5 Ways Product Based Businesses can Improve Sales and Boost Revenue

Products based businesses have to worry constantly about declining sales and revenues. Having achieved the herculean objective of increasing their customer base and winning the battle for consumer perception, they don’t want to squander their hard work. These businesses usually compete in a competitive market; this makes sales and revenue generation more of a challenge.

But this article is not about businesses suffering from decreasing sales and revenue, but about how they can up the ante on their sales activities. What can they do to improve sales and boost revenue?

Even if they are ahead of the game as compared to their competitors, they’ll still want to keep adding to their sales channels, increase their already burgeoning customer base and look to explore new avenues for revenue generation.

The business of sales growth and revenue generation is ongoing and doesn’t stop. It only stops if businesses are not very clear about their sales generation activities.

Let’s take a close look at how these businesses can give their sales a leg up and boost their top line.

(1) Deeper Customer Insights for Better Sales

No, this isn’t a magic trick; this is really possible. What you are trying to do is improve sales effectiveness, not the volume of sales. For this to happen, every sale you make must be scrutinized on various parameters. To maximize returns, you must negotiate the best deal for your product. This is only possible if you’ve access to customer intelligence, which is available to you in the form of sales data. So examine it minutely and find out:

• Whether you’ve priced the product right? Could you have set a higher selling price?
• Could you have sold more products to a particular customer?
• Were you able to sell a high end product or a standard product?

You get the answers to these questions and more by tracking and analyzing your sales. The idea is to get actionable insights from the products you’ve already sold and learn how you could have optimized the sales process to generate even more revenue from the proceedings. This isn’t as difficult as it sounds because you can take the help of integrated software solutions to not only help you track and access sales data but also get insights on how you can leverage this information.

54% of marketers are already investing in these solutions, are you?

(2) Inbound – Low Cost Alternative to Outbound Marketing

You’ll be forgiven for thinking that the idea behind this article is to offer cost effective tips to prop up your business’s sales figures. Quite frankly, that wasn’t our objective. But the fact remains that inbound marketing is one of the cheapest and currently the most effective ways of attracting leads.

Inbound delivers 54% more leads to a business’s marketing funnel than traditional forms of marketing.  The key to profitable inbound marketing is content, specifically content marketing. It is a critical subset, of inbound that will have a bearing not only on your business’s revenue generation but also its reputation and influence.

So how does content marketing improve your sales?

• Content developed around industry resources, best practices, user needs and so on will help customers make more informed buying decisions.
• By showcasing your domain expertise through well-written content pieces, you’re developing more trust in your brand; it is this trust that leads to better lead generation and conversion.
• Content begins your brand’s point of interaction; great content sparks value driven conversations with your brand, which furthers brand appeal leading to better sales.

The key is creating content that appeals to your target audience and making sure the content is delivered to them. To ensure content reaches your audience, use social media marketing.  With over a billion users on Facebook and hundreds of millions of them on Twitter, Google+ etc. no prizes for guessing a large percentage of your target audience has a presence on these networks. Each and every piece of content you create should be shared across them.  The more you share, the more its chances of going viral. And remember, it’s not just your content that’s going viral; it’s your brand as well.

The whole idea behind using inbound marketing is to change your marketing approach to improve sales. It’s about leveraging/exploring new marketing avenues that have a better a chance of increasing your sales figures.

(3) Use Technology to Increase Top Line Revenue And Cut Overhead Costs

If you want to boost revenue without really going overboard with your operational costs, it’s time to explore the various technology solutions available on the market to address your growing sales needs. Identify the pain points interfering with business growth and choose a business management suite that helps you get rid of the bottlenecks interfering with your growth strategy.

This pointer is not a plug for our own integrated business management suite, but an attempt to highlight the need for a ‘comprehensive results driven’ technology solution to improve sales.

Growth in sales and revenue is a direct outcome of how well you are able to manage your existing sales channels, your ability to keep adding and managing newer sales channels, and ensuring optimal control of your business operations. Rather than subscribing to a labor intensive process that leaves doors open for errors, incremental overhead costs and scalability issues, why not invest in technology to enhance sales and operations.

It’s not that you’ll have to search for such solutions. They are easily available; all you need to do is pick the right one.

(4) Leverage Existing Customer Base

Your existing customers are your pot of gold. Don’t go looking for it at the end of the rainbow. These people are already buying from you, so why not go the distance and try selling more products to them! The idea is to make the most of your Cost per Customer.

Do the math. Compare the costs of adding more customers to your business with increasing sales to existing customers. The latter works out to be cheaper.

Look inside rather than outside. You’ve already captured their mindspace; it’s time to capitalize on it.

Figure out how your existing customers can be approached again to buy more products. Will a discount do the trick? Will adding a few more product offerings rekindle their interest? There are plenty of businesses who offer product discounts to customers on their next purchase. This is just one of the many ways they are making sure customers buy more products from them.

Put in place strategies that allow your sales personnel to approach existing customers and convert them into repeat buyers.

(5) Satisfaction At Point-of-Sale

Make sure buyers are able to embrace your products. Your point-of-sale should be intuitive, engaging and interactive. Your customers must be able to buy your products with ease. Aim for a zero error purchase process. Error in this case could be lack of information, complexity or something else that affecting the sales process.

The fact of the matter is – You as a business are satisfied when you sell a product, but have you ever wondered whether your customers felt satisfied when they bought your product. This isn’t about feedback; it’s about the process of purchase. Sales will hit the roof if and only if you’re able to ensure a painless shopping experience, whether online or offline.

From the time the customer considers your product for purchase till the time he/she actually buys the product, focus must be on convenience and satisfaction. Deliver both and you really don’t have to worry about revenue generation.

Final Words

So, here they are – 5 great ways of improving sales and boosting revenue. You can actually use a collection of them to take your sales northwards or align them with some other tricks/methods/tactics you’ve up your sleeves. Just one more thing – whatever you do, make an informed decision.