Short on Your Sales Goals? 3 Tips for Generating Revenue Quickly.

There are as many sales tactics out there as you could ever want to find, but not all of them can be implemented, and they certainly don’t all have the same return on investment (ROI). Depending on your industry, some sales cycles can last months or even years, but there are a few methods that I've found to generate some quick sales revenue with minimal investment in both time and money, no matter what industry you’re in.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking these sales tactics are “easy”, because any type of sales takes discipline and consistent follow up, but these are some strategies that I’ve found to shorten the sales cycle. If you’re close to your year-end goal but not quite there, these tactics could help push you over the finish line! Some of these might seem obvious, but it’s only obvious if you implement them; they won’t work if they’re never used…

1) Selling to prospects based on length of sales cycle.

What I mean by this is you need to sell to prospects who have the greatest likelihood of closing in the quickest time frame possible. With this in mind, there are 3 different types of customers to sell to:

a. Current clients. If your business offers differently priced products or services, it makes the most sense to go to your current clients to upsell them on different or additional services. A great way to do this is to create some sort of educational marketing campaign that informs your current clients of all your different services and how you've been able to benefit others in their industry with “x, y, z” additional products/services. This will keep your current clients from feeling like they are being “sold” by offering valuable resources and information about your additional products or service offerings. The customer most willing to pay you is someone who’s already paying you or has paid you in the past. By going to current customers, you’re able to skip the entire introduction and rapport building processes; not to mention, you probably have all their billing information already!

b. Lost business or past customers. The second type of prospect to target after your current customers is your lost business or past clients, if parting was amicable (obviously). This means businesses you've created proposals for in the past but for whatever reason, they chose not to buy from you. Chances are they went with a competitor, but may not be satisfied with their current relationship. There are usually bumps in the road when switching vendors, so what better time to swoop in and save them from a sub-par competitor! By going back to those who have considered you in the past, you're able to skip the whole introduction process and bypass many other formalities the typical sales cycle requires. They may also still be experiencing the same issues as when you last spoke with them. It only makes sense to sell to those whose needs you already know and have attempted to address in the past; simply repackage your messaging. There are many potential reasons they didn't choose you originally, but if there is still a pain point for them, it gives you the opportunity to address that pain point and potentially win their business.

c. Third (and lastly) pursue new business. Only after you have exhausted the first two types of customers should you start heavily pursuing new business. While getting new business is fun and the reason many of us got into sales, it is also the hardest and most time-consuming business to close. The prospect is unfamiliar with you and your services. You aren't sure who your primary point of contact is at the company, and you likely aren't sure of their specific wants and needs before you're able to get them on the phone or in a meeting. Hunting for new business is absolutely needed for an organization to stay profitable and for the sales team to keep their funnel filled, but there are a couple other areas to go after before moving on to new business. You can even incorporate the first two types of prospects (current customers and lost business) into your new business development efforts. Below, I’ll discuss how to automate your new business solicitation efforts so you can have a good mix of new business coming in while you’re pursuing your current customers and lost business. By using a tiered sales strategy like this, you will decrease the amount of time spent in the sales cycle and increase the amount of business closed while utilizing different selling tactics.

2) Automating your outreach efforts.

By automating some of your standard outreach methods, you free up your sales people to spend their time in areas with the biggest return on investment (i.e. in front of customers). One great and inexpensive way to multiply your outreach efforts is by automating your email outreach. This can be done for both current clients and new business alike. Many Sales CRM platforms offer some sort of template builder so you can send emails quickly, and this is a great way to save your sales team time. By using personalization tokens embedded within your CRM, you're able to make each email appear customized to the individual without having to type out every single email. The trick here is to make sure that you are collecting meaningful information from your interactions with every client and recording it in your CRM. By putting things in the email such as the prospect's name, current provider, industry, contract renewal information, etc. the email can be targeted to each individual prospect in your database without the effort of writing an individual email to each of them. If you want more ideas around template creation, feel free to message me!

3) Referral Programs. By going to the top 50% of your accounts and offering them a referral program, you can generate a good amount of warm leads for your sales team to put in their rotations. This type of program can look a lot of different ways depending on your business and industry, but a few different ways I've seen are: offering discounted pricing, a free month of services, or a portion off their invoice (dependent on the deal closing and the amount closed). Before going to current clients with any offers for discounted pricing, it is crucial that you run the numbers and make sure you can afford to give them discounted pricing. There's nothing worse than offering a client something you can't afford and losing money, or even worse, breaking your word with them.

In conclusion:

There are very few new sales tactics “under the sun”, but there are some tried and true ways to generate revenue quickly. Just remember, these tactics will only work if you stay dedicated and consistent in your follow up and sales activity. Keep hustling and please share any of your success stories in the comments below! 

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Happy hunting!