Optimizing Your Sales Process – Dissected!

If you are doing sales, you have to constantly think on how to maximize your effort.

And how you can create leverage on your sales process and get back exponential results…

To bring this further, let’s look take a leaf out of the most sought after marketer today.

Jay Abraham says there are only 3 ways to grow your business. Only 3.

• Grow your no. of customers
• Increase the frequency of your sales transactions
• Increase the value of your sales transaction

Now that can give a lot of insights on how you can optimize your sales process. And getting as much out of the initial sales transactions.

There are several stages in a sales process. Let’s examine them from start to finish…

Pre-Sales

Move the free line. Give something of value away for free. Not just any free things you can think of. That will serve as a no-risk bait for your prospect to commit to you.

For example, if you are selling a trading system, you may want to give a free booklet on trading strategies. Something related, and packed with good value.

Get them to opt in to receive their freebie.

Follow up

Email them. Follow up with them with more valuable information. And pre-sell your product. Tell them how your product can help them or their business.

Give real examples. Give specific case studies. Focus on the ROI. Educate and empower them…

All these while…always follow up, follow up, follow up…

Sales Page

Write a compelling sales copy for your product. Highlight your prospect’s problems. And aggravate it. Make them feel the pain.

Provide them the solution that your product is supposed to give. Sweeten the deal by piling on the bonuses. Do a risk reversal by giving them a free trial or money back guarantee.

That’s copywriting 101.

That said, you can also look to incorporate an up-sell element on the sales page itself.

Take a look at Amazon.com. They have subtle up-selling components such as:

“Best Value” - Buy 2 books at 20% discount…

“Customer who have bought this item have also bought this”         

- Cross-selling related products

“Special offers & promotions”

All these are done aimed at one thing – getting the customers to spend more.

And Amazon does this very well. Godaddy is another example of having good a up-selling platform in place. Their’s are a bit more direct and in-your-face though. That said, it is still effective in getting them more profit.

Pre-payment

When they are about to make payment. Bring them to a page whereby they can choose to buy a best value package (e.g. Buy 2 get 1 free). Or they can move on to buy the intended item.

Again – getting customers to spend more when they are already in the buying mood.

You want them to act. Not tomorrow. Not the day after tomorrow. Now.

So to do that, you gotta instill some urgency. Introduce one-time offers. Set a deadline. Tell them if they buy now, they 20% off…or they get 2 more bonuses…

Push that scarcity factor. And get them to take the action of buying NOW!

Thank you page

At this juncture, re-affirm their buying decision. Congratulate them on a great investment. And tell them to get them started.

This will help reduce refund rates also as to get them to really reap the benefit of your product. That will increase customer loyalty to you.

You can use this opportunity to up-sell another related product.

After Sales

As you already know by now…follow up some more!

Ask them how they are doing. Tell them how to get the most out of their investment in your product. Let them know you genuinely care for them as a customer.

Get them to be also be your affiliate. Your customers already know about you and your product. They will make very good referrals to you if they like your product.

Profile your customers.

Know who are your repeat customers and who spend the most on your products. The Pareto’s Law applied in business and marketing is hugely important.

Focus on getting them to spend some more. And treat them well.

We talk a lot about the selling process. But remember your product is important as well. You don’t want all your marketing and sales effort to go down the drain just because of your customer’s dissatisfaction with your product.

So there you have it. As we go through the sales stages I mentioned above, you can see how we can increase

- No. of customers (via referrals and more follow ups)

- Frequency of transactions (via up-selling and cross-selling)

- Value of transactions (via up-selling)

This process constitutes a whole profit center by itself with a full sales process with many branches. And it applies very much offline as well as it is online.

Where you can go from here onwards is to simply….rinse and repeat!

Grow many profit centers. Multiply them and incorporate the selling process as described above for each of these profit centers.

As usual, let me know what you think. You have more ideas on how to optimize your business? Share them here and we can discuss!

All Success,

P.S By the way, Tucson SEO Solutions compiled a very comprehensive list of do-follow blogs. Very useful list if you are into SEO and looking for good link backs.

[tags]E-MoneyMarketing, business, sales optimization, business optimization, up-selling, cross-selling, pareto law, Jay Abraham[/tags]

Earn the maximum profit with the better quality should be the main target of a business holder.Thanks for your nice post and tips.

Wow! This is very helpful! Thanks for the post! Very interesting.

I love the information you have here. My store was slacking on sales and i’m going to put some of these methods into place. Thanks much!

Nice tips – especially the one on following up.

@ Reise:

Yep, good quality prospects always convert better.

@ Ed:

Great! Put them in place. And keep me posted on your results.

@ SEO and Tim:

Thanks man! Appreciate it!

Cheers,
Jag

What a great tips that you share about?Thanks for sharing all the useful tips to us.

Great article full of helpful tips…Thanks!

Another way to optimize sales is to use Salesconx. They’re an online marketplace for business referrals. It’s like LinkedIn meets Ebay. Check it out and let me know if it helps you out.

http://www.salesconx.com

-Justine

these tips remind me a lot about bestbuy back when i used to work for them.
-Johnny

This is definitely great tips that could help in increasing sales.

Yup! I agree too that Amazon have a great way of subtle promoting their other products =) Ingenious. Just remember that aftersales support is as important as the sales itself to keep customers come back for more.

@justine:

Interesting. I went to the salesconx website. More of matching businesses together?

@zohai:

Amazon’s style is very clever. I’m sure their upsell process must have added a hell lot to their bottom line.

Cheers,
Jag

It is wasting time if we are using wrong way to promote the products,i think you suggestion is good.

Interesting and informative article. I agree you need to look at how big companies sell on the internet i.e. Amazon dell ECT. Learning of these guys is the way to go.

Jag Foo,

Excellent advice and tips – you can’t go wrong with advice from marketing king Jay Abraham, to be sure!

One extra tip that would fall into the “after sale” category: Be sure customers know about your blog (hint hint: If you don’t have a blog, get one started!)… it’s a great way to put a human face and touch on your business.

The blog is an excellent way for customers to interact with you, learn about new products, learn ways to use existing products, and get answers to their questions.

On the flip side, the blog will also prove beneficial in the “pre-sales” phase for prospects, folks who aren’t yet customers. They can learn about your business and products/services in advance of making a purchase. If done right, the blog can help them feel confident to go ahead and make a purchase.

Thanks for a great post!

Alison

Better sale with best quality is the main target of a company.

You do have a great point on sales optimization. I always believed that the service after sales is very important. If the service after sales is great, then the customer will come back to you and even recommend your product to their friends.

very interesting stuff. Good suggestions on Amazon. Too bad I hate them so much.

@ Alison:

Good point. A blog if done properly does help a lot in pre-selling. It helps you establish yourself as an authority in the field. And gives a personal touch to it.

@Raterbator:

Yep, many people over-look the importance of service after sales. It’s like – hey, money is in my pocket now – screw you, the customer!

Customers like to be taken care of. And have their needs met. If we can do that, we will have a lifetime customers on our hand.

Cheers,
Jag

wow a cool way to educate others

nice tips for us
however, i focus prior on customer service

These are the basics and the very core of how business should be run. Sometimes there is too much information, so people get tangled in all sort of things. 80%/20% principle is by far the best way to make your business grow. Oh, good post btw :)

I hope attraction is the another main point for sale.

Nice tips for increasing sales volume, cheers!

Yep, thats very interesting. The blog is an excellent way for customers to interact with you, learn about new products, learn ways to use existing products, and get answers to their questions.

Thank you for the well presented and informative post. It certainly explains things in detail. Please do keep it up. All the best.

This blog have some great information about sales. It had covers every aspect of sales field. I like it.

@josiah:

Yep, it amazes to know that some businesses are just not profiling where their major revenue come from. Many just neglect the crucial 20%!

Imagine how much more revenue they will make had they follow up more with this group of people…

@Keistian:

It is. Blog is good for expressing your points across in a personal way. A way that you can relate better to.

@Luca:

Thanks for the compliment man! Appreciate it!

Cheers,
Jag

Yes I like this.Thanks a lot.

The ‘after sale’ part do really mention about the important of sales. That’s really great article!

I am really waiting for the next sale before christmass.

really good info…it’s very useful for a women like me…i only spend my money during sale but i guess i really don’t the meaning of SALE is….thanks a lot

I do agree on the after sale. Customer do like it when we care about them. This will make them come back to us. Great way to build a connection between seller and buyer.

Wahhh.. good tip for everyone and i like this post! Thanks and it may be can be share with my friends out there! Cheers!

This is great info and thanks for sharing! Oh and about the after sales, its good because it retains customers, increasing their loyalty. Good stuff.

Thanks for the great info! I am a shopping freaks and i never really know the word “sale” that well. As for being a sales person, i do have experience in it and it is not an easy task. We have to stand there for few hours and think how to attract customers, attain to their questions. Sometime, we might also meet some nasty ones.

Hey Jag,

Yep I agree… also… people should focus on 3 ways to increase profits:

– Increase the times your customer purchases
– Increase the average purchase amount your customers make
– Increase the conversion

Those are 3 ways everyone should look at first to drive up sales.

Nice work!

This is great info and thanks for sharing! Oh and about the after sales, its good because it retains customers, increasing their loyalty. Good stuff.

Thanks for the great article, I’d love to buy you a beer or two!! I love your idea about the thank you page. The sales page to me is most important and that’s where I used to have most of my trouble, writing that catchy phrase and headline. What helped for me was when I included Glyphius to my Adwords and Adsense account.

Hi Idonovan:

Buy me a beer? Sounds good to me. I’m waiting… =P

Yea, every part of the marketing process – from start to finish – can be monetized.

Best,
Jag

Sometimes you forget the basics, and this post was a great reminder.

Cheers.

Always be closing, isnt that what glenn ross says?

Optimizing and dissecting your sales process is a great way to ensure your process is operating as efficiently as possible. The more you know the more you can improve and also do better.