If you’re an entrepreneur, then you know that getting your business off the ground is simply the first step of a long journey. While making enough sales to cover your expenses and start turning a profit is one of the most important milestones for any business, you’ll need to start increasing sales and expand your business to fully reap the rewards of your efforts. More money is always a good thing, and while you can always conduct a money search to try and find unclaimed funds (You never know, you could get lucky!), it’s much more reliable to generate extra funds from your business.
Depending on the size of your business, you may already have a sales team dedicated to generating more sales, and this is always a good investment. It’s important not to ignore the other steps you can take, however, and not all efforts need to be large investments. The following are just a few relatively cheap ways you can start boosting your sales.
Pay Attention to Existing Customers
The customers you already have are among your greatest resources, both for current sales and for figuring out how to make new ones. It’s important to study which products and services customers most frequently buy, so you can determine why they’re popular and how you can replicate their success in the future. It’s also hard to overstate the importance of asking for customer feedback. You can ask for feedback in person, on social media, or send out surveys in company newsletters you send to subscribers on your site. This will allow you to both improve your service and show customers that they are important to you.
Use Google My Business
A Google My Business profile is completely free and gives you a big advantage with Google searches. This will give you listings in Google Maps, local search, and in the Google Knowledge Panel in search results. This gives your business much more exposure to your target audience and can have a significant impact on your sales. The more information you can include in your listing, the better, so try to fill every space. If you can build a profile of positive Google reviews, your star rating will show next to your listing and could be a deciding factor.
Boost Contact Center Efficiency
A successful business needs a good contact center, as the support you offer customers will greatly contribute to their overall opinion of you. Having reliable customer support staff is crucial, and it’s important to equip them with the best tools for the job. There are many options for call center software that will allow your agents to speak with customers across multiple communication channels, ensuring convenience for the customer, and agent desktops make it easy for your employees to keep track of everything.
You can also take advantage of ringless voicemail software to boost agent efficiency. This allows you to drop voicemails directly on a recipient’s voicemail server, thus bypassing the calling process. While this can be used for telemarketing purposes, it can also speed up call center performance. Instead of having to read a script to leave a message for every unanswered call, an agent can simply click to deliver a pre-recorded message and move on. This makes pursuing leads much more efficient.
Give Trials and Demos
Seeing is believing, and showing customers who are on the fence exactly how your products or services can benefit them is often the deciding factor in making a sale. If you’re offering software solutions, you could offer potential customers a trial to demonstrate your product’s value. You could also host demonstration videos on YouTube and social media to walk people through exactly how to use your products and show their practical uses. Product videos lead to conversions, and they shouldn’t take much effort to create.
Getting creative with how you approach customers and leads will give you more data to work with, and you can double down on efforts that are seeing positive results.
