30+ Sales Practices To Follow In 2021
Doing what you can to sell more but feel like you're banging your head against the wall? Customers listen patiently and then they go buy from the competition anyway? Are you struggling to increase profits, but at the end of the month it turns out again that you barely managed to achieve your goal?
Fortunately, there are sales techniques that guarantee an increase in profits. By reading this article, you will learn about sales tricks that will allow you to easily double your sales. The sales methods collected here will be useful both for traders working on the handset as well as those operating in e-commerce or in a traditional store. Are you looking for an answer to the question: how to increase sales as a trader and what are the selling techniques in 2021?
Demo content in every format possible The demo, whether it’s 1-1 or pre-recorded video, became a crucial part of the customer decision process before purchasing anything. Most of the companies know that it provides very solid conversion rates, therefore they double down on this tactic trying to get everyone on the call. However, not everyone loves to talk. Sometimes people would love to make their decision on their own. Therefore, I recommend promoting other ways of showcasing your products. Create pre-sales knowledge base articles, create a pre-recorded generic product walkthrough video, or even create an article on how to choose a product in your niche. Don’t hesitate to offer an option that will lack direct content, those who want to jump on the call, they will do that. And for the rest of your audience, they might not feel overwhelmed by the amount of call to action to hop on a call.
Matej Kukucka, Founder, Marketing Player
1. Personalization that goes beyond prospect's name. Context and insights on how your product can help an exact company or person accelerate growth and solve their problems. This entails value-based selling that should be prioritized over feature-based selling.
2. Sales automation which is more a necessity rather than a trend in 2021. It frees up time for the salespeople to develop creative ways to sell their products and craft content for every touchpoint to achieve higher engagement.
3. Finally, the adoption of conversational experience to aggregate user communication on a single platform. It results in better personalization of communication through an ongoing conversation between a customer and a brand. If you know the history between you and your customers, their requests and the problems they usually face while using your product, you can offer them better solutions, quicker!
Anastasia Tatsenko, Head of Customer Success, NetHunt CRM
Creativity is the new sales hack!
Creativity is one of the greatest revenue patterns in 2021. It sounds sort of ambiguous and not actionable at all, but that's the whole idea! Salespeople had to work just as much to ensure their organization remains alive and hits all the quotas in the midst of a global recession triggered by the pandemic. In a case like that, depending on chance is a dangerous business. Markets have been getting more crowded. Competition typically fuels innovation; it's just a matter of time before a revolutionary idea is created by your rivals and you get the benefit of going first.
No matter how hard you try, there will always be someone who will outcompete you if you use the same tactics as anyone else. Acting better, not faster, is the only realistic way to break the secret of sales growth. You ought to search at the items that would distinguish you from anyone else as a salesperson. Do the opposite of what most firms do, and you are going to make a lasting mark. In your sales plan, even the smallest bit of character will make you stand out from the crowd, especially because many salespeople have failed to realize this. Without modifying them, a jarring amount of experts simply use foolproof advice and tactics they read on the Website. As a consequence, over and over again, prospects receive the same outreach, which offers them an opportunity. You should also still change the tactics to represent the organization and be you. Know that when it comes to imagination, there's a fine line between silly and different. Your artistic endeavors must stay polite and focused on any analysis at the end of the day. You can't simply roll out a fresh project and hope that it will succeed. You need to consider the target group and come up with something they will enjoy.
Eliza Nimmich, Co-Founder and COO of Tutor the People
Integrating your sales and marketing departments isn't just vital for 2021, it's the key to successful selling post-pandemic as well. Having your sales and marketing teams working separately - even if their goals are aligned - doesn't lead to the best results and ultimately, they'll still have different priorities, which can affect the other team's overall goals. Ensuring that both teams are working together to deliver campaigns and everyday activities ensures full collaboration, allows the sharing of ideas, delivers improved CX and means your company is getting the best from both marketing and sales.
Matt Janaway, https://marketinglabs.co.uk/
If a potential customer contacts you, don't wait forever. Contact him immediately. The faster you answer, the more likely you are to get a customer.
The statistics confirm it. The Best Practices for Lead Response Management survey shows that sales opportunities drop tenfold if a consultant responds to a contact attempt in 10, not five minutes.
400% - the chance of a lead qualification decreases if the answer is not received within the first 5 minutes.
By responding after 30 minutes, the seller should take into account that the chances of closing the transaction will drop 100 times.
The project undertaken by Inside Sales and Harvard Business Review, which consisted in the analysis of over 14,000 unique leads over 3 years, confirms the above data. Its results show that companies that respond to a contact attempt within 5 minutes have almost a hundred times greater chance of dragging this contact to the next stage of the sales funnel.
David Cacik, Head of Marketing, CloudTalk
In B2B sales, where I work, trust is king. If you have an established online presence, good case studies, and good reviews, people will be more likely to buy from you. The best lead you can get is a qualified referral from an existing client. If your company delivers on its promises and makes its customers happy, then referrals will come. Referrals are the best type of lead because they are way more likely to buy. You've already won the trust of someone that the prospect trusts, so they're primed for purchasing. Win their trust, and you win the sale.
Garit Boothe, SEO Consultant at Garit Boothe Digital
The COVID pandemic has influenced a sales experience by far: Now brands do their best to engage (and keep) prospects online. It's not that simple to do, given the enormous competition, so the tip here would be to focus on adding some interactivity to a sales process. For instance, replace static data about your product with answers to customers' FAQs. Or allow them to try your application virtually. Design a game-like customer journey so that visitors could "try" your product and uncover for themselves how it can solve their specific needs or challenges. It will help you stand out from the crowd of competitors, increase customer retention, and stay on track.
Lesley Vos, Content Strategist at Bid4Papers
There is nothing worse than having a sales conversation going nowhere. Remember to always tell the customer why you are calling and what you have to offer. This rule also applies when the customer called you. Try to define the contact and define the way in which you will solve the problem with which the customer reports. You will not only present yourself as a professional - you will also avoid misunderstandings and make your work easier.
Andrzej Bieda, CMO, Landingi
There is no better way for a salesperson to get more inbound leads in 2021 than by being active in social media. I'm not talking about posting random Instagram photos and TikTok videos but to be actually 1) active in the social networks where their clients are but more importantly 2) providing value to them. Every salespeople should be in touch with their marketing about the content that they can provide their followers, and if they don't have content internally that can help support your customers, curate from other, non-competitive sources. The goal is to provide value and become liked, known, and trusted for the solutions that your company can provide as well as the information and advice that you provide people on a regular basis. Focus on providing value and information and not promoting your company at every chance, and you will build a relevant community who will warm up to doing business with you over time.
Neal Schaffer, Author, The Age of Influence, https://nealschaffer.com
Opinions of other consumers have a huge impact on purchasing decisions. Most of us are more likely to believe in the value of a product if we find that others like it. It's worth making use of. Use customer reviews and recommendations by placing them in a prominent place on your website or by indicating that the product is very popular during a conversation.
Sona Pisova, Content Specialist, LiveAgent
Make your best out of Virtual Selling. - Make sure your camera is always on since we all miss a real human connection. - Ask your customers how the pandemic has affected their business and life. - Get ready to negotiate about custom pricing/features, it's better to have a growing customer now than chasing ghosts.
Dmytro Okunyev, Founder of Chanty
We're a service-oriented company and there's nothing more important than monitoring our after-sales customer service statistics to check how satisfied our clients are with our consultancy services. Our firm deals with achieving tax liability reductions and increase near-term cash flows by implementing programs and strategies at the state, local and federal levels, which can be complex but highly crucial. It's highly important that in our practice, these statistics are covered to develop our decision-making skills. By looking into our voice of the customer (VOC), it has been highly influential in our word-of-mouth marketing as existing clients have recommended our services in their business groups.
Michael Hammelburger, CEO @ Cost Reduction Consultants, http://thebottomlinegroup.com/
Focus on your prospects needs. We always want to tell the prospect what the best features are for our product or service, but there is a good chance that the prospect does not care about many of those features. The prospect is looking for a solution to meet some specific needs they have. Let them tell you what they need and why, then tell them how your product our service will help them achieve that in the most efficient way possible, i.e: cheapest product, easiest to use, designed for their specific needs, etc...
Justin Grau, Founder, Bizdig.co
Since your customers have more and more options in 2021, it's getting harder to persuade them to open their wallets for your brand -- especially for the new customers. Therefore, you need to make your business stand out and trustworthy in the first place, so they have more confidence in purchasing your brand or products. In this situation, sales teams can ask for testimonials, reviews, and introductions from your best customers. Those reviews and testimonials are types of social proof that can make your brand more valuable and more believable to those who are exploring it for the first time. Sales teams can simply ask about the customers’ experience while they're using your product and feature it (in text, audio, or video format) on the homepage or landing pages. You and your sales team can also create profiles on third-party review sites and encourage the customers to tell their stories there. Not only will it boost potential customers' trust, but also transform your sales pitch into a credible, unbiased recommendation for your product.
Andre Oentoro, CEO, Breadnbeyond
For 2021, make sure to connect your sales and marketing teams and set up meetings together for them. The sales team often has no idea what kind of marketing materials they have at their disposal and the marketing team often has no clue what real customers demand from sales representatives. Connecting the two helps you get more revenue and maximize your ROI from marketing activities.
Petra Odak, CMO, Better Proposals
Be sure to use social proof. This social proof is a way to build trust in your brand. Psychology is at work here - if others have taken advantage of the offer and are satisfied, the product will probably work for me as well.
Collect customer opinions on the website (preferably in the form of a widget of an external company collecting reviews from buyers), show team photos, take care of a professional website design, place customer logos (especially well-known and recognizable brands) and even try a video of customer testimonials.
Dominika Kuraś, Brainy Bees
Embrace automation, starting with chatbots. Automation is clearly the future of marketing. With huge advances in AI, there’s no doubt that we’ll see a dramatic change in what automation can do for a business. Chatbots are a great place to start. With chatbots, you can provide in-site customer support, obtain leads, and even help with sales, all while you’re literally sleeping. When looking for chatbot solutions, favor companies with a strong focus on AI and the tech behind it. You want chatbots that are not only intelligent but easy to set up, so look into their processes to choose the right one. Then, look into other ways AI can help your business. There are multiple tools out there with wildly different purposes. You can find, for example, AI to scan podcasts and determine which ones are the most popular with your customer base, so you don’t have to do all of the manual work. Wherever there’s a long process, or wherever there are short and repetitive tasks, there’s room for automation. Find it, and use it.
Lisa Dietrich, Founder at Let's be crazy
You surely know that the harder it is to get something, the more interest it gets. Therefore, a good selling technique is to suggest to the customer that the offer you are presenting is limited in time (e.g. a promotional campaign lasts only a week) or quantitatively (e.g. only the last items are left) and using the so-called FOMO (fear of missing out).
Andrej Csizmadia, Growth Marketer, Post Affiliate Pro
Forget about in-person presentations. Since the pandemic started, in-person demos and presentations quickly became a thing of the past. No one wants to risk getting sick just to get a customer tour of an online app. However, a lot of people are starting to see how much time they save if they don’t have to physically move from one place to the other, and how convenient it is to use online presentations whenever possible. So, start embracing online presentations, not just for now, but as the new way to do business from now on. You don’t have to be a tech wiz or a professional designer to nail your online presentations. There are multiple tools out there to create customer tools, vibrant customer proposals, and flashy live streams. Start by defining the way your client persona likes to receive presentations. Then, look for solutions that help you improve your delivery. If you nail online presentations, you’ll soon love them just as much as your users do!
Max Benz, Founder at BankingGeek
In 2020, in person sales meetings came to a crashing halt. In 2021, buyers will want more than ever the interaction and perks that comes with sales. With the pandemic continuing, this means an opportunity to be creative. Send a bottle of wine or beer to prospective clients, and ask them to grab a virtual drink with you where you can discuss how you can help them. Give prospects an excuse to get out of their mundane routines and you'll have an opportunity to connect with prospects and make sales.
Neal Taparia, Co-founder, Solitaired
My advice for any business trying to grow their sales in 2021 is to use sales productivity tools to help you manage sales in the most efficient and productive way possible. In general anything that saves your salespeople time (or helps them make better use of it) or optimizes the selling process is a sales productivity tool. Top-performing sales teams use 3x as many sales tools as their less productive competitors. Sales today involves many activities that don’t actually include making sales, things like admin work and answering emails, sales tools can help reclaim some of this time and use it for more important tasks. Companies and team that deploy tools effectively can generate more leads and turn those leads into sales at a higher rate. I recently wrote a guide on how to choose a sales productivity tools where I cited a recent study which found 79% of sales executives say improving productivity among their existing sales reps is key to hitting new targets.
Dmitry Dragilev, owner of SmallBizTools blog which reviews the best business software tools, such as sales productivity tools.
Although we make a large part of our purchasing decisions under the influence of emotions, we also like to feel that our decisions are rational. Being able to choose is important when making a purchasing decision.
In an article published by the Journal of Consumer Research, Daniel Mochon proved that customers are more likely to decide to buy a product if they are given the choice between several options.
In an experiment carried out by Mochon, customers were offered to buy a DVD player. In the group showing one product, only 10% of customers decided to buy. On the other hand, in the second group, which presented two different products, sales increased by 66%.
This is because being able to choose gives us the feeling that we are in control of the situation and make an informed, rational decision.
Lukas Mehnert, CMO, Smartlook
Try ABM (Account Based Marketing) if you haven't yet. It's a great way to have alignment between sales and marketing to make sure that sales gets the best possible MQL and subsequently SQLs that can close faster.
Helena Ronis, Co-founder and CEO, AllFactors
You've probably heard from a customer once that your product or service is very similar to what is proposed by another company. What to do in this situation? First of all - refrain from criticizing your competitors or you will make a bad impression. Instead, indicate significant differences between your product and the competition (e.g. better quality, more functionalities, longer warranty period, etc.). In short, prove that what you sell is better. This selling technique and similar sales tricks are really effective!
Gaetano Caruana, CEO, Early Parrot
Focus on social selling. There are two major platforms to do it: Facebook and LinkedIn, but instead of relying on organic and paid posts you should concentrate on smaller, focused groups of users. Creating one will solidify your community and help you to pinpoint their needs and expectations. Just remember to actually listen to them! Webinars and online conferences went big in 2020. The trend will continue and so should you. If you haven’t already, start with your clients. Prepare an informative online training session – it’s a great opportunity to hone your skills and even upsell some of your solutions and tools. With the groundworks primed you will be ready to move on to bigger audiences. All of the above should go beyond your everyday marketing activities, that’s why you’re going to need help from your sales and customer care departments. Your goal is to digitalize sales. To do so you may have to show them how to network and influence people online. In other words, help your specialist to employ their skills in social media. Tap into the potential of affiliate programs. Forge partnerships with reliable brands to grow your range, position together. You can either propose them monetary compensation or swap benefits with them. Either way, such partnerships are a sure way to increase your client base and raise brand awareness.
Maja Wiśniewska, Marketing Manager, SMSAPI
Acknowledge the COVID-19 pandemic The pandemic has clearly affected all industries. However, the approach of ignoring it so customers aren’t constantly reminded of it doesn’t seem to be working as well for many companies. Customers don’t want to forget about their situation, they want to feel better during it. That’s where you come in. Start by asking your customers how the pandemic has affected them. Use customer data and surveys to better understand how your customer has been affected, what they want, and what they fear. Then, develop a marketing plan to tackle those fears. If, for example, you discover that your customers are concerned primarily with the health sector, you can show your support towards them with discounts for medical employees. If your customers are concerned about how the pandemic affects vulnerable people, you can find local food banks and other charities to sponsor and donate to them. Find what your customer fear or hates about the current pandemic, and show them how your company is actively trying to become part of the solution to them.
James Davis, Head of Marketing at Messagely
If you haven’t already start building an affiliate strategy for your offering. According to a study by Business Insider, by 2022, affiliate marketing will generate $8.2 billion in revenue in the US alone. You can’t afford to miss out. Google’s algorithm is already favoring affiliate websites over vendor websites in many commercial search results. For example is you Google the query “best business phone service 2021,” the top organic listings are affiliate websites: BusinessNewsDaily, TechRadar, WPBeginner. This makes sense, people want to see other sites vouching for your brand before they make a purchase.
Gaetano DiNardi, Director of Growth Marketing at Nextiva a small business phone system company
Involving a potential customer in the conversation is the first step to closing the sale. To do this, try to ask open questions, i.e. those to which the client will be able to answer longer. An effective selling technique is to avoid asking questions that can be answered with a simple "yes" or "no".
Open questions will help you engage your client in a conversation, explore his needs and find the right offer for him. If you start bombarding your interlocutor with closed-ended questions that can only be answered "yes" or "no", he will feel like he has been interrogated and will try to escape, ie hang up the phone or leave the store.
Agnieszka Kuprianowicz, Marketing Specialist, Angry Nerds
As growth hackers or entrepreneurs or marketers, you sell what adds value to your audience or "an audience". It doesn't matter if it's a tangible product or a service as long as you can create value for your audience. Anything that creates value from the audiences' perspective is not a waste of time. Go with a value-focused approach rather than a sales-focused approach and you will find all the right answers.
Usama Amin, SEO Executive, Digital Aimz
Before you connect with the prospect know about them - what they like? what they don't like? what problem they are trying to solve? Once you connect with them listen carefully to the NEEDS of your prospects - this way you will be able to close more deals. Many sales people make the mistake of trying to sell, in fact, if you help your prospect with the problem (it can be anything) they are facing, it becomes very easy to offer your solution. And, as said by Mark Roberge, the selling should be felt like a relationship between a doctor and a patient and less like a relationship between a sales person and a prospect.
Vineet Gupta, SEO Specialist, 5 Minutes SEO
Create a powerful USP (Unique Selling Position) and push on it, hard. Nowadays the web is brimming with competition. No matter the vertical you're in, you probably have dozens if not hundreds of competitors, some of them with huge brand moats and deeply entrenched in the niche. How to beat them? Be creative and circumvent your competitors. Find a way to speak to your audience's hearts and minds. This means talking to the emotional part of the human brain which influences buying decisions a ton. For example, most people realize that our planet is polluted and that we humans are at least partly at fault there. Now, since we can’t just stop living and consuming resources, the best alternative is to preserve what we still have and reinvest in Mother Nature. So, position your brand as eco friendly, and let Eco friendliness of your brand help you leapfrog your competition who’re all about the taking from nature and never giving back anything. Make the act of shopping with you a selfless act on their part, and they will (shop) and feel good about themselves.
Nikola Roza, CEO of Nikola Roza
Use videos in your sales processes! People may not be traveling and visiting places as much during the pandemic, but they’re definitely still looking at products. With lockdowns and quarantines, more and more people are hungry for visual content to help them make purchasing decisions, or even to just pass the time. That’s why videos are so important for your sales efforts. Look into where you can create and insert videos in your customer journey. Flashy videos can quickly pique someone’s interest and tell them everything they need to know about your company, your products, and what they can get out of them. Once your lead is in your pipeline, you can nurture them through demos and customer testimonial videos. You can also create webinars instead of ebooks to further engage customers. By creating video content, you can help your customer understand why they need your solution in their lives, and help satisfy their hunger for visual stimulation, at the same time.
Will Cannon, CEO at Signaturely
2020 kept us home, forcing an accelerated digitization of companies, especially their sales. Social interactions shifted towards online platforms.
In 2021 social selling is going to work even better. Larger audience, more discussions with sales potential, customers much more open to online conversations.
I'm pretty sure you're more or less active on social platforms. But do you utilize social listening tools like Brand24?
Can you afford to miss all these sales opportunities?
Konrad Caban, CEO Supermonitoring
These are all sales methods and sales techniques for today.
Try them in practice and let us know how they work!