As a small business owner, you may ask yourself why tracking sales is important. You know the products that you offer, you know your budget, and your books balance at the end of every month. Why do you need to make the effort or invest in some type of software that will allow you to track your sales? This article will discuss the importance of that and more.
Selling Products Continue reading
When developing a new product or service, one of the first things to consider is how to get it to the end-user. Deciding on what channels of distribution to use is a very important business decision that must be made correctly. Using the wrong channels of distribution costs you money and depletes the value of your product.
1) How does the end-user want to buy?
To answer this, you’ll need to understand your customers and your relationship to them. How does your customer prefer to buy this product? Will they need customization or regular service? Maybe your customer needs other products or services to be able to use your product. Continue reading
Your small business exists because it has a product or service to sell. However, you can’t have a sale if you don’t have a buyer. And you can’t have a buyer if you don’t successfully generate and track sales leads.
What Exactly is a Sales Lead?
In general, a sales lead is a potential customer who previously indicated an interest in your product or service. They are not a customer…yet. Your job (or that of your sales reps) is to sway that individual or business so that they become your customer.
Seems like an easy enough task. Continue reading
I came across a blog the other day written several years ago by Al Lautenslager for Entrepreneur.com.
He tells a story of walking into the dry cleaners and finding a $5-off coupon for the pizza joint a few doors away. Deciding to enjoy some pizza, he walks to the pizza place to redeem the coupon and there on the counter he finds a $5-off coupon for the dry cleaner. This might be called reciprocal marketing or, as Al suggests, fusion marketing. Whatever you call it, it makes sense.
Finding a power partner – Continue reading
As many people know, it can be very difficult to grow revenue for their company. Do you have the right sales strategy in place? Maybe you don’t even have a written strategy. Are sales growing as expected? Maybe you should double check your sales strategy or put one in place to guarantee your company continues to have some growth.
The first reason you should check your strategy is to ensure your entire sales team and the whole company Continue reading
Power Partners is a compelling concept. Simply put, it is a group of businesses that band together to use and promote the products of the other businesses in the group. There is an old song; “No Man is an Island.” No one can do it alone in the business world.
As much as we might want to think that we can win the battle alone; it just does not work that way. No matter what your line of work, you cannot afford to stand alone. You need people promoting your business and helping to build your clientele. Yes, we have many online marketing tools to help us out, but what is better than “word of mouth,” especially when it comes from people you trust.
Find the people your customers trust, and build a relationship with them. Continue reading
The shortest distance between two points is always a straight line. However, selling directly to your customer instead of developing an indirect sales channel isn’t just about cutting out the middleman and keeping all the profit for yourself. It’s about considering the pluses and minuses of going it alone.
Selling direct may sound like the most profitable way for a company to do business, until you consider the costs that go into selling this way. Let’s compare Microsoft and Apple.
For the most part, Apple sells direct. Continue reading
Everyone wants to win. Companies love tracking sales growth. But what about the losses? Don’t overlook them. They are important to your company as well.
In the MediaPost article, “9 Metrics Every Company Should Use,” writer and senior vice president of strategy and solutions Martha Bush, suggests:
As the number of sales channels continues to increase, so has the need for organizations to get a strong, metrics-based grip on all that data to maximize their successes and learn from their failures.