Three Critical Ways Marketing Can Be Applied to Close More Sales (Part I)

The new reality is here for sales and marketing — both must operate as one seamless entity. This means compelling, attractive, and persuasive strategies that are integrated to acquire new customers, close sales, and retain them for long-term profitability.?

A Post-Covid world is not the new normal. It’s the new reality. The old order of doing things has been irrevocably disrupted. The internet has cemented the power of information in the hands of the buyer. B2B buyers are doing over 50% of their buying research upfront; decision times are shorter and buyers have narrowed their options before they even speak to the first salesperson. Buyers have also prioritized their home life and have opted for remote and hybrid work environments. Many now prefer to conduct the majority of their operations virtually using once unfamiliar platforms like Zoom.?

In this two-part article, I will share how to attract customers, persuade them, and close more sales. Both parts apply to sales and marketing. For me, there is no longer a meaningful difference. I will first cover tactics you can deploy immediately. Then in Part II, I will discuss diving deeper to create a sales & marketing environment that fundamentally responds to the new reality, head on.

Social Selling

Social selling is a method innovative businesses are using to close more sales. At its core, social selling harnesses the power of social media to develop personal connections with target prospects while making sales less transactional and more interactive.

At the end of the day, people prefer to work with businesses that appeal to their humanity and with which they have some sort of personal connection. The key is focusing on creating a connection before even trying to introduce, let alone close, a sale.

To effectively integrate social selling into your business strategy, first, you must make and have connections — both personally and within the social media framework. Make a point of offering prospective clients helpful information to establish a personal touch with them and solve their problems. Create the impression that you actually want to help them and not just sell them products.?

Secondly, use social platforms to curate and share captivating content tailored to your specific audience. This helps to keep your brand top of mind while actively engaging them to establish a deeper connection with you and your brand.

Third, ensure you have something of value to offer them. This demonstrates that you are committed to solving their problems and that you are not simply seeking to mint a dollar out of their pockets. Therefore, curate and share content that offers your audience tangible value, while building trust.

Make this social approach to selling an ingrained habit and part of your organizational culture. Be consistent about it and your customers will come to trust and rely on you for thought leadership and value.

2. Better Collateral

Again, the Post-Covid world has ushered in greater dependence on self-serve research options and digital solutions to solve their problems. Therefore, produce better collateral to close more sales, expand your customer base, and increase profitability. We’ll talk more about the strategy behind this in Part II.

Be extensive in your approach. Exploit all available collateral from both printed and digital material, Powerpoint presentations, videos, landing pages, webinars and workshops, infographics, guides, case studies, and blogs. If you don’t have it, build it. This is the material that will represent and communicate your value when you are not right in front of potential customers.?

While communicating the value of your brand and business, interweave the story of your brand, experiences, and expertise. Use anecdotes, and state outcomes, cite case studies, and share testimonials. Better collateral communicates the customer’s predicament and your solution to it. It tells the customer's story while shining a light on “the happy ending.”.

Last, better collateral creatively compels. If done correctly, better collateral communicates your company's brand and value without drawing conclusions for the customer. It convey emotions that paint a picture.

Pain Points

Last but not least, do not forget to identify, call out the feeling behind, and offer alleviation of customers’ pain points. Because the power of emotion is very influential in the decision making process, it is very important to incorporate it into key parts of your marketing. People will inevitably take action faster to alleviate pain (emotional, psychological, physical) than they will move from the status quo to a better state. The latter is possible, but the former is more often the immediate priority.

Emotional “pain” and “suffering” — this sounds dramatic when considering a considered purchase or final sale, but it’s true at the core. There’s always an emotional element, including pain associated with a challenge or problem. Draw the shorter line to your solution to overcoming the pain. Lower the barriers to entry and make it easy to say “yes” to relief.

Welcome to the New Reality

If you’re still clinging to pre-pandemic sales and marketing practices, it’s time to change. Don’t let business pass you by. Reassess your marketing and sales strategies.

Start by adopting the tactics of social selling, better collateral, and targeting pain points to close more sales and improve retention in the long term. Next time, I will share deeper insights on building a more effective sales and marketing strategy that will effectively adapt to our new reality. Stay tuned.