28 Unique Ways To Increase Sales

There are many ways to increase sales in your business, but with a limited budget and staff strength, you need to choose where you put your time and money carefully. 

When you start a business, it is likely that you are working with a small budget. This is why it takes a lot of hard work and patience to grow a small business with marketing.

Alongside this, your business needs a good strategy if you want to take it to new heights. 

Here are some of the best strategies your business should invest in to drive more sales.

1. Sales funnels 

A sales funnel maps out the process of finding your customers and converting them. This is an excellent strategy all businesses need, as it will dictate the revenue model and actions you take in your business.

Your sales funnel will help you to take the necessary action that will resonate and attract the right customers, at the right stages of the buyer’s cycle.

If you only take generic action, you are unlikely to find the right customers. You can use Afrofunnels to design a beautiful sales funnel in an effortless way.

A sales funnel means you better understand your customers’ problems, and how you can solve them. This strategy will ensure you are turning your prospects into leads while increasing the efficiency of the leads.

It will also inform your sales team of all the information they need to close a sale, for example, the challenges and decisions that your potential customers are facing. 

2. Utilize The Art of Cross-Selling and Upselling

You may have heard of the terms cross-selling and up-selling. What do they mean?

Up-selling means offering your customer the nicer version of a product. Like in restaurants, you get to place an order for what you want, and an employee could ask “Would you like a larger size of that?” That is called up-selling.

Cross-selling this simply means presenting to your customer a harmonizing product. For example, a restaurant employee can ask “Would you like shrimp with that?” if you ordered fried rice. That is cross-selling.

Assess the goods you sell and determine which of them fit well together. Identify harmonizing products, and ensure that you suggest them to your customers when they decide to purchase one of the products.

3. Research 

You should always have an ongoing strategy for research. Consumer behaviour and the industry is always evolving, and your business needs to be ready to adapt to it.

If you create a strategy based on outdated information, you are going to quickly fall behind in the market.

Keep speaking to your customers, find out what they want and what their problems are. Research will enable you to drive sales because you will always be on top of what the market and what your customers need

You can also use automated tools that help bring your marketing and sales needs together such as using HubSpot Salesforce integration to generate new leads.

You should also regularly analyse your competitors and the market, to see what they are doing well, and what gaps are being missed.

Then, you can take advantage of that and get your business ahead of the game.

4. Let Go of The Free Plan

Freemium pricing is a business technique where a firm gives its normal or basic products and services to consumers at no cost but charges a higher price for useful or developed items.

A free plan can be risky and difficult, especially for first-time business owners. If you are using the freemium strategy to gain more customers, I will advise that you reduce its process or better still, end it completely.

This may seem hard and terrifying.  At the end of the day, once you end the free plan, the unavoidable truth comes in. Do your customers like your products enough to spend their money on them?

It is way better to face reality and make good changes to products they do not value enough to purchase. In that way, you can do better in sales because your products are of better quality.

5. Technology 

Technology and automation have massive benefitsUtilising the latest technology and ai enabled opportunity management is key to driving more sales.

By automating your sales process, you can manage your team, customise your playbooks and keep deals on track.

Technology is popular with many organisations, so this will enable you to stay competitive while monitoring opportunities and staying on top of forecast accuracy. 

You can also automate a range of other tasks in your business that will indirectly help you to drive more sales.

For example, administration and marketing tasks, that free up valuable time of your employees to focus on more tasks that drive sales and reduce wasted time on mundane and repetitive tasks in business.

They have the power to increase the efficiency, productivity and performance of your employees, and therefore, your business. 

If you enlist the right strategies and stay consistent, you will see your sales skyrocket. 

6. Price of the Product

Price is one of the fundamental aspects and natural determinants of income generation.

Businesses have worked on prices in several ways to come up with better convincing pricing that can fetch them a generous sale.

There are exceptional strategies in pricing that can be worked upon.

7. Employ Decoy Pricing

Decoy pricing is a trick that helps increase sales of high-profit products by producing another model of the item exclusively to make the costly version seem less expensive.

Decoy pricing influences your customers to distinguish the pricing alternatives and for that reason, the sales of the impressive higher-priced product will increase.

I’m sure you must have noticed how frequently products come in three choices. While it may be different because most businesses want to give various options to consumers, smart trade takes full advantage of the decoy strategy to direct customers to the most expensive item rather than the option they would naturally go for.

I would like you to think about the last time you went to an amusement park and your excitement to buy ice cream. If there was a large and a small cup of ice cream, and the small one costs $3 while the large one costs $6, you are most likely to purchase the small one.

But in a case where you can get a medium cup for $5, most people will purchase the large cup because it is just $1 higher than the medium size. Now, the trick is the $5 medium-size option is known as a decoy.

8. Penetration Pricing

This is a marketing system employed by companies to entice customers to a recent product or service by giving a lower price during its first offering.

The lower cost helps a new product or service enter the market and lure buyers away from rivals.

9. Create a Generous Affiliate project

You can expect that people will circulate the word about your goods. Or you can motivate them to do it with a decent affiliate strategy.

Giving them a commission on every sale they make through their affiliate link will make them more inclined to refer your product to other potential customers.

Bear in mind that for this to work well, you have to offer your affiliates a good deal. The bigger the commission, the more interest they’ll have in making more sales for you.

10. Discounts

Another way to boost sales is by providing discounts on the higher price.

The discount amount is pre-determined and usually, even after the discounts, you can make a satisfactory profit.

The Discounted pricing may be extended for a brief time by establishing an artificial stock deficiency which may raise the sales.

11. Come Up with Innovative Sales Ideas

It is important for you to continuously Explore to see what might work for your business.

It is much easier to come up with creative plans when you don’t see them as big business decisions but as experiments, you need to explore.

Carry out a small test, gather the data, and evaluate that data. Did it function well? Good. Weigh it.

If it does not work properly then the next step is for you to learn from it and then move on to the next idea or plan.

This procedure has very few negative effects, but an unlimited positive effect, which is why it works very well

Of course, most of these experiments will not yield anything but the useful ones will make up for the failed attempts. So, start exploring.

12. Freebies

Giving away a free product with the main product is also one of the strategies for the sales increase.

The free product could be of a different type or it could be of same kind. In some cases, it could be, buy two get one free or buy three get one free or any other mix.

The benefit of the last procedures is that they assist in rapid product consumption.

13. By Advertisement

Advertising is the act of sending a message that promotes your products and services through any type of method/medium.

This is one of the earliest and most widely accepted strategies for boosting sales. Advertising has the details and functions of the product along with the cost.

The advertisement can be in any mode like billboards, personal, print, or online. The process in which mass media uses devices to reach magnitudes is called above-the-line advertising.

In this case, there are no specific targets, ads are simply posted for massive promotional reasons than every other thing.

The whole intention is to increase knowledge and awareness about your brand or product. Distinct messages may or may not be included in ATL ads.

Types of ATL ads:

Television advertisement – is targeted to no specific group and is categorized under mass advertisement, mainly for mass awareness. Print media is also a part of ATL ads examples are magazines, flyers, Newspapers, etc. Finally, radio ads are a good ATL ads medium that is broadcasted to the public. Billboards also fall into this section as they can be seen by everyone on the road. 

The exact opposite of ATL is below-the-line advertising (BTL). In this case, customers are targeted particularly for specific products. These ads are used to control buying opinions rather than create insight. The aiming and distribution are achieved very specifically and the information is arranged to suit people.

Examples are Direct marketing and advertising which involves pamphlets, personalized emails, SMS, etc.

Another type of advertising is Through the Line Advertising (TTL) which is a combination of both ATL and BTL. TTL has the benefits of the last two advertising modes, and it is a piece of mass information with customized reach for specific audiences.

It is deemed to be more productive than the last two, and it helps in better placement and identification of products in the minds of your customer.

Digital marketing is a good example of TTL. Posts are made for a group, aimed at certain people. Those who are targeted and sometimes people who are not can see the ads. It aids in brand promotion and can boost sales.

14. The Sales Team

Another strategy to improve sales is to encourage the sales team. This is relevant, mostly in the case of business-to-business transaction sales where the seller is the promoter of buying conduct.

Supporting and stimulating the sales team with generous incomes and privileges is one way to accomplish that.

Giving bonuses after realization and higher achievement of sales targets is another thoughtful way. There are many creative ways to motivate and retain your team.

In the issue of bigger salaries, the income will be paid even though whether the seller has accomplished a target or not, but giving encouragement and bonuses after fulfillment of targets and shows two things.

First, development is attained and the target is completed.

An additional aspect of the sales team would be to invest in adequate training. The sales team is the image of the company in the market.

If sales teams are not appropriately trained, they would not be eligible to sell in the market and thus numerous companies use a ton of time and money in grooming them. How else would you persuade a client if you are not positive yourself?

15. Provide Customer Service

It is not just a product market anymore. Even product-oriented businesses also have to deliver the perfect service to keep customers.

High guarantees are made while describing the details and advantages of the product and while an advertisement is an advertisement, consumer expectations may be high.

If a product malfunctions, customer service must provide proper visitation to the client.

Have you ever thought about how some companies manage to make good sales better than other competitors? Though the product may have a ton of issues, customers tend to purchase from them because of their outstanding customer service.

Sometimes, customer service can fetch absent consumers which would not be likely by the sales team. Therefore, investing in excellent customer service is a vital factor in boosting sales.

16. Review the Competition for Benchmarking

Benchmarking is the process of analyzing business operations and accomplishment metrics to industry elites and the best techniques from different companies. Attributes commonly estimated are time, cost, and quality.

It can occur in various incidences where rivalry operates better than your company. You may have done your best to develop and expand your brand, you utilize the best logical methods and assigned them to the profession with the best credible team but good results are absent from them.

In situations like this, one can often examine rivals and what works best for them. Benchmarking is estimating your achievement against the best in the business. You can always improve those methods to work for your product.

17. Increase Your Prices

Occasionally, increasing your costs is a reasonable alternative that could assist induce more sales, after attempting several of the other sales tricks on this list.

You should completely evaluate your expenses, compare and contrast your prices to your rivalry, and know your customers’ demand for your goods or services.

In multiple situations, however, you can increase your prices by five or ten percent without encountering any market obstruction. If your products and services are of adequate value and your customers are generous and thoughtful, a slight rise in your general prices will not push them away.

18. Marketing

Marketing is the procedure of analyzing, establishing, and distributing value to satisfy the demands of a target market in terms of products and services.

It is frequently said that marketing is the pillar of the sales team. Possessing a useful, creative, and outstanding marketing program promotes sales.

Various marketing techniques can be used but utilizing a suitable strategy for insignificant products often get valid outcomes. One particular instance is creating curiousness or anticipation in marketing.

Several brands have employed many marketing techniques and determining which functions well for your brand is vital to the supremacy of loss or success in it.

19. Dump Less Profitable Products

Profitability is very significant than sales. Examine your product position and abandon goods that are not yielding profits. A product that is not profitable and does not make any gain, is non-profitable.

The determination to terminate a product line or sector needs you to analyze how your action influences both incomes and expenditures.

Concentrate on revenues that will improve the impact of your decision and total expenses. Then choose the best option that is more productive (or at least, slightly less unprofitable).

20. Take a Video of Your Product

Videos can be made viral and are incredible to attract and maintain the interest of your customers. Honestly, the visible message has an increased retention rate of 65%. This is considerably greater than the retention rate of 10% for only text information.

In extension, your consumers who would see your product videos would be more inclined to convert to your product than those who do not.

Keep in mind that, video content is very potent, even if you are educating customers or revealing how your product functions physically.

21. Maintain a Unique Value Proposition

A special offer that is in demand on the market is important.

If you propose an excellent service or product and there are plenty of other corporations that do the same thing and at the exact quality, it won’t be that simple to increase your sales.

But when you provide true quality to your consumers, you gain their commitment and respect.

22. Concentrate on Your Current Customers

If you seek to increase sales, you should switch your priority from luring new consumers to ensuring those who have tried out your goods or services purchase again and understand how to retain all the consumers.

A customer is an individual or company that consumes, purchases, and receives a product or service and can choose between many products and sellers.

The biggest sales buyers are those you have already converted into loyal existing customers instead of a total stranger.

If you concentrate on and build loyal customers, you are eligible to improve and increase your sales exponentially.

Marketing can influence sales, but it cannot fully lead to improved sales because you only concentrate on new consumers and skip maximizing your already existing buyers.

23. Raising the regularity of transactions per client

This means convincing customers to buy from you more frequently. If your standard client visits your company twice a month, encouraging them to come to your company once a week will boost your sales.

The more often they return to your company, the more income your business will earn, considering the regular transaction size remains the same.

24. Build a Good Relationship with Your Customers

Another way of increasing sales is by improving customer connection and authentically boosting the existing customers, your company should know how to treat the workers in a good and respectful way to enable them to preserve those who have come to purchase goods and services.

Good customer relationships enable you to engage with your clients on a much better personal status.

When you relate with your customers to a great degree, you are most likely to recognize their necessities, fix their issues with a product, and establish a common insight.

25. Perform a Content Inspection

How helpful is your content at advertising your products and services? You might have to carry out a content inspection and render some meaningful changes to the way you speak about your company.

Assess all your content, as well as your marketing and website materials. Question yourself, “Does this content center on benefits or details?” the reply should benefit, if that’s not the case, you have to rewrite.

Benefits center on what your clients will receive from using your products or services, while features reveal what your products and services do. The motive is to reveal how your products or services can be of good use to your customers.

26. Be Available for Your Clients

Unless you want to run an online business, being present with your clients and potential customers with the behavior of “what do you want me to do?” and “How else can I be of help to you?” can help you concentrate on the choices of the other party.

Sales happen when you are present.

This is also a good way to build strong relationships with clients.

27. Do Not Waste Time on Difficult Clients

Not every client is a nice client. Several clients will drain your strength, resources, and time without giving the results that you’re hoping for.

If you are consuming a lot of energy attending to clients who do not patronize you often, have a poor transaction size, do not circulate the word about your business, and disagree with the price, it makes no sense to entertain more of those clients.

Focus most of your efforts on attending to your loyal clients. Your perfect customers purchase quickly, buy frequently, pay the most, circulate the word about your business, and are ready to spend more for the quality you provide.

28. Ask Customers for Feedback

It is advisable to ask your customers for feedback on your products and services, including their thoughts and feelings about the customer service.

Discover where you might need improvement or where you are experiencing difficulties. Also, specify what makes them satisfied with your customer service.

Client feedback can easily spot opportunities you had not thought about, which can lead to a new increase in sales.

Share with love

Post Author: Abimbola Joseph

Abimbola Joseph is a creative content developer who derives pleasure in encouraging individuals to be the best they can be in all relevant facets of life. She believes that we all have a better version of ourselves which can be leveraged to impact others and make the world a better place. Connect with me on Instagram @abimbolajoe.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *