by James Wong, CEO Avidian

In today’s struggling economy, maintaining strong sales growth can be a greater and greater challenge. It’s OK to sulk for a little while but now that you are done with sulking, it’s time to take action to maintain or continue your growth. One of the most efficient solutions to this problem is to focus on creating better processes and leverage the existing tools you already have while spending very little money.  

Here are six tips to help grow your sales and leverage your existing resources: 

1. Be more organized. Know who your current customers are, who your prospects are and how you became aware of them. Keep all information regarding customers and prospects up to date so that you have accurate data available when needed. If you are an Outlook user, you can be more organized by leveraging Outlook’s contact, calendar and tasks features. You can also keep an Excel spreadsheet of contact information but that can get arduous if you have many contacts. Some of you might need more sales features than what Outlook has to offer and if that is the case, please consider checking out Prophet. 

2. Focus on the funnel. At any given time, your sales cycle will include various deals at different stages of completion. Tracking where specific clients are in this sales cycle is vital to ensuring that none of these deals fall through the cracks. To keep track of your sales pipeline, develop a list of milestones that you would like achieved by your sales team. These milestones will be different for every business, but should include three to five decision or contact points. For example some contact points might be the initial contact, a follow-up, a verbal agreement and finally a written contract. CRM programs like Prophet can help with this and it’s easy because it’s built right inside of Outlook. Again, you can create a spreadsheet listing each individual sale, where each sale is in the sales process and the estimated date of closure. However if you have many opportunities or want to share the information, getting a CRM application makes sense. 

3. Track who your evangelists are and thank them. It is important to keep track of your customers, but it is also essential to maintain relationships with your referral sources. By noting which sources have referred the majority of your sales, you can begin to see which of them are providing the most sales opportunities and focus your attention more directly on them. Being able to see this documented will help make it clearer who your lead referrals are. If using a CRM solution, see if it has this capability to tie referral information to sales in the pipeline. Every time someone refers a customer to you, thank them immediately with a hand written note or a quick email. This is a common courtesy that many are guilty of neglecting. 

4. Measure your progress. Make sales expectations known to employees and make achievements measurable. One way to do this is to use the stages of the sales cycle as levels of achievement. More sales will be finalized and more revenue will be made when an employee is well informed and knows what is expected. For example, a sales employee might be expected to make ten new contacts and move three accounts onto the next stage of the sales cycle each week. This will make expectations clearer, allowing employees to effectively meet them. 

5. Get out there. It is essential to keep your company and your product in front of customers. One way to do this is to create and distribute a newsletter with items of interest to current and potential clients within your industry. That is why you regularly receive newsletters from us. However, your newsletter can’t just be spam. It must add value to your customers’ life. Another tactic to help keep you on the frontlines is to host an open house at your offices to get better acquainted with your local customer base and try to build better relationships with them. 

6. Leverage your existing tools. Established tools and processes are already being used by your sales team to acquire new customers. As another way to boost sales, capitalize on what your team is already doing and streamline it. If an individual salesperson is using a certain tool or has developed an efficient process that they’re using on their own, find a way to expand it to a corporate level. Reward individuals for sharing their best ideas with the entire sales team. 

Enduring tough economic times can be a challenge, but we trust you’ll get through it. Successful sales is a process. Therefore build good processes and habits that will help ensure that success.

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Read the original post:
How to Boost Sales in Tough Economy