A well-defined and well-thought-out sales strategy is essential for success in most markets.
In this post, we will guide you in creating an effective sales strategy that can increase your company’s revenue. We’ll first look at what a sales strategy actually is, and then dive into the key elements and steps involved in the process.
Read on for valuable tips on how to create a strong sales strategy.
- What is a sales strategy?
- 4 sales strategies you can utilise
- 6 pieces of advice for your sales strategy
- Why it’s important to have an effective sales strategy
- 4 considerations for an effective sales strategy
- How to evaluate your sales strategy
- Design or optimise your sales strategy with Radiant
What is a sales strategy?
A sales strategy is a plan or approach used to increase company revenue through effective sales activities. An effective sales strategy can vary from company to company, but as an example, they can involve:
- Sales outreach / Canvas sales
- Focus on relationship building to build strong customer relationships with potential customers and partners to create more successful sales opportunities.
- Social selling
The above are three sub-elements of a sales strategy. You can see a sales strategy contains several important components, which can be divided into:
- How do you get new customers?
- How do you handle new customers?
- How do you ensure they stay customers?
- How do you sell more to your customers?
The above are three basic questions that any good sales strategy should be able to answer, because it covers the areas an effective sales strategy should include. Therefore, it is essential to consider lead generation, customer service, upselling and sales process when discussing sales strategy.
To put together an effective sales strategy, it’s crucial to understand your company’s goals and vision. This involves analyzing needs, focusing on action areas and engaging with stakeholders. It also involves defining USPs, which helps communicate the unique benefits through strategic outreach to potential customers.
The prevalence of sales strategies varies. In B2B sales, sales strategies are very complex due to longer customer journeys, whereas a sales strategy is less complex in B2C.
As a growing company in the SaaS space, there are a number of best practices to familiarise yourself with. Working with Radiant’s forward-thinking leaders and experts has helped us navigate this playbook and implement a solution tailored to our specific go-to-market strategy.
Rasmus, CCO, COMASYSTEM
4 sales strategies you can utilise
Below are 4 sales strategies that you can use to get started with your sales. Sales strategies are complex and should be created with a focus on your service/product, target audience and internal resources.
Focus on the customer and their needs – actively listen!
Keep the customer in focus throughout the sales strategy, from pitch preparation, sales process, sales funnel, etc. The customer is at the heart of any sales strategy and must therefore be at the center of the strategy. It is therefore also important for your sales strategy that you know 100% who your customer is, what their needs are and what they want from you.
Many salespeople think it’s about following their sales pitch 100% – but in many cases, it’s also about being dynamic and adapting your pitch to the customer’s specific needs.
Read more about active listening.
Think long-term and build relationships in your sales strategy
As we’ve discussed in this article, the importance of sales doesn’t stop when a customer becomes a customer – thinking long-term and building strong customer relationships is key in sales strategy. It doesn’t matter if the most important thing for you is to get the sale, it’s just as important that the customer remains a customer for a long time. As a sales leader, you can influence this in several ways, including introducing bonus models that reward salespeople who ensure long customer relationships, focus on the customer and ensure an efficient sales process.
Read more about customer relations
Use references as a path to new sales
References are one of the most powerful things in sales. That’s why a commonly used sales strategy is to go through existing customers to get new ones. That way, you’re backed up in credibility and don’t come in without credibility as others kind of vouch for you.
This will also help build longer customer experiences that can benefit you in the long run. You can do this by contacting the customers you are sure are happy with your service and would like to refer you.
Build a sales strategy on top of inbounds
If you only want to work with companies that have already shown interest in your brand – then you should continue working with inbound. You can do this by creating a content universe that taps into the problems, solutions and opportunities that stakeholders are looking for.
In this universe, you can create content that they can download, read and then sell to the personas.
Read more about inbound sales
Get guidance on which sales strategy to go with
Not sure what your sales strategy should look like, how to start creating one or how to optimise your current sales strategy? Then it’s all something we can help with. We have sales experts who have experience from a wide range of industries within B2B sales – each specialising in one industry. In this way, we ensure that we can always help companies to create the best sales strategy.
Fill out the form to the right and we’ll talk about your needs and goals.
6 pieces of advice for your sales strategy
Below we list 7 of the tips we give for most sales strategies, it’s important to remember that few sales strategies are the same. Therefore, you need to remember to customize what you see as important to you.
Make a good sales pitch
A good sales pitch can ensure customer centricity, consistency and professionalism in the way you communicate with the customer. It will also help your sales team get started and you can share experiences on how to pitch best. A sales pitch and knowledge sharing are therefore very central to a sales strategy.
Download our sales pitch template.
Train your sales team
Invest in your employees’ success by offering them ongoing training and development opportunities. Give them the tools they need to improve their sales skills and motivation, which will boost their performance and increase your company’s sales results.
Read more about sales coaching
Selection of sales channels
Effective sales channels play a crucial role in an effective sales strategy. It’s all about choosing the right channels where your target audience is located to best reach them with your message and increase the chances of conversion.
Read more about sales channels
Optimize your lead generation
Focus on effective methods to generate qualified leads. Use targeted marketing strategies, such as content marketing and social media advertising, to reach potential customers at the right point in the buying process. By optimizing your lead generation, you can increase the number of good opportunities for your sales team.
Read more about lead generation
Improve customer service
Go the extra mile to deliver excellent customer service experiences throughout the entire buying and post-purchase process. Be responsive to customer needs, provide fast support and ensure seamless communication between your company and your clients. By constantly striving for better service, you’ll gain greater loyalty from existing customers and positive recommendations from them to potential new customers.
Read more about customer service
Create an omni-channel experience
By integrating multiple channels in your approach to potential customers, you can ensure you stay top-of-mind, reach your target audience with multiple messages and create greater brand recognition. Overall, this leads to a higher conversion rate.
Read more about omni-channel
Why it’s important to have an effective sales strategy
An effective sales strategy helps define clear goals and areas of focus for your sales team. This gives them a clear direction to follow, increasing their focus and motivation to achieve results.
- By analyzing customer needs and having a clear sales strategy when approaching them, you can also ensure better communication with your ICP(ideal customer profile). The strategy thus contributes to streamlined communication, which leads to increased customer satisfaction and creates loyal customers who are more likely to buy again and/or remain customers for longer.
- At the same time, a well-implemented sales strategy contributes directly to your bottom line by setting realistic sales targets and KPIs(Key Performance Indicators). By constantly analyzing the results, your strategy can be continuously adjusted for optimal performance.
- An effective sales strategy will be an essential part of your go-to market strategy, as sales is the direct channel for more revenue. With an effective sales strategy, you’ll be far along in your growth plan and can then build more parts of your go to market strategy.
4 considerations for an effective sales strategy
Although a sales strategy is tailored to the individual company, there are certain elements that an effective sales strategy should always include. We’ll go through these below.
1. How do you reach new customers with your sales strategy?
When creating your sales strategy, it’s essential to know how to reach new customers. You need to consider whether this should be done inbound, outbound or through partnerships.
Once you’ve decided on the above, you can start looking at how to build each new customer strategy. If you want your sales strategy to include elements of outbound, it’s important to educate your sales team on how to approach customers and make them experts in your product.
Read more about lead generation
2. How does your sales strategy handle new customers?
What do you do as soon as a company comes to you and says they want to become a customer? Who takes it from here, do you have presentations ready and how easy is it to buy for them? This is an element of the sales process that you need to be 100% on top of to avoid appearing unprofessional – it’s also important for you to have a good relationship with your new customer that the process from here is efficient and easy.
You can make this process easy with a CRM system where, for example, you create an inbound funnel that has defined the stages a new customer must go through.
3. How does your sales strategy ensure customers stay customers
Your sales strategy is not over as soon as customers become customers, because the impact of sales on customer retention is significant. Imagine a sales process where you are listened to, feel prioritized and your needs are met – are you more willing to remain a customer here versus a sales process where you are not prioritized?
Therefore, a good sales strategy is often linked to customer service and ensures that the customer is at the center.
Read more about customer service
4. Your sales strategy should focus on upselling
One place where you can really grow is through upselling and therefore your sales strategy should have a plan for this. This can be when the customer reaches a certain level of engagement, has used X number of features or has been a customer for a long time. There are different ways you can incorporate upselling into your sales strategy, just make sure it doesn’t compromise the customer relationship.
You can read more about upselling here.
How to evaluate your sales strategy
Clear goals and KPIs are essential for an effective sales strategy. By defining clear goals, you can measure and assess your progress and identify areas that need improvement.
Set realistic but challenging goals:
- Define clear and specific sales goals that can be achieved within a specific timeframe.
- Be ambitious, but take into account your company’s resources and market potential.
Define Key Performance Indicators that can be quantified:
- Identify the most relevant KPIs to measure sales performance and success.
- Choose KPIs that are objective and easy to report.
Create an action plan with milestones along the way:
- Break down the sales strategy into concrete steps or milestones to ensure progress.
- Assign responsibilities to key employees and set deadlines for each milestone.
Radiant executes the above and helps define through Sales as a Service.
Design or optimise your sales strategy with Radiant
Radiant is a B2B growth consultancy that specialises in creating effective growth for B2B companies.
Radiant is a B2B growth consultancy that specialises in creating effective growth for B2B companies. With a broad experience in 4 verticals including SaaS, tech, finance and professional services and hands-on experience in optimising processes, expanding into new markets and winning the existing market, we have the experience needed to design or optimise sales strategies.
Let’s talk about how we can take your sales to the next level – contact us.
Mød nogle af vores salgsstrategi eksperter
Christoffer Tofte
Christoffer har mange opgaver inden for at udarbejde salgsstrategier på vegne af vores kunder – han har helt konkret arbejdet med:
- Forståelse af salgsproces fra lead til deal samt identificering af optimeringer heri
- Opbygning af målrettede kampagner
- Håndtering og styring af pipeline
- Opbygning og anvendelse af salgsplaybook med best practice for hele salgsprocessen
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Kasper Bjerggaard
Kasper har stor erfaring med salg inden for Corporate Finance, Bank, Payment og FinTech løsninger. Han har både indsamlet erfaring fra Radiant og Deloitte hvor han har været med til, at opbygget salgsafdelingen.
I dag er Kasper COO i Radiant og hjælper dagligt virksomheder i Norden og Dach med, at effektivisere sit salg gennem effektive salgsstrategier.
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