50 Ways to Boost Sales in Tough Times

SELL MORE TO EXISTING CUSTOMERS
• Analyze each account for cross-sell and up-sell opportunities
• Accompany your reps on key account sales calls – call on executives if possible
• Conduct customer satisfaction surveys and look for opportunities to improve service and to sell more
• Inspect contact records for each account and ensure key decision makers are being called on regularly
• Call each account, add new contacts to the sales database and set up meetings with selected new contacts
• Better understand your customers’ competition and help them devise ways to win more sales using your products and services
• See how much they’re buying from your competitors, then ask how you can earn all of their business
• Provide customers with on-site educational seminars to generate new leads within existing accounts
• Search customer websites and press releases for potential sales opportunities
• Analyze customer financial data (e.g. annual reports, 10Q and 10K reports) and devise ways your product or service can help improve their financial situation
• Check out detailed profiles for each customer account via an online service such as Hoovers
• For major accounts, develop strategic account capture plans

GENERATE NEW BUSINESS
• Analyze the characteristics of your top customers and use them to identify and target new prospective customers
• Get letters of reference from satisfied clients and use them to gain new accounts
• Boost your website effectiveness via search engine optimization
• Ask companies you know well to add reciprocal website links
• Add a lead form to your website
• Develop “try and buy” programs to encourage prospects to try your products or services
• Challenge your marketing department to generate more high-quality leads
• Hold a seminar or mixer and invite new prospective customers to attend
• Hold a prospecting “Phone Day” in which sales teams compete for qualified prospects
• Determine which associations your prospects attend and send your salespeople to them
• Network with trade publication editors and reporters to generate fresh leads
• Upgrade programs that allow customers to finance their purchases
• Start a lead sharing group with vendors who sell non-competing products to your target customers
• Package low-cost, high-value “extras” with your product or service (e.g. extended warranty, 30 days of Level 2 support, product training classes) to increase the perceived value
• Offer an incentive to both customers and non-sales employees to provide leads and referrals

OUTMANEUVER THE COMPETITION
• Shop your competition and understand their strengths and weaknesses
• Pick a weak competitor and target their accounts with a special program or incentive
• Hire a salesperson from a key competitor and target their accounts
• Perform a strategic, major account plan for each account where competitor moves are anticipated and counter moves are planned and implemented

SALES MANAGEMENT AND SALES TEAM MOTIVATION
• Adopt the principle of “control the controllables” and pinpoint specific areas you can impact
• Be more available to your team members to provide support during tough times
• Begin and end meetings on a positive note with words of encouragement
• Ensure your compensation plan provides rich rewards for beating revenue goals
• Develop spiffs or other incentives to boost sales of high-value products and services
• Add a motivational component to team meetings (e.g. contests, guest speakers)
• Look for ways to leverage the effectiveness of your high performers such as providing them with administrative or telesales support
• Scrutinize your sales processes and reporting, then look for ways to streamline them
• Conduct loss reviews to see why you lost accounts and to prevent the same things from recurring
• Find ways to boost salesperson time spent in contact with customers and prospects

PROVIDE SALES SKILLS & TOOLS TO BOOST CLOSING RATES
• Analyze close rates and revenues for each sales rep and help low performers approach the norm
• Develop responses to your salespeople’s 10 most common objections and rehearse them
• Review and then upgrade the questions your salespeople use to qualify prospects
• Review and upgrade your sales proposals
• Pinpoint key reasons for sales stalls, then devise programs to combat these sales delays
• Develop e-mail templates to boost the quality of written communications and to save time
• Ensure that your salespeople are quantifying the monetary benefits of your products and services in their sales calls and proposals
• Review and them improve the questions your salespeople are asking