Small Business Sales Tips for 2015

Michele Warg
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Small businesses have more tools than ever to increase sales and profitability, from social media feeds to personalized customer service. In 2015, entrepreneurs face many challenges thanks to quickly changing technology and increased expectations. Sales tips for contemporary businesses offer some interesting insights by focusing less on money and more on data that leads to better sales.

Salesforce Blog writers interviewed several experts to get sage advice for its cornucopia of sales tips for 2015. Businesses must prioritize, strategize, mobilize and digitize operations as much as possible to compete. Expect customers to walk into your store with questions, knowledge of your products, and what other places charge for similar products and services.

Set your priorities straight, and let employees know how productive they should be on a particular task. Delegate the right amount of man-hours to a task that gets you the greatest return on investment with the most efficient process to streamline profits. Use data from these tasks to make better time-management decisions in the future instead of using information just to track progress. Sales tips do not have to revolve solely around the end result.

Allow your employees to be mobile, especially if they are on the road. Allow in-office tasks to be completed remotely on a laptop or tablet computer rather than forcing employees to waste productivity while you wait for them to come into the office. A salesforce needs all the tools it can get in order to stay on top of the best leads and the most relevant sales tips. While someone waits for a layover flight on the way home, that salesperson can log in and work for a few hours. Work smarter, not harder, by eschewing bad sales leads quickly to allow more time for marketing staff to follow up with bigger and better prospects.

Care for your customers, and make sure your employees retain knowledge to better serve your customers. Small businesses thrive on personal service not usually found at big-box stores. Remember how to negotiate with people, and be sure to train your employees on how to relay information to customers in a friendly manner.

Know what comes next in the process. Sales tips and leads do not stop with a handshake after a tense sales pitch to clients. Figure out how and when to follow up with a prospect to remain on that person's radar.

Invest in data-collection techniques, including mining information from inbound calls and keeping records of email correspondence. Keyword searches help find similar situations in the past that help customer service reps handle current dilemmas. Knowing your customer's needs from a previous call six months ago helps relate to that person when he calls back. Your data should bolster any claims and assertions your staff makes with regard to how and why sales occur at your firm. Stories are not just anecdotes but well-researched theses on the process of customer retention.

Sales tips in contemporary business settings focus on retaining repeat customers while earning new ones. Strike the proper balance among data, advertising, service and responsiveness to increase revenue streams and create growth.


Photo courtesy of Steven Depolo at Flickr.com

 

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