10 Dos and Don’t of the Sales Strategy

There is no magic solution or a universal formula for ‘successful sales.’ Creating a good strategy that will help a company pursue and achieve the set business goals requires patience, analysis, and creativity. The same goes for tactics – the phase that follows planning, when a team starts to implement a strategy. In this article, you will find some tips based on the most frequent pitfalls. Hopefully, they will help to avoid some mistakes.

Things That Can Boost Your Sales

Let’s start from the ‘dos.’ Even if some of the tips seem too obvious, don’t relax your precautions. An easy part is often overlooked when a team starts overthinking.

1. Know your target audience

Create personas, describe them in detail, and make the team study these profiles of the potential clients. Understanding who your perfect client is will help to differentiate and disqualify the leads that aren’t ‘your people’.

2. Define the roles and responsibilities

When you work on the strategy, make sure to specify the tasks every person on the team is to do. Every person should understand their role in the team and the list of assigned responsibilities.

3. Experiment with ideas

It is okay to get creative just remember that experiments should also be planned – with a clear hypothesis, timelines, efficiency metrics, etc. Never devote all the resources to an experiment.

4. Analyze, plan, forecast

Every strategy begins with research and analysis. The data gathered allows you to plan further activities. With time, you will learn about the sales forecasting based on the previous performance and available data.

5. Use technology to boost team’s efficiency

Guided selling platforms like Revenue Grid, as well as numerous CRM systems and other helpful software allow automating some time-consuming processes and get better market insights.

Things That Interfere With Your Sales

Now, it is time for ‘don’ts.’ Just like success stories, the reasons for failure differ and can be quite unpredictable. Start your path to improvement with avoiding the most common mistakes.

6. Don’t exaggerate your value

First of all, don’t use absolute words in your brand copy. Even if you believe your company and product are the best in the world, don’t build your brand image on praising. It is safer and more effective to be honest and true.

7. Don’t be too pushy

Persistence is a good quality for a sales specialist, but you shouldn’t presume upon it. Don’t try to make a potential client buy something if they absolutely don’t want to do it. Know when to back down.

8. Don’t create information overload

A unique selling proposition of every product and service should be laconic, offering to solve one or at most two of the problems a potential client may face. If you try to stuff in too many benefits, it signals a poor understanding of a client’s persona.

9. Don’t spread yourself too thin

Instead of striving to win as much leads as possible, focus on the quality of those leads. This is what real efficiency is about. Invest your energy into establishing the differentiating criteria rather than reaching out to random people who won’t bring value in the long term.

10. Don’t fixate on work-arounds

Sometimes sales specialists want to be helpful and forget about their main task – to sell. In other words, unassuming messages with subtle requests tend to work less effectively than direct questions. Of course, you should be polite. Just don’t forget that your messages are meant to sell. So don’t waste time on trying to trick people into replying.

Bottom Line

Creating an effective sales strategy is not an easy task, but it is not a challenge either. Research, analyze, and make decisions based on the facts and data. Keep a clear mind and don’t overthink. Simply put, just be reasonable and don’t try to reinvent a wheel.