to customers?

Many sales people focus on sales training to close sales, but without the skills to make more sales appointments or have more telephone calls they are restricting their opprtunities to sell. 

Your sales appointment calls should include a concise introduction that includes an engaging reason why you are calling or visiting the prospect. Making sales appointments is a skill-set as important as any other sales training.

This mini-course will help you to convert more of your prospects into appointments...

Making Sales Appointments in a Nutshell - eBook Mini Course

Action 2 - Close more sales

Once you have a process in place to supply enough sales appointments or calls you can focus on sales training to close more of them.

Closing more of the prospects you talk to not only increases sales, it saves money by giving you a greater return on your marketing spend to aquire the leads. 

How to increase sales by closing more deals

There is no one right answer to the question how to increase sales by closing more deals.

Think about it, a sales closing technique that works effectively selling services to businesses is unlikely to work when selling home improvements direct to home owners.

Selling a simple B2B service such as waste and recyling collection requires a different approach to selling highly complex technical hardware.

A quick, assumptiive close based on emotional triggers may work well in a retail clothing outlet, but a seller of financial services may want a close with more gravitas.

When choosing the sales closing techniques you will use, consider your prospects, the financial value of what you sell, and the complexity of your sales offers. Take into account why prospects buy from you. Their: need, want, or desire.

The best sales closes to use are those aligned with your sales process. The close should be a natural follow on from the rest of the sales conversation. No shocks, no pressure or bullying, just an appropriate question asked at the right time. See sales training on How to Close Sales and select the right close for your sales.

Action 3 - Increase the average sale value

The 3rd action on how to increase sales: sell more to both new and existing customers.

Increase average sales value by selling more products or higher value offers at the point of sale, or cross sell later to existing customers.

Many sales people are happy to gain a sale and frightened of trying to increase the sale value in case they lose the sale already agreed.  One way to stop this is to make the sale, get it all agreed, signed, and sealed, and then sell more. This can be done either at the first meeting or call time, or on another, later visit or call.

When looking at how to increase sales value, consider the different ways you can add more revenue to your sales:

• Increase the number of products bought at the point of sale.
• Increase the range of products you offer to prospects.
• Sell the highest priced item first and then present lower value add ons.
• Present your products and services in neat packages that complement each other.

Increasing the average sale value to new and existing customers is another sales tip that will give you a greater return on your current marketing spend as you are selling more to the same incoming leads. 

Now you want sales training on how to sell more to your customers...

Sales training on increasing average sale value

When you increase the average value of your sales to each customer by upselling or cross selling, you will probably need to ask more questions in your sales conversations and gather more information about needs, wants, and desires.

Asking more questions means asking for more time and attention from the prospect. It also requires you to have a good process for asking the questions and for organising the information in the answers.

This page will help you to do both. See how I trained my sales teams on the Questioning Stage of the sales process.

Make selling more products easier

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