Achieving your sales targets - Question from a reader

Dear Colleen,

We have only one quarter to go this year and I need to motivate my team to sell more in the last 3 months. We are a bit behind so far and I want them to make up for it before December 31st. Any thoughts on what I can do?

Thanks - Mike

Dear Mike
Here are three tips that can help you to help your team improve their sales results, increase their revenues and exceed their sales targets for 2007.

Tip #1: Love the one you’re with.

Many companies invest far too much time chasing new customers, and far too little making sure their existing customers are happy. Research tells us that selling to an existing customer is between five to fifteen times less expensive (and takes far less time) than acquiring a new customer. Why risk losing something you worked so hard to secure in the first place? One sure-fire way to increase your customer retention rate is to create a monthly newsletter or other program that lets you stay in touch with them on a regular basis. Newsletters can be easy to create, inexpensive to produce and can even be distributed instantly by email. Most importantly, a newsletter can help keep you in your customers’ top of mind, so whenever they need to buy again, they think of you first.

Tip #2: Get some feedback.
A satisfied customer is predisposed to purchase more, purchase more often and even purchase something different than a customer who is less than satisfied with your product or service. So what are you doing to ensure your customers are satisfied customers? The most successful companies poll their clients immediately following a purchase in order to gauge their level of satisfaction and make any necessary changes to their sales and service programs. If you haven’t gotten any feedback from your customers in a while, pick a day this month for you and your team to sit down, call your customers and find out how they really feel about you. Ask them specific questions like how they would like to be served by you, what their experience has been like with the various departments in your company and what they would like to see you do differently. You can then use this information to craft a sales and service strategy that puts what the customer wants, first.

Tip #3: Get connected.

According to a recent Gallup study, emotionally connected customers spend 46% more than customers who are simply satisfied. How do you create emotional connectedness? Start by being personal. Have your sales reps send handwritten thank-you cards after each first-time sale. Keep track of and contact your customers on important dates such as the anniversary of the day they started doing business with you, their own company anniversary, family birthdays or anything else you can use to build a personal relationship. Plus, make a point of connecting with customers on holidays throughout the year. And always, always be on the lookout for any opportunity to refer someone to your customers. If you can help your customers grow their business, believe me, they’ll be only too happy to take you with them.

Dedicated to increasing your sales,

Colleen