Improving leads and sales is a strategy in itself and warrants valuable time being spent on it; after all, cash flow is the lifeblood of any business and what’s a business without any customers? Here we share with you six top tips on how to find, retain and boost your sales performance:

Build a highly targeted prospecting list

Building a prospecting list lies right at the beginning of the sales process, and isn’t something you should do half-heartedly. In order for it to be truly effective it has to be underpinned by research, and contacts should be approached one by one in the most personal way possible (i.e. not via a ‘blanket’ email). Account-based marketing (ABM) ties into this; simply put, ABM focuses on a list of targets whereas other marketing strategies involve getting your brand in front of as many people as possible. With Company Check you can gain access to financial information that will help you to see quickly whether or not a business can be qualified as a prospect. If you want to read more on this topic check out our previous blog ‘Develop a research-led prospecting and sales strategy’.

Check what your competitors are doing – and do it better

We’ve written a whole blog post on this too, which you can read here. Essentially, competitor research not only helps you understand the strengths and weaknesses of businesses that offer a similar service or product to you, but it helps you to identify your own, giving you ideas for where there is room for improvement. One area worth researching is how much time your competitors spend on social media and marketing – if they’re posting their own content 2-3 times a week, and you haven’t been active for the last six weeks, could that be telling you something? Think: “Am I really engaging with my customers – and prospective customers – as much as I can / in the best way possible?” Often the things we need to change are blindingly obvious, but we don’t necessarily realise them until we take a step back.

Retain and reward loyal customers

What better way to improve your sales than by going back to your loyal customers? Some ideas include:

• Offering discounts
• Creating a loyalty-card scheme
• Giving customers ‘sneak previews’ of new products, and providing them with the opportunity to buy them first
• Sending customers a surprise on special occasions (for example, when it’s their birthday or when they have made a certain number of purchases)
• Rewarding those who recommend a friend
  

Incentives like these make customers feel valued and more likely to talk positively about your business to others, or write a glowing review.

Check Google Analytics for traffic drop offs

Google Analytics is a valuable tool which enables businesses to see where their customers are coming from, which pages they’re looking at and how long they’re spending on site, among many other things. By looking at a page’s bounce rate (the percentage of people that land on your website and exit immediately without any further interaction) you can get an indication into which sections need improving. The ‘user flow’ section also enables you to see how users are navigating your site – if you notice that too many people are leaving the site with products in their basket – but haven’t converted – then there may be something wrong with your checkout process.

Look into APIs for better integration

An application program interface (API) is a “set of functions and procedures that allows the creation of applications which access the features or data of an operating system, application or other service”. Essentially, it enables developers to share their code with other people/businesses can be used in conjunction with your own software to add value or functionality to it – for example Creditsafe’s API can be integrated with a number of different customer relationship management (CRM) systems in order to provide the user with business financial data at their fingertips. Another good example is Facebook’s API, which game developers can use to enable users to login to their Facebook profile before playing. This way they don’t need to spend time creating their own account.