Sales is the lifeblood of any business. Along with marketing, sales is one of the most important activities for a business to thrive. Without either, a business can’t find new customers and can’t generate steady revenue – and can’t stay in business, much less grow.
Building a better sales machine is the path forward to help a business grow beyond its borders. Sales is hard, but with the right approach, you can turbo-charge your efforts.
Here are four practical tips to boost your sales team and get results.
Use the Right Collateral
Sales collateral helps immensely by giving your sales team something tangible they can then give to customers – and, hopefully, convince them to sign on the dotted line.
What is the right collateral? After all, as digital printers, we’ve seen a lot of sales collateral created by others – often the businesses themselves – and we’ve noticed a few themes that make for effective pieces. A good piece of sales collateral is:
ClearConciseCommanding
A piece should have one unmistakably-clear point to make; even if you have multiple selling points, they should all relate to your main overall point, which should be presented early in the document.
A piece should also be concise. You only have so much space, and people scan rather than read anyway.
And your piece should be commanding, with a clear call-to-action that leaves no doubt as to what you want them to do after they read your piece.
Empower Your Team Members
A sales machine is only as good as the team that runs it. And a team is only as good as the support you give them.
Education and training is one way to support your sales reps. Help them grow professionally by sponsoring opportunities for personal development. Seminars, books, courses, training – all can be extremely helpful in taking your sales team to the next level.
Also, give sales reps the resources they need in the form of sales collateral, adequate customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, market research, inbound lead generation, marketing, and the like. Sales is a lot easier if there’s plenty of support coming from the boss.
If you don’t support your team, they’re likely to fail.
Use a MAMS–Marketing Asset Management System
Finally, you can control your collateral and sales material and make sure it’s being used in the right way by the right people with the right design through a marketing asset management system (MAMS).
A MAMS is an online platform that you can use to design, approve, and distribute your collateral to the team. If you don’t have one, you should consider it; you’ll be amazed by how it streamlines the support you give to your team.
Create a Digital Marketing Program
What’s one thing that sales pros need? Something they depend on every day?
Leads.
If sales is the lifeblood of a business, leads are the red blood cells that carry oxygen throughout the body. The more leads you give your reps, the better they’ll perform – and the more money you’ll make.
A digital marketing program is one of the best ways to generate leads using the Internet. People go online every day to search for what they need. If you can get in front of them, you know that they’re interested in what you have to offer, which makes it a lot easier to approach them and eventually do business with these prospects.
Building a better sales machine is possible. And, it’s crucial to the performance of your business. Follow these steps to get started generating more sales through an empowered team that has the resources it needs to thrive.