Tag: Sales and Marketing

6 Ways To Lessen The Effects of Inflation Impacting Sales

Posted on | by Sienna

As inflation continues to affect various sectors of the economy, businesses are looking for ways to lessen its effects on sales.

Here we will discuss six ways that businesses can mitigate the effects of inflation on their sales.

Upsell & Cross Sell

Upselling and cross-selling increases the overall revenue generated from each customer transaction.

Upselling – encourages customers to purchase a higher-priced item or a more expensive version of a product they are already interested in.

By persuading customers to spend more money, upselling can increase the average sale value and the overall revenue generated per transaction.

This increased revenue can help offset the impact of inflation on the cost of goods sold.

Cross-selling – involves recommending related products to customers to encourage them to make additional purchases.

Cross-selling can help increase the total amount customers spend on their purchases, and can help offset the impact of inflation by increasing revenue generated per customer.

Combining these two strategies can help businesses mitigate the impact of inflation on sales.

Upselling and cross-selling can help businesses build stronger relationships with customers by providing them with a better shopping experience and meeting more of their needs.

Ultimately this can lead to increased customer loyalty and repeat purchases.

Upselling and cross-selling

Increase Prices Strategically

A common response to inflation is to increase prices – but businesses need to be strategic about how they do this.

Consider the cost of goods sold, the competition, and the impact on customer demand.

A small price increase might be more effective than a large one.

It could also be phased in over time to minimise the impact on customers.

Implement Cost-Cutting Measures

Businesses can look for ways to reduce their expenses by:

  • Negotiating with suppliers
  • Reducing waste
  • Finding more efficient processes

By cutting costs, businesses can maintain their profit margins despite rising prices.

Offer Discounts and Promotions

Offering discounts and promotions is another way to mitigate the effects of inflation.

Customers are more likely to buy when they feel they are getting a good deal.

Businesses can offer sales, coupons, or other promotions to incentivise customers to buy despite rising prices.

It’s important to note that discounts should be strategic and well-timed, or they could hurt profit margins.

Diversify Your Product Line

Expanding your product line can help to lessen the effects of inflation.

If prices are rising for a particular product, businesses can offer alternative products or services that are less affected by inflation.

This way, they can still generate sales – even if customers are cutting back on spending for certain items.

Focus On Customer Service

Focusing on customer service can help mitigate the effects of inflation.

When customers feel valued and appreciated, they are more likely to continue doing business with a company, even if prices are rising.

By providing excellent customer service, businesses can retain customers and maintain sales despite inflation.

By providing excellent customer service, businesses can retain customers and maintain sales despite inflation.

Inflation is an economic reality that businesses need to address.

By implementing these strategies, businesses can ease the effects of inflation on their sales and remain competitive in their industries.

Contact KONA today to discuss a tailored Sales Training Program for your business!

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4 Ways To Maximise Last Quarter Sales This EOFY

Posted on | by Sienna

As the end of financial year approaches, it’s time to start thinking about how to maximise your sales.

Here are four effective ways to boost your sales and end the financial year on a high note:

Offer Special Promotions and Discounts

These promotions can help incentivise customers to make a purchase, especially if they feel like they are getting a good deal.

To make the most of this strategy, ensure that your promotions are publicised through email campaigns, social media, and other advertising channels.

Focus on Customer Retention

Loyal customers are more likely to make a purchase than new customers, so it’s important to keep them engaged and happy.

Consider sending out special offers to your email list or offering loyalty rewards to encourage repeat purchases.

You can also personalise your marketing to make customers feel valued and appreciated.

Increase Your Online Presence

With more people shopping online than ever before, it’s important to ensure that your online presence is strong.

This can include:

  • Investing in search engine optimisation (SEO) to improve your website’s visibility on search engines
  • Increasing your social media presence
  • Creating engaging content for your blog

By improving your online presence, you can reach more potential customers and increase your chances of making a sale.

Free Ways to Increase Your Business's Online Presence | by Tim | Medium

Negotiate And Close Better At A Good Margin

Negotiating and closing deals at a good margin requires a combination of skills, strategies, and tactics.

Here are some tips to help you negotiate and close deals successfully:

1. Research and prepare:

Before entering into a negotiation, research the other party and gather information about their needs, interests, and preferences.

Also, prepare your own objectives, and identify your strengths and weaknesses.

2. Set a clear and realistic goal:

Determine your minimum and maximum acceptable outcomes and identify the range within which you want to negotiate.

Be flexible and creative in finding solutions that meet both parties’ needs.

3. Build rapport:

Establishing a good relationship with the other party is essential to successful negotiation.

Listen actively, ask open-ended questions, and show genuine interest in their perspective. Try to find common ground and build trust.

4. Present your case persuasively:

Use clear and concise language, and back up your arguments with evidence and data.

Highlight the benefits of your proposal and how it meets the other party’s needs.

5. Be willing to compromise:

Negotiation is a give-and-take process, and both parties need to make concessions.

Identify areas where you are willing to give ground and be prepared to make trade-offs.

6. Close the deal:

Once you have reached an agreement, summarise the key points and confirm that everyone is clear on the terms.

Be sure to get everything in writing and include any contingencies or conditions that need to be met.

Remember it’s the EOFY and that successful negotiation is about finding win-win solutions that benefit both parties QUICKLY!!!

How Long It Roughly Takes to Close a Deal in SaaS. And Why.

By following these tips, you can negotiate and close deals at a good margin while building strong relationships with your partners.

Maximise your last quarter sales and end the financial year on a high note.

It’s important to monitor your sales regularly and make adjustments to your strategy as needed to ensure success.

Contact KONA today to discuss tailored training and consulting for your business.

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4 Selling Techniques For Social Media And Beyond

Posted on | by Sienna

Salespeople have been presented with a new landscape in the rapidly changing digital-age

The right way to approach social sales is one of the most valuable things today’s salespeople can learn.

Here you will find 4 effective selling techniques for social media and beyond.

   

1. Have A Marketing Approach

To be successful in sales, some of your practices should be marketing techniques.

Although there is a distinction between a marketer and a salesperson, it’s important for salespeople to incorporate marketing into their sales process.

 

2. Technology Has Shifted Sales Conversations

Sales conversations aren’t what they used to be. Nowadays prospects can:
  • Research your company
  • Research you
  • Know everything you have to offer

Now, the techniques formerly used to approach customers and start sales conversations have changed. And you need to know how to navigate this situation.

 

3. Connect Online And In Person With Your Customer

The ‘social’ aspect of selling is more about building relationships than selling a product or service.

You have to make a real connection with prospects, and not just make a transaction.

This approach is more time consuming, but is packed with benefits. It results in having trusting and loyal relationships with customers.

  38 Social Selling Statistics You Need to Know for 2023  

4. Face-To-Face Interaction Is Still Important

Making connections in a social media sense is important, but doesn’t outweigh the importance of having face-to-face meeting with your customer.

 Nowadays many salespeople make the mistake of thinking social media is all they need.

A face-to-face meeting will always create a more personal and trusting connection than an online connection.

 
Contact KONA today to discuss how you can make your sales process more personal & effective!
 

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Asking Questions Shows You Care. But Why?

Posted on | by Sienna

Most companies aspire to build a brand that potential buyers will support for the long haul. But, as salespeople look at the potential needs of their customers, they will realise that building customer relationship is imperative for their customers to trust and support their brand.

Building relationships is vital to understanding and addressing your customers behaviour, needs, complaints, etc.

Business to customer relationships are the reason why specific products are made, and why some services are integrated. In such more precise definition, sustaining a good relationship with your existing customers and potential ones require a lot of communication.

One way of communicating effectively with your customers is by asking probing and useful sales questions to them when presenting your products and services.

Read on as we discuss in this post how formulating different sales questions can help you build a healthy relationship with your clients.

1. It Helps Build Trust 

Trust can be a difficult thing to achieve, especially if you have clients that are sensitive and have high expectations with your brand. Trust is the foundation of a great client, to gain this kind of relationship, salespeople should focus on what your company promotes rather than pleasing clients with false information about your company as well as being complicated.

A clear and genuine motive behind every probing question you will ask can help you better understand your customer’s situation, and thus allowing you to provide a more tailored solution for their needs.

In order to build trust, you must show respect and assurance when asking a question to your clients. This includes being polite when asking if they are comfortable for some changes with the service they want, or if they are satisfied with the service that your company had given, etc.

2. It Shows That You’re Proactive

Asking the right questions can also help you respond to your customer’s concerns as quickly as possible, helping you build the reputation for speed of response and a reliable source of information in the process as well.

By asking questions, you will be able to address any concerns and objections from customers that may arise during product presentations. An effective method to know the concerns of your customers is to ask them about their perception of your products or service.

3. It Can Help You Exceed Expectations

Sales questions will not only provide you with the information you need to offer the right solution but valuable insights on how you can provide them with a service delivery experience that exceeds their expectation as well.

At times, some of our clients might have a variety of comments about our business. Looking through these different comments and understanding what they all imply can allow you to adjust service level with each type of client, ensuring that each one of them receives a service that matches their preference and needs.

4. It Keeps Your Customer Engaged with Your Brand

With technology, there are more ways to begin conversations with your customers than ever before. There are many online tools and social media outlets you can use to reach customers. Use your resources wisely; this predicts how well you manage your priorities in creating a good relationship with your clients.

Questioning is essential to building a good and healthy relationship with your clients; this enables you to provide the right product and service, establish a good reputation among your prospective clients, and ultimately retain more loyal customers in the long run.

Contact us today to learn more about how our Custom Sales Training program can help you build a good relationship with your clients.

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Ways on How to Quickly Hit Your Fiscal Year Sales Number – Infographic

Posted on | by Sienna

Every business has a fiscal year. A company’s fiscal year is its financial year; it is any twelve-month period that the company uses for accounting purposes. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) says a fiscal year is “12 consecutive months ending on the last day of any month except December 31st.” The IRS distinguishes “fiscal year” from “tax year,” stating that a tax year can be either fiscal year or the calendar year.

It is no doubt that the end of a fiscal year is considered one of the toughest times for any sales organisation. Whether you’re planning for next year or selling to meet end-of-year numbers, the crucial part of your sales assessment is with surviving your last month’s designated fiscal year goal. However, today, you can conquer this sales dilemma in your business. In this infographic, we will discuss different ways on how you can maneuver your sales number into a successful fiscal year, and not worry with your year-end results from your sales.

Ways on How to Quickly Hit Your Fiscal Year Sales Number - Infographic

What are the Different Considerations When Hiring Sales People?

Posted on | by Sienna
Hiring the best sales professionals for your company is not a one sitting task that anyone can administer. What most executives don’t know is that hiring salespeople can be expensive considering that they have to be trained first before they can be deployed in the field. Companies typically spend more on hiring in sales than they do anywhere else in their business. So how do you improve the returns on this investment? Developing criteria of what you are looking for, such as experience, industry contacts, and knowledge of your product and the market will help you dissect the eligibility of a prospect sales professional. Ideally, this person would be good at building a sales force, so they should be a player-coach as well. If you are ready to hire a professional salesperson, you need to develop criteria and a list of questions to ask. In this post, we will give you different tips on how you can start hiring a sales professional. Here are a few considerations: — Visible Sales Professional Experience – One good way of knowing if one is legitimately appropriate at being a sales professional in your company is with their experience in this field. Your recruitment team should develop a process wherein sales experience will be readily seen and evaluated during application; casual questions that uncover their level of sales expertise during the initial interview and written exams that have actual sales situations that can show how effective they are in making sales decisions are just ones of the techniques that you can integrate. — Clear Understanding of Sales Process – Once you’ve determined if their previous sales experiences is sufficient enough to match your company needs, it is now the time to know if they have proper knowledge about the intricacies sales process. You may ask during the interview the methods they go through when engaging a potential customer, such as:
  • Do they use a database of contacts and write to prospects and then follow up with a phone call?
  • How many calls do they believe it takes before they get a meeting, and how many sessions until they get a sale?
Another way to gauge the capability of a budding salesperson to close sales is to give them an object or concept and see if they can get you to buy. — Thorough Personality Assessment – It might be complicated to assess the personality of an individual at the first interview. But, if your company keeps up with the ever-growing profiling of professional salespeople in the business industry, assessing will be an easy task for you. Research based upon thousands of exit interviews shows that a primary cause of poor performance and turnover is poor job fit. People, especially salespeople with a variable pay component, become frustrated when they hire for tasks that are a poor fit with their skills and preferences. That is why nowadays, assessing first the personality of an individual plays a huge part in how they are capable of handling the position as a part of your sales team. — Search for Growth Potential – If your goal in recruiting sales staff is to build a high calibre sales team, you need individuals who are equipped to scale the career ladder. These individuals will fill leadership roles on your sales team and eventually work their way to positions in sales management and beyond. The sales industry is continuously adapting with different techniques that most consumers prefer when closing a deal, so it is only wise to hire an individual that is willing to grow with you as a company that provides great service and experience to its customers. Contact KONA Customised Training and Consulting today and let us help you assemble of professional salespeople that deliver results for your company through our Sales and Management Training. Contact us today to learn more about our services. 

Reasons Why Your Sales Team is Not Hitting Their Target (Infographic)

Posted on | by Sienna

Setting a sales target is one of the most important steps for measuring the sales performance of a business.

In establishing an efficient sales team, being crystal clear about your goals keeps you growing through the years, which keeps your company on track, and drives your future success.

Hitting your Sales Target

Setting a realistic sales target is one thing, but actually hitting them is another.

Increasing competition, changing customers preferences, advancing technology, along with the strategies and tactics you implement – can all affect whether your salespeople achieve the sales goals you’ve set, or not.

Reasons Why Sales Team is Not Hitting Target - Infographic

If your sales team is having a rough time hitting their targets lately – contact KONA to discuss sales training.

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Brand Positioning: Selecting a Point of Difference (Infographic)

Posted on | by Sienna
Some marketers only focus on searching more leads and creating different strategic advertisements in order to increase their sales. While these activities are indeed critical, both would be pointless if your target market does not see any point of difference between your brand and your competitors.Brand Positioning Selecting a Point of Difference

7 Reasons Why Your Sales Are Dropping

Posted on | by Sienna
Is your business experiencing a drop in sales?

Sales promotions are one of the reasons why businesses operate and acquire more leads.

But while the term sounds easy on the ears, sales promotions actually involve a high level of strategy and psychology that even the most prominent brands sometimes get wrong.

Salespeople are always creating a better plan comparing different statistics with the previous results of operations, but at times, this amount of data is not enough to situate an appropriate sales plan for a specific target.

Every salesperson fears to drop their sales because of factors that make their plans and strategy lack.

In the specific occurrence of events, we cannot control everything, let alone change itself. However, learning how to develop and adapt backup plans is effective when things go wrong with your sales.

There are a lot of factors that affect sales dropping in your business; this varies from hiring employees that have no proper training, missed competitor campaigns, the unclear input of internal and external sales, etc. But, the real question is, why does your business experience a sales drop?

Ineffective Sales Pipeline Management

Managing your sales pipeline starts with estimating incoming cash flow by looking at the analytics for existing leads and sales opportunities.

Yet, some brands fail to use useful analytics to track key metrics on how successful deals take place and how the overall pipeline growth takes place. I

Ineffective sales pipeline management can lead you to miss leads that are nearly closing to a sale, or pursue suspects that neither need your solution nor fit for your business.

Unclear Communication

Some people only listen with the intention to hear, but not with the purpose of understanding.

It is essential to have a productive relationship between different teams that handle sales to make a strategic plan to maximise sales performance.

But at times, some teams cannot show cohesiveness, resulting to a loss of sales, and being unprepared for advertising campaigns.

Lack of Sales Follow-up

Every lead that you will get during sales campaigns should be followed-up as they move through the sales pipeline.

Some companies forget to check with their leads because of the different considerations when campaigns started, but this is not a reason why you should not check yours.

According to a research, lack of sales follow-up can be costly – upwards of 10% more in revenue lost per year.

Ineffective Forecasting

Some sales representatives are too pressured with the sales drop that their campaign had experienced, and this results in changing and guessing the real data between your wins and losses.

It is best to use historical data and the right metrics to extrapolate the results of your quarterly outputs; being truthful with every detail that is enclosed with your report will give your company more accurate insight on how to adjust and create more strategic plans.

Overlooking Competition

When it comes to handling sales properly, no one is ever entitled to be comfortable, just because their leads are increasing.

Being competitive with your sales shows how dedicated and advanced your company is when it comes to performing the right strategy and plan for your consumers.

Competing brands are also stepping up their game by doing thorough research about their consumers and how they can market their brand while adapting to different trends.

If you’re not aware of what your major competitors are doing, you’re flying blind.

Look to see whether your competitors have seen an increase in sales, while you’re experiencing a decrease.

Insufficient Sales Training

The salespeople that are aware of their clients’ strategies will better focus their sales efforts; this includes DNA-ing the client.

Companies who intend to survive for the long haul should invest in sales coaching that will further improve their competency in attracting new customers and closing more leads.

Lack of Motivation

Incentives and rewards are effective motivational tools that many companies still do not use to boost their sales performance.

Motivation creates a healthy environment which then creates good outcomes resulting in the sales increase. Do not take for granted the hardships of your salespeople; it is best to practice fair treatment in every win that every person acquires for the company.

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To discuss how we can help you to improve your organisation’s results.

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How to Sell Value Instead of Price (Infographic)

Posted on | by Sienna
Customers are willing to pay more for products and services that guarantees them significant value. Most companies, at times, are presenting their products right away without even knowing if they are really engaging with their customers. One might say that every product is just the same as the other, and it only differs with its price range; but, have you thought about how buyers also have different needs and point of view towards products? How to Sell Value Instead of Price - Infographic