There are various reasons why you don’t make sales. It can be particularly frustrating when you feel like you are working hard, you really believe in what you offer, and still, you don’t land the customer. This question could easily apply to the job seeker reaching out to 450 contacts or submitting 450 resumes and not landing a job. Furthermore, with even traditional employees pursuing temp jobs and side gigs, knowing how to close a sale is critical to small business owners and traditional employees alike.
Here are seven reasons why your business is not generating sales:
- You Are Targeting The Wrong Buyer
You don’t want to be wasting your marketing and sales efforts on people who just aren’t interested in what you have on offer. Reaching out to 400 people sounds great but are all 400 people, potential customers, for what you sell? Unfortunately, many times businesses can cast their net too wide. In an effort to get as many customers as possible, they forget about the relevancy of those customers. In the case of a training business, you may be better off following up conscientiously with 30 people who are all HR professionals or business managers who need your type of training for their staff. Sure, you may talk to someone who is not a buyer but knows someone who could be, and that’s useful. But that’s not selling – that’s still marketing.
How do you correct this: Review your contact list and make sure that you prioritize people with a need and interest in what you offer.
- You Are Marketing, Not Selling
Generating sales is not a one-step function. Generating sales is actually a process. In every business model, there is a marketing funnel. Before a customer makes a purchase, they want to know they’re making the right choice. It’s important that they feel loyalty or trust in your business. Reaching out to a networking contact is a sales call when that contact has expressed a need and interest for what you are selling, and you actually discuss your offer, your pricing, next steps, and/or other ways to move forward. If your networking meeting is to introduce what you offer or to reconnect in general, that’s a marketing call. Many small business owners are busy on social media, tweaking their website, writing blogs, and catching up over coffee all of which are great for marketing and may lead to sales eventually but these activities aren’t directly generating sales.
How do you correct this: Assess your meetings to date, and be honest about which ones were marketing and which ones were sales. Make sure that you are pitching for more dollars than your desired revenue target because you will not close all of your sales.
- They Don’t Need What You’re Selling At The Moment
You may connect with an interested potential customer, and he/she may even have the budget to buy, but has other priorities. Budget, time, and attention are limited resources. To close a sale, your offer needs to be a priority right now.
How do you get them to buy; During your sales process, make sure you confirm the deadlines and constraints your prospects are facing. Remind your prospects, not only of the value of your offer but why it is so critical now.
- Your Offer Is Not Irresistible
One of the biggest mistakes a business owner can make is to ignore their competition. If your sales are declining, diving deeper into competitors’ data can help uncover useful insights. The underlying issue of your declining sales can be due to a new marketing campaign, a better price, or a new promotion. In fact, most reasons mentioned above can be avoided by considering competitive intelligence.
Your prospect may need what your business offers right now, but she/he has choices on how to meet that need. There are other businesses that do what you do. To ensure you never miss out on an opportunity to increase sales, keep an eye on what competitors are offering to help you match that. To make your offer irresistible offer incentives such as free shipping or discount on a particular number of products.
- They Cannot Afford To Buy What You Are Selling
Price has a big influence on sales. In essence, a high price can maximize short-term profit, while a low price can maximize long-term profit, as it generally attracts more customers and helps the business gain market share. Price can also be a determinant of a brand’s positioning and quality. If a product line launches at a high price, it suggests high quality and prestige.
A price change on a price-sensitive product can reduce sales. Therefore, measuring a product’s price elasticity is important, as it will help you determine how sensitive demand is to any price changes. By testing pricing strategies, you can maximize sales and margins at the highest price consumers are willing to pay.
User Experience is Key to Digital Marketing Success
Consumers today are smart, savvy, and time-starved, and they want their needs delivered in an instant.
Whether at a mall, on a bus, in a bank line, or in the comfort of their homes people like to access the internet for a lot of reasons; whether to shop, book flights, check in with friends, or just search for information. These various online functions all have one thing in common: the quality of an individual’s online experience makes a huge impact.
A critical part of that experience is the ease with which a consumer can find, access, review or buy products and services. For businesses wanting to attract and convert that interest into revenue, user experience is crucial to their success and, in many cases, survival.
When it comes to developing and executing modern digital marketing strategies, User experience is often overlooked. In fact, only 65% of brands are currently in the process of user experience testing—which is incredible when you consider that 74% of people will return to a website if its user experience is optimized for mobile.
The ideal online customer journey is a user-friendly website that combines seamless navigation; a clean-cut purchasing journey; dynamic and digestible content; top-notch customer support, and mobile device compatibility. By combining these elements, a business can create a digital environment that can make a brand stand out from the pack.
- User Experience is More Than Just Usability
While many marketers shrug off user experience as an industry buzzword, this is not the case. In fact, the most successful marketers in the industry will tell you that user experience is the key to facilitating conversions and helping you to become that glistening needle in a giant (and vastly oversubscribed) digital haystack.
According to American professor and statistician Edward Tufte, “Confusion and clutter are the failure of design, not the attributes of information.” This rings true to user experience as a whole, and when you’re trying to stand out from the crowd online, one of the best ways to do so is by being clear, concise, and accessible to your target audience. No compromises.
While usability is an essential component of the user experience, it is only one piece of the overall pie as it focuses on things at the surface level, while user experience digs deeper into whether an individual page or piece of content will satisfy the specific needs of a user. As an entity, user experience determines how a brand speaks to its customers and delivers the message it is trying to convey, effectively.
- User Experience in a Mobile World
The rise in android and IOS phone usage has changed the way people view, buy, and connect online. With the growth in media consumption since 2018, the desktop is becoming the less-preferred touchpoint for an increasing number of digital users.
Mobile is so ingrained into the psyche of today’s consumers that mobile users are significantly more likely to abandon a website if it isn’t correctly optimized for their phone and if you’re running a business, this could mean a major loss in conversions or even damage your brand’s reputation.
That said, what’s alarming is that 60% of users said a bad mobile experience made them less likely to engage with a company, and with 80% of searches now performed on mobile devices, user experience is a fact that simply should not be ignored.
Although mobile is a dominant force in today’s world, it doesn’t mean that the laptop is no longer relevant. The majority of e-commerce transactions still take place on the PC, and as such, a balanced multi-platform strategy is essential to a successful buyer’s journey. Despite this, many marketers and brands still treat the desktop as their main area of focus, which is out of sync with today’s consumer behavior.
- Content is Vital to User Experience
One of the best ways to convey a message to your audience is by publishing content that is engaging while offering direct value. In fact, according to Quick Sprout, 87% of people enjoy reading relevant content from company blogs.
Well-crafted digital copy that is optimized for search engines is a key ingredient to a good user experience. Not only will this help your web page to rank well for relevant search terms on Google, but SEO- friendly copy will also give the consumer an informative answer to a question or query in an instant. This approach will ultimately result in conversions rather than website abandonment.
While it may seem obvious for online businesses to provide search optimized, engaging, and consumer-focused content, it is often overlooked don’t make the same mistake.
