13 simple but effective ways to increase sales

In order to grow continuously, companies must adopt strategies that foster growth. An important step in scaling up is a thorough examination of business operations, including the value created for current and potential customers.
Although business owners know that there are several ways to increase their company’s revenue, the challenge is to figure out which strategy is easy to implement. To help you do so, 13 members of the Forbes Business Council each offer one recommendation that can be easily implemented to increase a company’s sales.

engage in your niche

Ideally, you will have developed a specialised product or service that solves a problem or satisfies a demand for a specific group of people. If not, you should rethink what your brand offers compared to other brands. Consider how you can rework your product to appeal more to your core customer base, gather feedback and become the leading brand in your niche.

create value and long-term relationships

Increase sales by creating long-term value and building deep emotional relationships with each transaction. Provide services that go beyond the essentials to inspire the customer to stay in your brand experience. By analysing the customer experience before, during and after the purchase, you can create seamless upsell and downsell offers. Always add value.

offer sellers more support

Put the biggest wood behind the sharpest arrows. This means better utilising your best salespeople and offering them more support so that they can better serve your best customers. You are already doing very well in both categories, so keep it up.

Focus on areas for improvement

Before spending more money to generate more leads or traffic, look at the data to see if there are areas where you can improve conversion rates. This way you can get the most out of the traffic you already have, maximise your marketing budget and increase sales without having to spend more.

cross-selling complementary products

You don’t want a leaky bucket, so focus on retaining customers and then acquiring them. One way to increase sales with existing customers is to sell complementary products or services that fill a need not met by the original purchase.

use social media

Social media have become a powerful resource for lead generation. They allow you to access a large audience quickly and relatively inexpensively. Create contacts through your online platform. It’s not just a matter of posting: comment on others’ posts, like them and engage in dialogue with potential customers.

Position yourself as a thought leader

Make sure every conversation has the right frame. If you chase someone, it is natural for them to walk away. Whether you make the sales calls yourself or hire a team to make them for you, make sure you have a system for framing every conversation with you as a prize. You can do this with a book you have written, with testimonials from satisfied customers and with the social media you have appeared on.

tap into your network

Work on your book. Yes, you have heard it a thousand times, but almost always the simplest things work best. The problem is that this requires perseverance and discipline. Turn to people who have already supported you and don’t be afraid to ask them for references, preferably after a real conversation! If you have been good to them, why wouldn’t they want to help you?

start a referral programme

Start a referral programme to get your most loyal customers to speak up for you. The best thing is that you can set up this programme without increasing your expenses. It is easy to pay per referral (like Uber or Lyft), but it is more valuable to offer incentives like badges, rankings and authority, like Reddit, Waze and many other companies that have saved millions of dollars. The concept is simple, but implementing it well is very difficult.

make limited-time value offers

Create scarcity by making limited-time offers that are not only about price, but also about value. Think of offers like ‘the next 100 customers will receive an additional 30-minute session with our expert’ or ‘for the next 24 hours we can offer access to this complementary solution for free’. Make sure your scarcity tactic makes sense and is not inauthentic. Everyone likes an offer.

get in touch with previous customers

A simple but effective way to increase sales for many different types of companies is to look at previous customer transactions during the same period last year. Did they make the same purchase again? If not, you should contact the customer and remind them of what they bought last year and ask them if they would like to buy it again.

make sure your team has the necessary knowledge

Make sure that your team knows everything you offer and can easily talk about all your offers. The easier it is for sales representatives to make connections between customer needs and your overall service offering, the better their experience with your company will be. Train your sales team to listen and find connections, not only between what they need, but also between what adds value.

improve the customer experience to win enthusiastic fans

There is no better strategy to increase sales than to raise customer service to a level where customers have no choice but to talk about you. You can win enthusiastic fans of your company by providing your customers with a service that most companies find too boring. Do what nobody else does and generate revenue that nobody else gets.