By Nadia Bulcourt – 14 November 2022
The importance of a sales strategy for your business
All businesses need a sales strategy, but many don’t know how to plan it. However, the success of a business depends on planning and implementing the right strategy to achieve its goals.
To develop an effective sales strategy, you need to implement a clear marketing vision and a well-structured action plan. In this article, we present the basic principles that will help you create your sales strategy.
Sales strategy: definition and importance
With competition increasing every day, it is essential to implement a relevant sales strategy to obtain more and more contracts. Thanks to it, the company has a clearer vision of the path to follow and the means to deploy to achieve its objectives.
What is a sales strategy?
The commercial strategy consists of putting in place all the marketing and commercial means that will allow a company to reach its objectives. To function, this sales strategy will take into consideration the strengths and weaknesses of the company and its environment.
The importance of developing a good strategy
By developing a business strategy, you will have a better chance of growing your business. If properly implemented, it will allow you to maximize your profitability over a defined period while considering your current and potential resources.
How to implement a sales strategy?
Today, it is more and more difficult for a manager to set up an efficient commercial strategy. Indeed, the latter does not necessarily have much time to devote to sales. Moreover, they do not always have a sales manager and do not necessarily master all the sales channels.
This is why it is essential that the manager surrounds himself with specialists and salespeople to make the right choices for his company. Thanks to their expertise, it will be more obvious to set good commercial objectives. These objectives answer the question “Where do we want to go?“.
It is important to know that among the innovative practices, some companies do not hesitate to let the salespeople define their own objectives. These are then communicated to the management, who validate them or not.
Defining sales objectives
A sales objective describes what a company wants to achieve over a given period. It can concern, for example, the turnover or a few customers to reach. Following sales objectives helps to motivate your teams, provided that they are achievable within the given timeframe. This way, your salespeople know where they should focus their efforts. As a result, they avoid spreading themselves too thinly in unprofitable sales actions.
Analyze the market strategically
A market analysis allows a company to keep up to date with the latest trends in its industry, consumer buying habits, technological developments, and competitive actions.
By using data, your company will be able to create a realistic and effective plan that will support your decisions and strategies, both in sales and marketing.
To analyze the market strategically, you will need to consider different aspects such as:
- the size of the market,
- the trends and growth rate of the market,
- the competitive landscape,
- the buyer profile,
- internal and external factors.
By understanding your market well enough, you can more easily contribute to the growth and success of your business.
Let’s take a closer look at the different steps to consider creating your sales strategy.
What are the steps to create a sales strategy?
How do you build a coherent and effective sales strategy for your company? If you don’t know where to start, we invite you to read on!
Setting objectives
Setting goals is an essential step in maximizing your growth results. To do this, companies often use the SMART method to define business goals.
This SMART method is a real help in developing your strategy. Each objective must be well formulated and well understood by all.
To respect this step, we advise you to first define a main objective and then, complementary sub-objectives.
Identify your target audience
For a sales action plan to be effective, it is essential to identify your target audience. Indeed, it is essential to understand who your customers are and what drives them to use your services.
To do this, you can use techniques such as segmentation or SWOT analysis.
Once you have identified your target audience, you will be able to create an approach strategy that will perfectly suit your customers’ expectations.
Know your environment
It is important to know that a market is not fixed in time. Indeed, it is constantly evolving and full of opportunities if you understand it well and identify all its movements. It is therefore important to take the time to analyze the main components of this market. As mentioned earlier, you can use the SWOT matrix to identify your internal (strengths and weaknesses) and external (opportunities and threats) success and failure factors.
Establish an action plan
Now all you need to do is identify the angles of attack to achieve your business ambitions. You will determine them in an action plan. This is usually done once a year and will allow you to identify all the sales and marketing actions to be implemented in your company.
In short, the sales action plan defines what you sell and to whom, but especially when and how you sell your products and/or services.
Choose the right tools
Objectives are not enough to make your business successful. You must also provide your team with the right tools and resources to achieve them. To achieve this, your teams must master the various prospecting techniques.
This is where prospecting tools like CRM, LinkedIn social network… come into play. These tools aim to boost both your productivity and your sales. It is therefore essential to choose them well and master them perfectly.
Monitor your results
Once you have set your objectives and exposed them to your marketing and sales teams, you will set up a follow-up of your results. This follow-up is essential to adapt your actions.
The monitoring tools are multiple and varied. They can be from a very simple to a more professional level. There are, for example, softwares that allow you to follow the purchases and sales of your products or services.
How to make a successful sales strategy?
First and foremost, a sales strategy must be written in a clear and concise manner so that it is understandable to the entire team. It includes the company’s main procedures and summarizes the key elements that constitute the company’s competitive advantage.
To help you build an effective sales strategy, there are some things you should not overlook:
- Your customers’ concerns
The customer relationship and experience have become a major element for companies. They must therefore take them into account on digital platforms as well as in person.
- Improving your sales process
Today, mastering data is clearly essential, especially for small and medium-sized businesses. It is therefore important to train yourself to apply good sales practices.
- Anticipating your market
The success of a company also results from the implementation of effective strategies to anticipate and navigate in a highly competitive global landscape. To survive, companies must constantly work on their competitiveness.
Implementing an operational sales strategy
At Finelis, we help you implement an operational business strategy that respects the style, culture, and well-being of everyone. We support you in every step of your sales process, regardless of your company’s level of sales maturity.
The idea is not to learn for the sake of learning, but rather to progressively integrate concepts that help the salesperson daily, a bit like a great athlete who discovers one day that he or she can also take care of his or her diet in order to be more efficient or as efficient but with less effort.
Would you like to benefit from support to make your sales strategy a success? The Finelis Coaching team is here to help you:
- You benefit from expert coaching.
- You choose the duration of your support.
- You get help to optimize what already exists within your company until you progressively integrate concepts that help your salespeople daily.