5 easy steps for developing a successful sales strategy

Hello! Welcome to this Lead Forensics Focus: Elevating your Marketing and Sales Success. Educational insights brought to you by marketing and sales leaders.
I’ve been leading sales professionals for over 17 years and In this video, I’m going to cover 5 easy steps you can take to develop a winning sales strategy.

Step 1 is to define your target audience

You need to understand who your potential customers are– even if your product or service has a broad range of applications and many potential customers.
Ask some key questions of your audience, like

1. What industries and sectors are they from?
2. What is their job title?
3. Why do they need your product?
4. Why does your product interest them?
5. Do they have a budget for your product?

Understanding the answers to these questions helps guide your sales strategy plans, so you can use the right pitches and tactics to win over the right audience.

Step 2. Have a clear USP

You may have a very clear understanding of your unique selling point (USP), but your sales strategy may not be very good at communicating it.
Why should a buyer choose to work with you, and not one of your competitors? If you and your sales team don’t know the answer- how can you expect a prospect to?

– You need to be clear about what makes you different.
– From the very first communication, keep your message simple and understandable so you don’t overload the prospect with too much information.
– Try and describe your unique selling point in one minute. Then condense it to 30 seconds!
– Remember- there is a difference between product benefits and product features. Focus on the benefits, always answering the prospect’s “what’s in it for me?” question.

And finally Help your prospects understand what their future could look like if it included your product.

Step 3. Make yourself easy to find

Let’s say for example you are experiencing a reoccurring business problem, and you’ve been given a budget and a time frame to find a solution.
What’s the first thing you do? You go online.

94% of B2B buyer journeys now start online, because the internet is full of answers.
Modern buyers can research their problems and find potential solutions without speaking directly to a salesperson.

The average buyer is 60% of the way through the buyer journey when you first speak to them, so you need to make sure your brand and product are easy to find online, so they can find you first.

A successful sales strategy needs to include educational content, like whitepapers and videos, to help prospects quickly discover and learn about your product.
And you should be sharing this content on your website, and on social media channels like LinkedIn – the more the better.

Trust me, the online world is a competitive place, and if you’re not easy to find, you will lose out to competitors.

Step 4. Think about measurement and reporting

You can’t build a successful sales strategy without knowing what success means.
If you don’t think about measuring and reporting when planning your strategy, how can you and track your progress?
Outline a process for measuring and reporting your sales strategy by asking:

a. What specific data and metrics do you need to measure?
b. How will you gather and analyze these numbers?
c. How can you spot what is working, and what is not?
d. How will you convert data into a plan of action?
e. How will you communicate this data and reporting to other departments?
f. How often will you gather and analyze data?

Sales is a process usually driven by taking action and closing deals, but reflection is equally important. ……….Only by reflecting on past performance can we create an improved strategy for future success.

Step 5. Have Goals but also realistic expectations

Goal setting is essential to developing a successful sales strategy. You need to know where you’re going, so you can understand how to get there.
But some teams lose their chances of success when goal setting because they have unrealistic expectations.

Yes, dream big. Yes, be ambitious. But don’t demotivate yourself or your team by setting a goal too far out of reach.

Look to the budget and resources you have available, and ask how they can be pushed and maximized, but not exhausted.

There’s only so much a person can do, and so much time in a day. But asking how this time and that person’s skill can be most effectively used is the key.

Now, once a goal has been set, be sure you document it and track your progress regularly. Keep these goals “real” so they always seem achievable. Finally you want to motivate your team to fight for this goal, instead of writing it off as impossible.

I hope you have found this video helpful, and you feel ready to develop your sales strategy into a plan for success!

If you have any questions, please feel free to comment below and one of our expert team will get back to you.
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See you next time.

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