You are a CEO and wonder how to increase your sales and revenues! If this is your case, this blog might interest you. 

Many studies out there show that it is 5 times easier to sell to an established clients than it is to a new client. So, why not spend some time to upsell (more or bigger of the same) and / or cross sell (complementary products or services) to these established clients.

Your established clients shoud technically represent roughly 30% of your sales.

I have always said that we are all in sales. We may not be paid on a commission base, but we all have a genuine interest in seeing our company do as well as possible.

Let’s take this as an example : your support / servie people spent most of their time helping your clients either on the phone, in person or otherwise.  Your people quickly earn the trust of your clients. This trust is worth a lot to you. Your clients often open up to your people about problem related or not to the product they bought from you.

Sales is a science where whoever has the right information at the right time, is the most likely to get the order.

 Here are a couple of simple tips that proved beneficial time and time over :

• Training the support / service people on your company’s Unique Value Proposition (UVP or what makes you better than the competition):

By training your service / support team, on your UVP, they will be in a better position to speak about what makes you better aand the value add of your offering. Having earned the trust of your clients, the message of your service / support people, will carry a bigger impact than if it came from a salesperson. Once done, they just have to debrief with the salesperson assigned to the account, who in turn will carry the ball to the sale.

• Sales meetings;

Having your service / support people attend sales meeting on a regular basis will provide the sales team with information on the real client’s appettiate for such and such product, or even more valuable, the real influencers and decision makers. The sales team will therefore be in a better postion to craft the righ message to the right person.

• Strategic planning for the bigger accounts;

Holding strategic planning meeting on a regular basis (monthly or every 2 months) with some of the customer facing people, will help the sales team create the right strategy aimed at the right people at your clients. These types of meetings reduce sales cycles and most importantly avoid being blind sided by the competition. In many cases, these meetings will sometimes  increase the size of the sale.

• Recognizing the Customer Service people

They say that people are coin operated! However, recognition is way higher in the motivation scale. So it is important to recognize whoever has contribute to important contracts (emails, coma=pany meetings, special memo to the managers of the people, etc.). Another way is to create a support / service team bonus when they contributed to the deal. I admit that this one is sometimes tricky. It has to be fair, consistent and easy to understand. One thing for sure, I spend many hours thinking of the right compensation scheme.  Everyone of these hours spent were brought their value in gold.

These simple tips work in small and large companies. They help generate more / bigger  sales faster.  Because your entire customer facing team deliver the same message, it will increase your customer satisfaction and somehow block the competition, it will also improve your teams cohesion.

SO, like I always say : we are all in sales,…. Even if we are not compensated the same way.

Good luck and good selling.