Increasing sales - a big goal on a thorny road? If you combine the right measures with professional implementation, you will overcome all obstacles! But where to start?
These three factors are essential for a successful and sustainable increase in sales: additional sales, good marketing and optimal customer support - all tailored to your company, your (desired) customers and your goals! To ensure success, there are several measures and strategies that you should definitely consider! In our blog, we will introduce you to 12 effective measures to increase sales and the success of your company and show you how you can implement them professionally and effectively, taking into account the specifics of your company!
Whether B2B or B2C, wholesale or retail, industry, services or e-commerce: additional sales can be successfully implemented in all areas and will bring you and your company a noticeable increase in sales!
At the same time, you gain many other advantages: by offering additional products and services, you can expand your company and your services even further. The customer will be especially pleased with the newly created comprehensive service!
It has been proven that an extended service improves the shopping experience and thus customer satisfaction. By investing in existing customers, you also save time and money on acquiring new customers, for example through advertising.
But you can also attract new customers more easily with upselling - because you offer a wider range of offers and services than before. This way, you increase customer interest - if you implement proven upselling strategies correctly!
To profitably implement your additional offers and increase sales, it is useful to use several promising strategies:
To do this, define both quantitative and qualitative values that must be achieved, for example, by the end of the year or quarter. In this way, you provide a target for your company and your employees and at the same time provide the first important impetus for implementation. Define your goal and take action step by step!
What do your customers (still) need? With the help of needs questions tailored to your company and your offer, you can conduct a meaningful analysis of customer potential! Checklists and key questions are also used to learn more about your customers' needs. You can also find out about their motivation for buying, for example: lifestyle, safety, comfort.
Based on the potential and motivation of customers, you can determine the price expectations of your customers, for example, with the help of key questions. Depending on the answer, you can use a sales strategy that allows you to set a higher price.
A well-structured advertising campaign is necessary to convince customers to make an additional purchase or a more expensive product! Focusing on an additional chain of benefits or an additional chain of argumentation is ideal for this!
For an online advertising campaign, you can use the BEILRY advertising service. Thanks to it, the company will be able to ensure increased brand awareness and increased sales at a guaranteed low cost per ad impression.
BEILRY advertising service is a platform with payment per impression (CPM or Cost Per Mille). There is no minimum amount for replenishing the balance for advertisers, you can start (continue) an advertising campaign with any budget.
The following applies here: if your customer cannot see it, he will not be able to buy it either. So show what you have to offer. This way, you will not only make it easier for yourself to start a conversation, but also improve the customer's shopping experience.
Influence the purchasing behavior of your customers and cause an impulse to buy by providing psychological incentives, for example, through presentation, emphasizing situations of scarcity, such as limited editions.
With these strategies, you can exploit the full potential of upselling: they not only form the basis for all further sales promotion measures, but above all also simplify their implementation – both analog and digital!
Cross-selling is particularly effective for increasing sales and is a proven method of upselling. You offer products that are directly or indirectly related to your main product. To properly equip this product range, identify the areas and needs associated with your product.
For example, you own a car dealership and sell new cars. Cross-selling is everything you need for a car: a new set of winter tires, additional car insurance or an annual inspection.
You know this from e-commerce, for example through certain fields in an online shop or in a shopping cart, in which other products are advertised under headings like "Customers who bought this product also bought...".
The relationship between products is determined by the offers that customers prefer and buy in a given context. This is, for example, particularly useful cross-selling on the Internet, which has proven to be effective in successfully increasing sales.
Cross-selling works in two directions: the vertical direction refers to directly complementary products, such as winter tires, and the horizontal direction is characterized by indirectly complementary products. This is where cooperation with other companies is especially useful!
Additional sales methods such as horizontal cross-selling are particularly suitable for expanding your own product range and service range many times over by collaborating with others.
In our car dealership example, collaborations with other car dealerships, car clubs, racing clubs and insurance providers are possible.
By teaming up with other companies, you not only expand your offer, but also gain a direct partner who further promotes your company and thus effectively helps increase your sales.
Another effective additional sales method for increasing sales is upselling. As the name suggests, when you sell more, you sell an “extra part”, in this case actually a “large part” of the main product.
In fact, it can be something more, such as adding a new set of summer tires instead of just a set of winter tires, or something more in the product: offering a series of products from standard models to premium models, or additional upgrades and special features. Often the actual product receives a quality upgrade. The product can, so to speak, improve, which is why upselling is also known as upselling.
To successfully sell, you must pay special attention to the needs and potential of the customer and use the right sales strategy to convince the customer of the advantages and added value of the more expensive product. But the benefit for the customer always comes first!
Through an analytical conversation with the customer, you obtain the necessary and relevant information (e.g. motivation, price expectations, living conditions), which you can translate into a skillful sales presentation using an additional benefit or an additional chain of argumentation. Upselling products can also be placed in e-commerce, for example, through a selectable product upgrade option.
By cleverly combining additional selling techniques such as cross-sells and upsells, you can get even more out of your offers!
For example, your upsell offer is a premium model of a new car instead of a standard model. You offer it in cooperation with an insurance company.
To advertise such integrated product (service) offers, you should draw attention to your company, your products and offers by ensuring that there are enough touchpoints between you and (potential) customers.
Examples of touchpoints between (potential) customers and your company and your online offerings can be customer reviews, comments or posts on social media, a professional online presence on the company website, emails, newsletters. Other touchpoints can be flyers and catalogs, as well as telephone or personal contact in a store or office.
Consider your customer journey to identify the right touchpoints at three critical stages. Where does the customer meet you: before purchase, during purchase, and after purchase?
Establish appropriate touchpoints at all three stops to positively impact the customer experience, draw attention to your services, and offer customers an attentive service even after purchase.
By identifying, analyzing, and establishing touchpoints that complement each other in chronological order, you can develop effective touchpoint chains that support your cross-selling and upselling efforts.
Good after-sales management, backed up by relevant post-purchase touchpoints, is worth its weight in gold in terms of customer loyalty and increased sales!
Whether a startup or an existing next-generation company: every successful company needs (new) customers. New customer acquisition is ideal for strategically acquiring new customers.
To achieve this, you need a systematic action plan tailored to your company and your target group! To do this, define your buyer persona to identify the key characteristics of your target group.
What is your persona's problem and what solutions does your company offer for it? This way, you will also be able to find out where and how to best reach your target group and what acquisition tools are needed: on social networks such as LinkedIn or at trade shows in the B2B sector, as well as through targeted advertising campaigns in the B2C sector.
Determine how well your products match your personas:
- Do you have a unique offer and/or a wide range of offers?
- Is it worth opening up new markets and/or expanding your range of services?
Based on the offers and services of your competitors, you will be able to see what is in demand and react to (market) changes in a timely manner!
By defining acquisition targets and conducting a success check, you will find out how effective your strategy and its implementation are and can optimize if necessary.
Determine how much time, financial and human resources you can invest in acquiring new customers.
Depending on the economic benefit, it may be worth optimizing your strategy or seeking external support from trained and professional agencies for marketing and customer dialogue.
When acquiring new customers, do not neglect your existing customers! In addition, existing customers can give you valuable information on where and how to properly attract new customers and thus attract exactly the customers your company needs.
Maintaining existing and new customers also includes good, targeted customer support! There is a huge potential for targeted sales increases here, as well as for increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Customers like a personal and individual approach, meeting their needs and solving problems effectively.
Once you have solved a customer's problem satisfactorily, they will be more willing to buy! Take advantage of this opportunity and recommend an upsell or cross-sell offer during the support conversation. And if you sell this offer with added value in the form of long-term problem prevention and as a win-win situation, then all the better for both you and the customer!
But stay unobtrusive! Leave the decision to the customer and focus on conveying a sense of personal care. For such support discussions, you need to know your offers, services and, above all, your personality inside and out.
Supportive customer communication agencies and dialogue marketing service providers who specialize in customer support can also help here - they know the right arguments, strategies and (telephone) methods!
Targeted marketing is essential as a measure to increase sales. But classic outbound marketing is no longer enough! Modern marketing relies on the inbound marketing methodology!
With inbound marketing, you provide solution-oriented content aimed at your target group, for example through blog articles, content offers such as white papers or e-books, newsletters or social media.
This allows you to advertise your (additional) products and services while at the same time achieving greater (digital) reach through content touchpoints. The basis is the creation of your buyer persona and buyer's journey: defining your target group and defining the path to purchase. These are important cornerstones for the targeted execution of all (inbound) marketing campaigns.
If you know who you want to target and attract as a customer, and where they are in their buying journey, you can target them more specifically with your content!
With this targeted implementation of content and SEO strategy, you are actively generating leads – the most fundamental component of successful inbound marketing and customer acquisition! After attracting (potential) customers with the solution-oriented content you provide, you are purposefully nurturing your prospects until they make a final buying decision – and then until they become advocates for your brand!
By perfectly aligning marketing, customer service, and sales, you can use the inbound marketing methodology to kick-start your self-promotion.
With the right software solutions, you can also automate all marketing processes: whether it's social media marketing, email marketing, creating and monitoring workflows and managing leads in the CRM, displaying the social media channels used, managing after-sales service - all communication processes can be managed centrally. In addition to professional and modern marketing, this also significantly reduces the workload of your employees!
The corresponding marketing consulting partners offer valuable additions to this and have the appropriate human and technical resources for holistic and professional (inbound) marketing, as well as the strategically necessary know-how!
Use all existing channels to get the most out of your sales promotion measures! In the age of digitalization, you will also be serving customers and traders who are increasingly moving online.
Via social media platforms, the use of appropriate messaging services, chat apps, SMS or chatbots on the company website – your ideal customers can contact you in a variety of ways, like never before! You should therefore be able to use professional communication tools for each relevant channel.
In addition, when you use several platforms at the same time, you have more space and opportunities for additional sales and touchpoints. For example, in your own online shop, shopping cart or checkout, via email, newsletters and invoices.
The combination of inbound and outbound marketing is also particularly promising when it comes to cross-channel communication! For example, through channels and measures such as proactive telesales and inbound telephony: in combination with professional customer support, specialist agencies help you sell targeted additional offers to incoming customer calls.
The more channels you use, the more present and accessible you are. Cross-channel availability with a full range of services is exactly what customers expect today!
With the support of professional agencies, external employees trained in customer support take over all communication processes in your company. This not only frees up your human resources, but also your technical and financial resources!
In particular, promoting and selling additional sales through targeted marketing, customer support and, above all, through channels, requires a lot of know-how and software.
If this is not possible, you will first have to train your employees in additional sales strategies, develop measures, find software solutions and integrate them specifically for your company. This costs a lot of time and money and, in the worst case, is a shot in the dark - if the implementation fails in the early stages, there will be no sales growth at all.
In addition to all the necessary resources, marketing and customer dialogue agencies also have the necessary know-how and proven processes. Marketing specialists and call center agents, fully adapted to your company and your sales goals, complement your service and sales and thus actively help increase sales!
There are several things you can do to effectively and measurably increase your sales. With our 12 measures, we have not only shown you the important adjustment screws, but also effective implementation options: additional sales, combinations and cooperation, touchpoints and inbound marketing, new customer acquisition and customer support. With the right strategies and professional implementation, you can fully exploit the potential of targeted sales increase opportunities!
With the right cross-channel company presentation, as well as accessibility and professional (customer) communication, you can bring your service and sales to a modern level. Satisfied customers will be ready to buy and become advocates of your brand!
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