Tuesday, November 6, 2012

5 Ways to Quickly Climb Out of a Sales Slump

Using a cloud-based simple CRM and sales tracking app, like Base CRM, is a great way to keep your small business organized and sales slump free.
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Are your sales numbers down?

  • Do you have an aggressive quota to hit?
  • Are you worried about your small business? finances?

Whatever the case is, if you?re in a sales slump, here are some ways to help you get things moving in the right direction ? quickly.

1. Get Organized

Getting organized can often help you clarify the best approaches to alleviate your sales woes. Figure out what leads you have in your sales pipeline, how likely they are to close, and make a plan prioritizing warm and hot leads.? Become best friends with your CRM and sales app ? checking in with it daily. If you aren?t recording your client information, conversations, leads, and sales in a CRM, your sales process hasn?t reached its organizational potential.

An organized desk or workstation will help with the organization of your sales process and? business procedures.

  • Are you missing out on leads buried under papers on your desk?
  • Did a note that should have been entered into your CRM about a client deal get stuck between two desk drawers?

A clear and organized work area, with both digital and physical desktops, can make a difference with your productivity, mindset, and sales.

2. Pick up the Phone

Picking up the phone can be a great way to pull your way out of a sales slump. Try any or all of the following:

  • Call old clients you haven?t spoken with in a while and see how they?re doing.
  • Follow up on cold leads and see if their interest or circumstances have warmed.
  • Talk to vendors and industry contacts and see if they have leads for you.

3. Run a Promotion

Another good sales slump buster is having a sale or some other promotion. This can be a great technique to generate interest from potential new prospects and to re-engage past clients. You may want to get creative with a ?free shipping? ?buy one get one free? deal, etc.? It may mean slimmer margins, temporarily, but could bring about great new opportunities and renewed interest from your client base.

4. Get Online

Is your small business taking advantage of all of the online opportunities available to them? Here are some ways the web can help with your sales slump:

  • Get on social media (Twitter, for instance) and see if you can make some new connections.
  • Conduct research on companies that can be potential clients and engage with them online or setup cold calls.
  • Update your LinkedIn profile. When you do this it will initiate an update about you that will go out in the weekly email to all of your LinkedIn contacts. Seeing your updated skill, your updated job title, or a link to your latest blog post or press release could drum up some interest and result in contacts reaching out to you. (Here?s an article on ways to use LinkedIn to grow your small business)
  • Send out a press release to drum up some interest in something happening with your company. Syndicate it and be sure to promote it on social media.
  • Write a good industry-related article and post it on a relevant industry blog with a byline linked back to your website. This can bring new traffic to your site and new interest to your brand.
  • Create content for your website. New content can bring new customers your way.
  • Consider a Google Adwords pay per click campaign. Setting a small budget and trying it out could be helpful. Google typically offers new Adwords clients a credit of $50 or $100 to get started. Don?t waste it by doing a haphazard campaign. Do your research and hire help if needed.
  • Work on search engine optimization. Down time is a great time to do SEO and online marketing. Just don?t forget to keep it up when you?re busy or you could soon find yourself in another sales slump.

5. Be Positive

Mindset matters. Work with energy, creativity, and a winning attitude.? Don?t resort to cheesy sales pitches and don?t work with desperation. If you do, you?ll turn off potential and existing clients.

Work with the mindset that the next call you make could be the beginning of an upswing ? and the end of your sales slump!

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About Dana Prince

Dana Prince writes for Future Simple?s Growth University. Dana blends her passion for entrepreneurship with experience in software licensing sales, product management, online marketing, and SEO writing to run Dana Prince Writing, a web writing agency that creates optimized content that helps websites succeed.

Source: http://www.futuresimple.com/blog/climb-out-of-a-sales-slump/

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