Designing A Sales Strategy: Restructuring For The New Normal🌸
Surviving as a business during the pandemic is no walk in the park. What was once thought of as a temporary roadblock for businesses now has to be dealt with as the new reality. So, rather than seeking temporary solutions, businesses should be designing a sales strategy and structures that serve them even as the pandemic continues. In this article, we’ll be discussing four areas to consider when navigating changes in the economy. You’ll learn successful sales strategies you can use in order to optimize your business.
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Table of Contents:
II. Strategies to Improve Sales with Digital Marketing
III. What To Consider When Creating A New Sales Strategy
Reconfiguring Your Structure – Designing A Sales Strategy
If you have not adapted your sales organisation and strategy models to cope with the pandemic, now is the time. Previous models recommended keeping sales in the back seat, while prioritizing initiatives, markets, and product assortment and capabilities.
This method works in a good economy, but the market these days is tight, and there is less business to be won. The key to a thriving business is to work on strategies to improve sales. Look at this as an opportunity to rethink how you sell to consumers and what your goals are.
Sales are what ties together everything you offer to the market. By prioritising your strategy to grow sales, you’ll be giving your business what it needs to be more effective and efficient. Designing a sales strategy requires you to identify a clear target market and pinpoint what makes customers choose your product or service over another business. Use market research to identify the issues that drive customer decisions.
Designing A Sales Strategy by Discovering New Consumer Needs
Though the economy has been greatly affected by the pandemic, there are still new opportunities for businesses to jump at. Consumer behaviour has shifted dramatically and lifestyles look very different now compared to pre-pandemic.
For instance, the US is seeing a major boom in recreational vehicle (or RV) sales. What’s different when customers buy them these days is that rather than purchasing them for luxury, they see RV as a new lifestyle. RV companies recognised this and are utilizing the “van life” craze by expanding their product lines and releasing relevant camping gear and interior design options.
Businesses must ask themselves what needs they can address and where consumers are directing their buying power. What problems can you solve for consumers? How can you adapt your product or service offerings to suit those needs?
Your sales organisation can serve as a feedback loop. Use it to gain insight into your customers’ changing needs. This can play a big role in the restructuring of your business, informing strategic growth, and conceptualising new product offerings. These are ways to optimise your production and adapt new strategies as long-term solutions to the problems that have emerged since the pandemic.
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Improve Customer Experience
Businesses have increasingly moved their sales online. This presents the question of how to improve the experience of customers while purchasing products. Rather than viewing this as a problem, reframe this as an opportunity to innovate user experience.
Customer experience happens from the moment they find out about your brand or product to the moment they receive your product in the mail and begin to use it. There are numerous ways to inject new ideas into your process. Engage your customers online. Instead of events, hold video conferences with relevant experts, personalities, or company leaders. Allow customers to engage and provide feedback that can be used to gain deeper insight. Offer exclusive online-only bundles. Produce interesting and informative content.
For B2B companies, webinars can be useful for sharing and learning about market trends with clients. These provide a direct platform for people to interact with your company in lieu of traditional meetings. This also makes it possible for businesses to expand their customer base beyond local regions since virtual avenues are available. When done well, businesses can actually discover unexpected efficiencies.
Strategies to Improve Sales in the New Normal
Most companies have withstood the test of time have had to come up with new strategies constantly to improve sales and achieve longevity or sustainable growth. Indeed, in the age of modern technology and the internet, businesses often have to restructure, experiment, and take advantage of marketing options in the digital world.
Based on a Statista study, currently, about 4.66 billion people use the internet. That’s roughly equal to 59.5% of the world population. And from that number, 92.6% or 4.32 billion use their mobile devices to browse the internet. In fact, that’s expected to keep increasing in the next several years.
It’s a well-known rule of thumb that to stay relevant and competitive in the industry, businesses have to adapt to the constant changes and trends. Part of the process is to keep up with customer buying behaviours. In fact, did you know that a Google study showed that there is a revenue increase of 2.8% for companies who adopt digital marketing platforms?
Traditional marketers use 60% of their efforts in the placement of paid ads. While active marketers spend 50% of their time creating content. Similarly, 30% of businesses spend on paid media to improve search engine position, recommendations, and reviews from online influencers and viewers.
Designing A Sales Strategy: Digital Marketing in the New Normal
Brand marketing promotions are set to influence customers’ and buyers’ decisions. In fact, most shoppers rely on online reviews nowadays. Back then, creating brand awareness and value often snowballed by word of mouth. Businesses often advertised through TV ads, posters, newspapers, and magazines.
At the time, this was considered part of the strategies to improve sales. Nowadays, in line with the current buyer behaviour changes, businesses need new sales content and social media strategies to improve sales.
Currently, 3.78 billion people use major social media platforms. That’s about 48% of the world population and that’s only expected to increase to 4.41 billion in 2025. As a matter of fact, the average internet user spends around 2.5 hours on social media. That’s according to DataReportal’s latest survey.
In the latest Statista data:
– Facebook has 74% of daily visitors.
– YouTube makes up 72% of online browsers daily.
– Instagram comes in third place with 63%.
Social media through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube have become the most dominant platforms. Either way, public communication is meant to engage customers with a brand. So, as customers form their opinions about your products and service, a digitalised sales content strategy steps in to positively influence customers to a buying decision.
Although brand traditionalists may resist the digital revolution. But digital platforms actually increase in customer base and convert new customers to loyal shoppers. Then, loyal shoppers become brand ambassadors as long as you stay committed to customer satisfaction.
Designing A Sales Strategy: Digital Marketing Facts in a Sales Content Strategy
Global Web Index reports that 54% of online browsers are researching products. Did you know that 86% of women check social media before purchasing? This is also according to Alist Daily’s study.
49% of companies do not have a clear digital marketing platform, based on the Managing Digital Marketing research report.
For example:
Creme Egg ditched the old TV ad spending and moved on to Facebook ads to engage customers in a period of 3 months. The result? A 7% increase in sales.
Brit Telecom – routed 600,000 contacts to social media in place of traditional call centres. Can you guess what happened? There was an improved customer experience and a savings of a whopping £2 million!
Clean & Clear – The beauty brand partnered with Snapchat and marketed its morning burst cleanser to reach engagement with females aged 13 to 24 years old. Clean & Clear optimised its snap ads that resulted in a 7% increase in brand preference.
Mann Family Dental engaged with potential customers through social media. The result? 10x more phone calls and conversion of inquiries to patients of which 50% were from the website.
HCC Medical Insurance used email marketing and infographic to their demographic of tourist customers. Guess what happened. It generated a 96% increase in revenue, 90% new visitors with 3m views, and 2,000 interactions after it was featured on Facebook.
Neutrogena wanted to encourage shoppers to buy a wider range of their beauty products. So, they turned to digital banners and video ads for their campaigns on product pairings. The result? 18.1 million views and a £5.84 return on advertising spending.
Designing A Sales Strategy: Value Creation with eCommerce in your Strategies to Improve Sales
Digital marketing and sales content strategy can be categorised into evergreen type and social viral digital content. Basically, evergreen content is one that stays relevant even after a long time. While social viral stays trendy for a specific amount of time, producing a spike in views and viewer interactions. But it eventually ends up becoming irrelevant as trends fade and continue to change.
Adopt a publisher’s discipline to produce publicity and save costs while creating customer engagement. Infographics are also a widely used part of content marketing to educate your customers about your services.
Design a visually appealing website, portfolio, and downloadable materials that help educate customers and prospects. Add call-to-action buttons that visitors can easily access or schedule appointments with. This is what Fisher Tank did with inbound marketing strategies. The result? 500% increase in quote requests, website traffic that rose to 119%, and a spike in qualified sales opportunities of $3.4m.
There are many other ways to digitalise your marketing strategy. That may come from booking speaking engagements or creating and scheduling virtual workshops. Also consider working with influencers, newsletter subscriptions, and partnering up with paid or unpaid advertisements. All of these amplify interaction with your customers.
Digital marketing converts more visitors and doubles revenue in a year. What’s even better is it’s almost absolutely free to take advantage of digital platforms!
Strategies to Improve Sales with Facebook eCommerce
In 2020, Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook shops for businesses to list their products. As part of its sales content strategy, it now has a feature for businesses to sell through Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram direct. With 8 million advertisers, this feature tags products during live streams on their websites. And the effort comes after the Covid-19 pandemic to help small businesses with more strategies to improve their sales.
Facebook, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, continues its reputation as the lowest-cost of advertising platform online. Its goal is to become a platform that targets the 300 million Facebook Shops visitors and be part of their shopping experience.
Facebook’s campaign objectives start from awareness, consideration, to conversion.
1. Awareness starts from introductory statements for viewers in the discovery stage. So, for ad campaigns, it’s recommended to include “Learn More” call-to-action buttons often.
2. When browsers are likely in the consideration process, you should encourage them to make a buying decision.
3. Lastly, you must include options for them to return to your site and complete a purchase such as an add-to-cart button.
A Facebook video sales content strategy should last between 4 to 4 1/2 minutes. Anywhere beyond that risks losing the interest and attention of browsers. Similarly, consistently posting and varying your content helps reach out to more enthusiastic audiences. So, you shouldn’t be talking about the same topic for weeks and bore potential clients.
Designing A Sales Strategy: Social Media as a New Sales Content Strategy
Draft your posts ahead of time. Make sure to align it with trending topics or international and local monthly events. That includes holidays or celebrations (Valentine’s Day, Labour Day etc.) Aside from that, restocking or a new line of products must be part of the “announcement” posts.
Provide high-quality visuals. That includes images and videos that entice and sell a “feeling” of a customer’s problems being solved by your service. Storytelling is the best type of content that works in this case. Everybody loves a good story, don’t they? So, share people’s real-life stories and journeys with your service. That sets the tone of honesty and genuineness.
Be responsive. Customer feedback and online reviews build up a trusted and high-quality brand/business. So, be there for your clients during their buyer journey and respond to all inquiries. The minute you pass the chance to entertain their queries, you risk losing them to your competitors. So, help them make a decision.
Investing in digital marketing is cost-effective. In fact, it’s a platform to understand and interact more with leads and new customers through optimised sales content strategy. In this new sales strategy, your content must be published at the right time and on a suitable platform for a specific demographic.
See, it wouldn’t make sense to post a 1000 word article on social media. Rather, it should be packed with a bunch of short, concise, unique, eye-catching, and engaging snippets.
Also, evergreen and viral content both generate customer engagement. So, you must discern when to choose one from the other through video content, images, infographic, and blogs. Therefore, by gaining web traffic through trending topics, customising your target market ranges from gender, profession, lifestyle, and hobbies.
Make the Experiences Memorable
In this economic climate, businesses can benefit a lot by adding thoughtful gestures to their usual products or services. It can be as simple as including a free roll of toilet paper or hand sanitizer. This is a very simple sales strategy to make your client feel more in touch with you. Small gestures of kindness can leave a lasting impact on the customers and make your business unforgettable.
If you’re engaging in deals with your clients, sending them a physical sample or prototype before your meeting can make you stand out. These are small pleasantries that allow people to connect to the physical world. The costs can be allocated from unused travel or meeting expense budgets, so it won’t eat away at the company’s expenses.
Interestingly on the flip side, some companies have found that employees actually thrive with a work-from-home setup with their structure. This could reduce overhead costs for renting meeting venues, electricity, food, etcetera. Find what changes work and utilise them.
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Thoughts on designing a sales strategy
Digital marketing helps you decide the quality and consistency of the content and brand that you want to establish with customers. It enables sales performance via content strategy setting aside the budget that lets you maximise opportunities. Most importantly, it’s the most cost-efficient way to accompany and influence the buyer’s journey.
– Leads and customer conversion
– Generates more revenue
-Provides opportunities to expand
-Engages and interacts with more customers
-Delivers customer support enhancement
-Helps consistently create brand awareness, exposure, and outreach
– Contributes to product or service information and education
-Digital marketing is a cost-effective marketing method
Surviving the pandemic as a business means taking measures to restructure more permanent changes. If your company can adapt to the current situation, there’s a good chance you’ll make it out unscathed and discover better prospects along the way.
The key is to innovate, keep sales at the centre of your goals, introduce thoughtful gestures, and strategies for a better customer experience. Finding new ways to connect to your customers and clients can really drive your company forward. By utilising market research and experimenting with new ways to be efficient, you can build a strong foundation that allows for longevity and expansion.
What To Consider When Creating A New Sales Strategy 🧵
One of the most important things that businesses has to learn is when to rethink structures that are no longer serving them. During times of disruption or imbalances, what worked before may no longer work for the present and future. When your business decides to carry out a change in strategy, there are key points that you will need to consider. In this article, we will be discussing what you need to consider along with your new sales strategy so that you can set up your business for success. Read on to find out more!
Designing A Sales Strategy: Considerations For A New Sales Strategy
Just like growing up, businesses will eventually outgrow old strategies. This is a natural part of a businesses evolution and in order to remain resilient, you must be ready to adapt. However, these changes may either come from natural growth or through external disruptions that may force you to change your strategy faster than you expected.
The Effect of Disruptions
Disruptions to your business can come from a number of sources. The causes may stem from changes in internal structures, which can disrupt the established routines of your workforce. They may also come from external sources, such as the pandemic, which caused imbalances all over the global supply chain.
Both can cause strain on your business. But if handled properly, it can be a unifying challenge that can bring your teams closer together. It’s important to prepare contingency plans or plan far ahead for what the future may look like.
Organising Sales For The Future
Businesses of nearly all fields and sizes have been contending with the imminent shift towards digital for years. The pandemic merely sped up that process. Buyers are now basing their expectations around global giants like Amazon.
One of the slowest sectors to adapt was B2B selling. This was due to the complex structures that businesses were wary of disrupting. Salespeople naturally resisted the change, especially since it meant that much of the core nature of their jobs would change. Businesses were also hesitant to shift for fear of disrupting customer relationships.
However, these days, many businesses are forced to take the leap due to the lack of options. With the right sales strategies and alignment, the transitions proved successful. The key seems to have been correctly aligning sales channels with the needs of customers while addressing any fears they might have.
Sales Process Considerations
B2B companies have found that digital sales channels work best for straightforward purchases, tech-savvy customers, and customers making repeat purchases or are sure of what they want to buy. It seems that the return to in-person selling will mainly address unsure customers who desire consultative sales, or those seeking more collaborative ventures.
Salesforce Considerations
Developing a new sales strategy will also often necessitate alterations to your salesforce, especially when shifting to digital platforms or when adapting to disruptions. As an effect of these changes, businesses are often forced to consider downsizing.
Though this may seem like an immediate disadvantage, sometimes this results in unexpected success. For example, due to the labour shortages during the pandemic, some manufacturing clients had to turn directly to engineers rather than go through customer service switchboards. This resulted in more efficient transactions.
Some other sectors, such as cloud services, have been upsizing due to the uptake in demand. It’s important to consider your situation carefully and to determine whether or not you need to expand or downsize. Staying on top of this can prevent major hindrances to your company’s growth and development.
Success Profile Considerations
Success profiles are typically designed to match up talent needed for roles. This is critical to consider or redesign, especially after major changes to sales processes and your sales teams. Your new sales team, either upsized or downsized, may no longer match the requirements for new roles.
For example, salespeople may now be required to be tech-savvy or digitally fluent. Likewise, sales teams may need to shift from a relationship-based sales role to a value-based sales role. Other businesses may have to bring more team-oriented salespeople on board in order to account for multichannel selling.
Redesigning Your Incentives For Your New Sales Strategy
As we have discussed, critical changes to the business may alter the core structures of certain roles. Salespeople, for example, may now need to take on roles that require a higher level of digital proficiency. This results in the need to reevaluate the compensation and incentive structure of your employees.
Plan Types
Traditional compensation plans involve commissions per sale. Depending on how your strategy has changed, you may need to develop new incentive schemes that can keep your teams motivated and goal-oriented.
This could be especially true for businesses with high numbers of repeat sales wherein salespeople don’t need to make the same amount of effort as those that constantly require new customers.
Incentive plans can come in a variety of structures. Traditionally, sales incentives target individual performance. Another method would involve imposing a combined sales goal that would motivate your salespeople to work together or collaborate. Likewise, you can alter plans in order to emphasize products that don’t move as quickly as other ones.
Each tactic has its own advantages and disadvantages. It’s important to know which works best for your business’s unique situation. Depending on what you choose, this can have a cascading effect on the rest of your business – just like with any other decision making aspect.
Pay Mix for Changing Roles
No matter what incentive strategy you choose to adopt, it’s important to consider whether it suits the new roles your employees are having to take. For example, as businesses move online, selling is largely shifting to more team-oriented, multichannel roles. As such, these kinds of positions will no longer be profitable with short-term based results.
Evaluate the changes in your business’s positions, and adjust your pay mix accordingly. This may involve a larger salary with fewer incentives, or vice versa. Other options include higher commission rates or incentives that are tied into team-based metrics.
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Bottomline – Designing a sales strategy
If there’s one thing to take away from this article that covers how designing a sales strategy works, it’s alignment. Dealing with a new sales strategy involves evaluating how every change affects the rest of your business. Business leaders need to let go of the fear of change because a growing business involves constant evolution. Your structures won’t hold up if you don’t take the time to redesign them.
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