5 Tips on Creating Sales Strategies for Small Businesses

In an uncertain market plagued by a global pandemic, having a comfortable level of certainty on your sales is mission-critical. If you don’t have an idea of how you’re going to bring in the right customers, your very survival will be on the line.

As such, small businesses now more than ever need to dig deep into understanding what makes for successful sales strategies.

Here’s an in-depth look at five critical tips that can help you in creating sales strategies that win.

1. Understand Your Customers

At its core, selling is all about solving a customer’s problem first. Since that is the case, you won’t make any headway unless you first grasp your customer’s needs.

Understanding your customers is a macro and micro effort. At a high level, you begin by developing a buyer persona. Buyer personas are compositions of your ideal customer that help you better understand those you plan to serve.

With a buyer persona, you won’t develop products targeted at faceless customers. Instead, you’ll have a deeper insight into their needs, wants, aspirations, and fears.

You’ll need to mine customer demographics and psychographic data to notice patterns that inform your strategy. As the team at Klyck.io guides, good customer data insights help you figure out how to engage your customers better.

Of course, using a buyer persona shouldn’t be a substitute for holistic sales architecture.

For example, you can’t solely rely on demographics without assessing the events that trigger your ideal customers to make a purchase. You need to factor in general data and individual-level insights if you’re to craft a winning strategy.

2. Build a Compelling Value Proposition

A common mistake you’ll often see with many small firms is underestimating how much value proposition drives sales. You’ll see a business carry a less compelling value proportion and look to sales strategies to put lipstick on the pig.

Before you get to selling, you need to settle it in your mind that successful selling supports a compelling value proposition. Without it, there’s no traction.

Take a look at the customer insights you have and map them onto your product. That will give you the sweet spot between your customers’ needs and the new ideas you want to try out.

With a well-thought-out value proposition, awareness is the key to driving sales. Thus, your strategy must include how you’ll communicate your value proposition to customers so they take it up.

3. Avoid Commoditization

Communicating your value proposition needs to happen strategically. Just like you, competitors are also looking to enlighten customers on how their product solves their needs.

If you don’t tread carefully, these types of sales strategies quickly devolve into commoditization. The moment everyone begins selling features, differentiation becomes an uphill task.

So, how do you work your way around this?

By peppering your value proposition communication with messaging that speaks to the unmet needs of your target audience. The moment you introduce unmet needs that move beyond what your current value propositions can do, it sets you apart from the pack.

Your target customers will take notice and gravitate towards the more comprehensive solution, which turbocharges your sales.

4. Emphasize Insights Over Discovery

Being data-driven in your sales strategy is no longer a nice-to-have but a must-have in today’s world. However, the downside of that benefit is that every sales strategy seeks to position the brand as an advisor.

That leads to many brands in the same sector sidling up next to customers, asking them what their pain points are, and then presenting a solution.

There’s nothing wrong with that approach. However, if that’s the primary perspective your sales strategy takes, it won’t be enough. You need to do more than share insights designed to trigger sales.

A sales strategy that outperforms combines insights with relevant stories to harness the power of narratives in delighting customers. If the fact that an overwhelming 63% of people who watch any presentation only remember the story is anything to go by, you can’t overlook this issue.

Work on your sales strategy to ensure it leverages storytelling to more memorably package the insights you glean. Your clients will then find it easier to connect the dots between your value proposition and how they can improve their lives, which anchors sales.

5. Look Beyond Customer Acquisition

Acquiring customers is a gladiator-level fight for small businesses. It costs every ounce of willpower to bring paying clients through the door. Because of this, it’s easy to find yourself resting once customers start coming in.

However, winning customers over is only the start. Customers are always discontent.

As soon as you ship a fantastic solution, they start longing for something else. If you get satisfied with past sales breakthroughs, you’ll inevitably fall behind.

It’s, therefore, imperative that your sales team training emphasizes customer growth over acquisition. You need to have a game plan for what happens once customers come through the door if your sales strategy is to be sustainable.

Prime your sales strategy to incorporate a value proportion approach that stimulates customer retention. Instead of challenging the status quo (which is necessary to draw in new clients), you should focus on assurance.

Remember, humans are creatures of habit. Once you satisfy a customer, you build a degree of trust in your offering. If you expand on that and assure them you’re a constant source of solution, they’ll want to stick around.

You’ll then have a repeatable and scalable way to grow your sales beyond more costly customer acquisition only.

Creating Sales Strategies Underpins Your Success

Selling is never easy, and in adverse market conditions, you really need to sharpen your approach. As a small business, invest your time and money in learning what matters when creating sales strategies to ensure your team executes a realistic plan leading to success.

Nothing happens in business until you sell something. Our website features business insights, tips, and tricks to help entrepreneurs carry the burden of generating revenue. Check out more of our articles today to learn how you can add value to your sales process and sustainably grow your business.