ARTICLE SUMMARY
Follow these simple but effective sales best practices to ensure your team's sales results always stay above the average and exceed your expectations.
The internet is full of sales best practices. But what most people forget is that, as a business, you need to come to the understanding that how you sell to people comes through to a lot more than just having a quality sales pipeline (the how ends actually being a lot more important than you might initially think).
The way you sell (the aforementioned how) is a massive part of your business, and in order to achieve greater results, you need to adapt yourself to your market and your public. To make life easier, here is a list of sales best practices according to which you can guide the way you do business:
Take a Look at the 7 Sales Best Practices
1. Create Interesting Follow-up Emails
The strongest of sales best practices you can put in place, right from the start, is to develop the practice of writing strong follow-up e-mails. This can be a little confusing to begin with, but our previous blog post on the subject will help you understand the criteria for success sending out follow up e-mails to clients who have previously bought from you or those who have just sent you a response to a cold e-mail.
2. Use a CRM
You should always use some kind of customer relationship management system – this lets you build up a strong rapport with each and every one of your customers along the way. Having an authentic and genuine bond that helps them in life will, without a doubt, benefit you in the future.
3. Create a Customer Journey to Success
You should never be just the business – you should be the expert, the genius, the consultant. When a client comes to you with questions you should have the answers as this will be what gets you to close the sale, not the flashiest website or the most attractive promotional team on standby! This is the definition of Customer Success. Learn and teach your clients to succeed.
4. Be Professional, but Personal
Always try and be professional, but keep it informal and personal. Being too formal makes things a bit too serious for the average punter and this can be hard to work within the long-term. Try and stay nice and friendly without falling into regional slang and expletives, and you should make clients feel much more comfortable in the future.
5. Build a Standard Process
Create a sales pipeline that everyone can follow – a sales pipeline is something that must be included in everything that you do. It’s the very basis of making selling possible in the modern world, and sets you apart from those who never actually took the time to set one up!
6. Learn about your Customers
Prospect the customer and look into the demographic they fit into. What are their into? What do their company or their place of work offer and sell? What are they trying to achieve? Working this entire situation out gives you a much better chance of succeeding when trying to sell them something in the first place
7. Never Lose the Human Touch
Always get in touch with a customer before you start trying to sell them something – a quick, informal chat introducing yourself as X business who is new to the area is usually enough to let them know who you are and what you offer without trying to make a sale
Create a Sales Process that Goes Further than Just Selling
As you can see, managing a business is about more than just having cool products at good prices. You need to be seen, you need to be heard, and you need to be worth listening to.
The fast-paced nature of the modern world can make this pretty tough to manage, of course, but with enough time and learning it should be more than possible for you – just never stop looking into the best ways to touch base with customers.
That’s why it’s essential to create a Customer Journey focused on the success they want to achieve. And having a platform to control and keep track of each customer will help your business to deliver value.
Take a look at the Sales Pipeline Template Pipefy has. It will guide your team through all the steps of the sale, from prospecting, to properly qualifying leads to close the deal, helping them keep track of the opportunities and always staying on top of their game.
