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In the current climate there are a lot of businesses faced with financial uncertainty who are relying on their sales teams to pull in vital income to start seeing signs of growth after a difficult few months. The problem is that a lot of companies are tightening their belts and getting money out of them is proving incredibly difficult – and that’s where your sales team can start to really prove their worth.

Selling is one of those skills that, unfortunately, nobody is born with and you have to spend years perfecting your strategies and techniques. It requires you to build and understand your own buyer persona over a long period of time to understand what your customers are looking for and where they’re at in the buying journey, while also welcoming challenges and responding to them accordingly - and all of that while constantly reviewing how successful your sales strategies are and adapting them to make them more efficient and more effective.

Regularly refining your sales strategy and technique is an essential process to ensure that you’re winning more sales than you’re losing. Besides knowing your product or service inside out, which is essential when explaining to your prospect why they need it in their life, implementing the following four sales strategies will dramatically increase your chances of securing a sale across almost any sector:

Selling Strategy #1: Build Genuine Relationships With Prospects

If you can develop a personal connection with your prospect then they are much more likely to put their trust and their money into the product or service that you are trying to sell to them.

Avoid awkward small talk or talking from a hypothetical script at all costs. Instead, try to find common interests and engage in friendly conversation to make yourself likeable, building a genuine rapport with your prospect that makes them think “yeah, I like them, I’m going to invest my time and money in them.”

Ultimately, you want to make your prospect feel like a human being, not just another “lead.” Their business is everything to them and they're not going to take an unnecessary risk so you need to be understanding and take the personal approach - because you wouldn't throw all your hard-earned money into something you're not sure about, either. Empathy is a key skill here and another part of your sales armoury that you need to develop throughout your career if you're going to succeed.

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Selling Strategy #2: Give Before You Take

As humans we often feel obligated to give back and, as a salesperson, you should look to give before you take. If you are unwilling to be the first person to give, you may subconsciously communicate to your prospect that you are only looking for personal gain in this transaction which will ring alarm bells for them and convince them that this partnership might not be for them.  

So, what sort of things can you give to your prospect? You could start by offering a demonstration or free trial of your service that has been personalised for their business and the specific industry they are in. Your prospect will appreciate the effort you have gone to and naturally will feel as though they should give back to you by making a purchase. Not only that, the demo might help them to actually see what your service can do and how they could benefit from it, capitalising on approaches they’ve been missing without even realising it.

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Selling Strategy #3: Demonstrate Expertise and Credibility

People trust those with authority. We’re conditioned to believe this from a very young age where the likes of our parents and teachers were the authoritative figures in our childhood helping to shape our behaviour and development.

You can use this to your advantage professionally by demonstrating your expertise to your prospects. Have you had 15 years of experience in your field? Add this credible title by your name on LinkedIn and it will instantly give you more authority on a platform where professionals frequently look up their contacts to learn more about them.

If you haven’t got a reputable title for your profile just yet, you can prove the credibility of the product or service you’re selling instead. This is where you should bring in some of your customer testimonials. Often, our actions are influenced by others’ behaviour and hearing or reading genuine success stories from others could prove to be your secret weapon.

Do you have a customer in a similar business or sector, or someone who has a similar persona to your prospect who is benefitting from your product or service already? If so this social proof will add that all-important credibility to help push your prospect over the line and generate the all-important sale.

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Selling Strategy #4: Use Time-Based Deadlines

You know those emails that draw you in with a subject line like “Last Chance to Purchase Product X!”? We all get them, and many of us are convinced to make a purchase because of them. Well, take inspiration from your inbox and use those time-based deadlines within your sales strategy to create a sense of urgency and encourage your prospect to act now to avoid missing out later.  

Fear of missing out is a genuine concern for some people which is why such sales messages work time and again in certain sectors. Here you can try a range of different offers including “this week only” or even “today only” packages and see what kind of impact this has on your email list. Of course, it will need sign-off from those controlling the pricing structure first!

In such uncertain times it’s definitely worth trying a number of different methods to generate sales. Even when things return to something resembling normality, you’ll need to call on every skill in your sales armoury to increase leads and generate sales, so try combining the techniques outlined above for a fully comprehensive sales strategy that will guarantee you more sales.

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We hope you found these sales tips useful and you can always try combining the techniques outlined above for a fully comprehensive sales strategy that will guarantee you more sales.