Every organisation wants to achieve more sales. They’ll look into all sorts of strategies to boost sales, but often come up short. Don’t let that happen to you. Take note of these methods to double your sales to ensure your organisation stays ahead.
Do you want to double your sales?
Of course you do. Every organisation does. A boost in sales provides all sorts of benefits. You’ll increase your revenue, which usually means you see a boost in profits. You can then use this extra money to grow the organisation, which should lead to even more sales and even higher profitability.
It’s an important cycle for every business. When your sales stagnate, the whole company stagnates. You end up with no capital that you can use for growth, which provides your competitors with the time needed to overtake you.
You need to double your sales quickly to prevent that from happening. This has likely led to you trying all sorts of strategies to boost sales, many of which may not work for your business. In fact, picking the wrong strategy leads to you spending money in areas that don’t grow your business.
Thankfully, there are several strategies out there with proven results. This article examines how to double sales in 12 months, and some of the strategies that get results.
Method #1 – Improve Your Shopping Cart
Most businesses have websites. But they may not place enough focus on the most important aspects of their websites. They’re so concerned with how to increase traffic that they forget to take care of the people who actually visit the site.
Of course, your website needs traffic. Don’t assume that you shouldn’t work on improving those numbers. But how your website handles the people who visit is just as important.
Think about your online sales funnel. This outlines the steps that people take in the purchasing process. It covers things such as awareness, which is when somebody finds out about you. Research is another stage. This may be the period during which somebody explores your website to find out more. The final stage is usually the sale itself. That’s what you need to fine-tune in order to double your sales.
This brings us to your website’s shopping cart. Improving this to the point where it converts just 1% more visitors into customers can lead to a 50% increase in revenue. Using a standard PayPal sales page isn’t enough. It doesn’t provide enough assurance to your visitors and it fails to individualise the process.
Instead of going for the default, create your own shopping cart. There are plenty of tools out there to help you do that. SamCart is an excellent example. This tool allows you to build content into your shopping cart and online forms. The form still collects the information you need from your customers. But you can use it to create a clearer structure. Plus, you can add information to the form that further encourages users.
Here’s an example of a SamCart page:
Figure 1 – http://www.jeffbullas.com/5-proven-growth-marketing-tips-to-double-your-sales/
Notice how much more it provides than a standard shopping cart. There’s a big banner telling people about the company’s money back guarantee. The entire sidebar tells the customer what they get from the product or service. Plus, the form itself offers more clarity than a bog-standard shopping cart.
It’s such a simple method of optimisation, but it’s one that has a huge effect on your sales. Having the right shopping cart is one of the key ways to double your sales. It leads to higher engagement and more conversions.
Method #2 – Educate Your Audience
One of the most common strategies to boost sales is attempting to push your products onto the customer. You constantly focus on your product in an effort to achieve the sale. It’s a high-pressure tactic that can lead to a few prospects biting. But it puts off far more people than it draws in. You may find that one of the best ways to double sales is to take a more educational approach.
What does that mean? It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re educating the consumer about your product. Instead, you’ll use this approach to educate them about your industry. Most importantly, you’ll show them how whatever they’re using now could cost them money.
Let’s look at an example. Assume your company sells internet services. You know that you provide the best value around, but you need to get the word out. However, pitching your service doesn’t work. People just don’t seem interested in arranging an appointment to talk about what you have to offer.
This often comes down to a key thought on the part of your customer – “My system isn’t broken, so I don’t need to fix it.” They’d rather stay put because it’s easier and they don’t think they’re losing out.
You need to take a more educational approach. Implement this four-step strategy to double your sales:
- Identify the largest customers in your sector. For internet services, this usually means large businesses, rather than individual customers. Create a list of prospects based on your research.
- First contact. What’s key here is that you’re not attempting to sell anything. That may sound counterintuitive, but it works as one of the key strategies to boost sales. Instead, you’re looking to ask a couple of questions so you can gather information. In the example, you may ask which internet service provider the prospective client uses and how long they’ve been with them. Most people will answer these questions because it doesn’t take much time. Conclude your calls once you have the information.
- Use the answers from your short survey to determine who on your list could save money using your product or services. You’re essentially creating a shortlist of hot leads here.
- Call the people on your new shortlist. But you’re not looking to sell directly again. Instead, you offer something educational that allows the client to discover that they’re not getting the best service. In the example, this could be a whitepaper with a title like “10 Ways You’re Losing Money With Your Internet Provider.” Conclude each call by letting the customer know that you’re there to help if they want to cut their costs or improve their service.
Here’s why this works. You’re informing the customer without pushing anything onto them. Moreover, you establish yourself as an authority in your sector. When the customer reads your material, they’ll discover why you’re a better option. You don’t even have to tell them. Many will get in touch to find out more, which means they’re hot leads that offer an increased chance of a sale. This is much more effective as a method to double your sales than cold calling. You’re establishing interest and educating your potential clients.
Method #3 – Engaging Popup Ads
There are other ways to get the attention that can help you to double your sales. Coming back to the digital realm, you may use popup adverts to tell people about you.
This certainly gets your organisation in front of the right people. But it’s also a double-edged sword. Popups have become so prevalent that many people click away from them without reading. They assume the message doesn’t hold value because so many popups appear spammy.
To counteract this, your popup must offer something of value. This is important because popup ads can have a massive effect on email subscriber lists. A good offer in your popup can convert up to 3% more of your website’s visitors into subscribers. These are people who have an active interest in your service. Appealing to that list is one of the best strategies to boost sales.
So, what should your popup have to ensure people pay attention to it? Here are some of the key features:
- A clear design that doesn’t overload the visitor with imagery. You don’t want people to have to search for the message in your ad.
- A clear call to action that tells the visitor exactly what they get when they subscribe. A single field asking for an email address should do the trick.
- A responsive design that looks just as good on mobile devices as it does on desktops. This ensures that mobile users don’t get frustrated with poorly-sized popups.
- Colours that match your organisation’s branding. Going off-brand with your colours leads people to believe the popup isn’t related to your business.
- Automatic activation whenever somebody reaches an appropriate page on your website. Having unrelated popups appear reinforces the idea that they’re spam. Make sure the popup relates to the content that’s currently on the visitor’s screen.
Of course, the popup alone won’t help you to double your sales. What it does is provide you with a list of people who want to hear more about what you offer. You can use this list to target relevant services to people. Moreover, you can also use this list to provide educational materials via email. Much like with the second method on this list, these materials can help potential customers learn more about your industry. And because you’re the authoritative source, they’ll come to you when they want to make a change.
The Final Word
These are just a few of the strategies to boost sales that you may have missed out on. The important thing with all of them is that they place no pressure on people. It’s all about making things easier and providing access to useful information. That piques interest and keeps people engaged with your business.
To round up, here’s what you need to do to double your sales:
- Optimise your website to ensure visitors keep moving through your sales funnel. Pay particular attention to making your shopping carts as clear and informative as possible.
- Provide educational materials to potential clients, instead of going in for the hard sell.
- Pay attention to your popups to ensure visitors don’t instantly click away from them.
Happily, you’re not alone in your efforts. The CUB Network is here to help you give your business the sales boost that it needs.
At CUB our ambition is to unite those who are changing the world through their businesses. We support these people by building a private community of Australia’s next titans of industry. And we bring these titans together to accelerate the achievement of each other’s ambitions.
If you wish to be considered for membership, please feel free to request a club introduction on our membership page: www.cub.club/membership.
