If you are experiencing a drop in your business sales, you need to find out what the barriers are and fix it. If you don’t, it can stop you from multiplying your sales, warns Themba Nkuna, founder of How to Sell Academy, a private company that offers sales mastery and competitive intelligence strategies.
Reasons your sales strategy might be failing include you’re selling to the wrong target market or you’re promoting the wrong message or a mixed message, or not tracking your leads.
Nkuna, who is an author of the sales book How to Pitch, Sell and Multiply, says he often gets emails with the subject line: What are we doing wrong?
“Through my experience and interaction with different business owners and entrepreneurs I’ve learned that there are many reasons why a company’s sales may be down and I compiled the most common challenges businesses have as a barriers to increasing their sales.”
Nkuna shares the 5 reasons on why business owners’ sales are down and what they can do to get better results:
1. You don’t have a sales force.
Do you know a business where the owner is Chief Everything Officer and not the Chief Executive Officer?
Fix it this way: No one can run a business alone and no one can succeed alone. Build a team of highly skilled salespeople who will on a daily basis look for more business. Without sales you don’t have a business.
2. You’re competing instead of dominating
So many companies are doing so much to avoid losing their customers but not investing double the effort to gaining more customers.
Fix it this way: Your competitor is ready to cut off your head, you need to constantly remind your customers of who are you are and what you can do for them. Dominate your space, invest in marketing and strategies to constantly communicate with your customers [the existing and potential ones].
3. You’re not showing your customer that you care about them
I asked business owners and some sales people this question “when looking at a customer, what comes to your mind?”
They give different answers but none gave the answer which I was looking for. The most common was answer I got was: “When we see a customer we are mostly interested in their wallet and nothing else”.
This is another reason why your sales may be down. You want money from the customer and don’t really care about them.
Fix it this way: Go an extra mile to give a customer extra value to show them you care about their business and not just making money from them. Ask them this question “Is there anything else I can do to help?”
4. You do not have a functional sales strategy
You just do things as they occur. Since you haven’t planned things properly with your team and don’t understand your sales cycle, you are not making sales.
Fix it this way: It is important to have a sales plan, whether you have a big or small company. Have a blueprint to your sales success. Selling is about numbers and hitting targets. Have systems to measure progress.
5. You cannot build relationships
People buy from people they know, trust and like. Your goal is to build relationships with customers.
Fix it this way: Invite them for coffee or lunch. Invite them to a rugby or soccer game. Challenge them to a round of golf. Get the relationship moved from pure business to some level of personal relationship.
It may happen that you have just one point from this list or all the five. You can fix all of them and get your sales improved. You can learn more about sales from my books and through my YouTube channel where I share on a weekly basis sales tips.
