Sales are the lifeblood of a business. They are what determines if a business is doing well and what we use to track and measure our business strategy and marketing efforts. In simpler words, sales are the end results of every effort you put into your business. 

That’s why it’s crucial for every business owner or salesperson to be aware of the common sales mistakes that could jeopardise their entire sales and marketing team efforts and eventually cost them potential customers and money.

In this blog post, we will discuss five common sales mistakes that could be costing you money, and how to avoid them. When you’re aware of these mistakes, you’ll be able to take the necessary steps to avoid them and save yourself a lot of money that you would’ve lost otherwise.

5 Common Sales Mistakes That Can Cost You Money

Lacking proper preparation:

One of the most deadliest sales mistakes any salesperson or business owner can make is to fail to adequately prepare before meeting a potential customer. But, unfortunately, this is often the case with many business owners. 

If you go into a sales meeting without doing the necessary research and sales preparation, you risk losing the customer’s interest. Before any sales meeting, research the customer’s business, identify their pain points, and prepare a list of questions to ask them.

Most people like specific answers. That is, you need to ensure that you have those specific answers to those specific questions potential customers will ask you. Ensure you also have evidence of how your company will help solve or ease their questions or concerns. 

Case studies are great evidence you can show to potential customers to convince them to make that sale with your business. Use case studies that directly or similarly relate to their pain points or problems.

Failing to Understand the Customer’s Needs:

Another common sales mistake you can make is failing to understand your customer’s needs. Conduct surveys, track your website’s traffic to see what people are checking,and  keep up with the trend and changes in your customer’s behaviour. Doing all these will allow you to know what your customer needs at the right time. 

If you don’t understand exactly what your customer wants from your business, you won’t be able to provide a solution that meets their needs. 

Take the time to listen to your customer and ask questions to clarify their needs.

Overlooking Building Relationship with Your Customers: 

Establishing and nurturing relationships with your customers is absolutely vital if you want your business to succeed in the long run. It’s not just about closing sales; it’s about building genuine connections that go beyond a simple transaction. 

If you fail to invest the time and effort into cultivating a meaningful relationship with your customers, you’ll run the risk of losing them after their first purchase with you.

When people feel a connection with your business, they’re more likely to keep coming back to buy from you, becoming loyal customers who will support your business’s growth and success.

Neglecting to Address Your Customer’s Feedback: 

One of the most common sales mistakes business owners make is neglecting to address customer’s feedback. Each complaint or negative feedback should be taken seriously and treated as an opportunity for improvement.

It’s essential to show your customers that their opinions are valued and that you are committed to resolving any issues they may have.

By doing so, you not only demonstrate your dedication to customer satisfaction but also foster a sense of trust and loyalty, leading to long-term success for your business.

Failing to Follow Up After a Meeting: 

Another common sales mistake that many business owners make is failing to follow up after a meeting. Following up with customers is a crucial step in maintaining strong relationships and ensuring successful final sales.

But when you fail to follow up with your customers after a sales meeting, you’re at risk of losing potential customers to your competitors. 

It’s important to demonstrate your commitment to customer satisfaction by promptly reaching out after every sales meeting and keeping them informed about any progress or updates.

By actively following up with customers, you not only show that you value their business but also provide an opportunity to address any concerns or questions they may have. 

Bottom Line:

It’s important for you as a business owner or salesperson to recognize these common sales mistakes so that you can avoid making them and hurting your business in the process.

By conducting enough research, understanding the customer’s needs, building relationships, addressing feedback, and following up, you’ll increase your chances of successfully closing each sale.

If you need extra guidance on the best sales practices for your business, then feel free to book a one-on-one consultation with us.

A growth strategy is a plan of action outlining how you want to expand your business.

You must clearly identify the goals you have for your business if you want to experience sustained business growth. This entails establishing business goals, which should be Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. (SMART). You can develop goals that are both reachable and practical by adhering to this framework. 

Do you have a well crafted business plan with clear business goals? Get one today – Book a free call

A growth strategy will help to assist you in achieving your business goals once you have identified them. There are many different ways to grow a business, so it’s important to choose the right strategy that would help drive growth results for your business

.“The best way to grow your business is to focus on creating a great product or service that meets a need in the market.”

Are you finding it hard to draft out a growth strategy for your business? Book a free call with us today

To make the best decision, here are a few things to keep in mind as you create your growth strategy for your business:

 ·       Set realistic goals

Setting realistic goals for your business will help you avoid being demotivated as you go on in business. These goals should set as realistic as possible, so as to be able to measure the growth impact per time.

·       Establish a timetable. 

It’s time to develop a time frame for attaining your goals after you’ve established them. This will ensure that you stay on course and are making the required preparations to achieve your set objectives.

·       Identify your available resources.

You must decide which resources such as funding, manpower etc. you will need in order to meet these growth objectives. This will assist you in correctly allocating you resources and ensuring that you are not over extended.

·       Establish a marketing strategy. 

A thorough marketing plan is a crucial element of any growth strategy. Identification of your target audience, the development of messaging that appeals to them, and the selection of the most effective means of reaching them should all be part of this (e.g. paid advertisement, social media, public relations, etc.)

·       Measure your progress. 

It’s crucial to assess your progress along the way so you can alter your strategy when necessary. Keep tabs on important metrics like revenue growth, customer acquisition costs etc. and make sure to analyze them frequently.

You are at the right place, here at EZAdvisory will help businesses solve complex business problems, build strategies  that work for your business in achieving growth now and even in the future.

It is important you measure your result to be sure your growth strategy is working. There are a number of ways to measure your results. The most important thing is to choose the right metrics for your business.

Some common metrics include:

·       Revenue

·       Profitability

·       Customer satisfaction

·       Employee satisfaction

·       Retention rate

·       Engagement rate

At EZAdvisory, all these factors are important in creating strategies for business growth.

Visit us at: https://thebusinesshq.xyz

Any company’s growth is a crucial component of its success. It is what propels companies forward and provides them a cause to continue operating.

A corporation needs growth in order to thrive as well as survive. There are several ways to assess a company’s growth, including turning around sales and growing the number of consumers every day, among other metrics.

But one thing is certain: a company’s growth is influenced by a number of factors, and each of these aspects must be taken into account.

The following four factors can help you grow your business:

1. Competition

Under the strain of competition, successful businesses flourish. They perceive competition as an opportunity rather than an impediment.

Businesses benefit from competition because it spurs them on to innovate and pursue greater standards. You perform better in business when there is opposition attempting to unseat you. You make greater use of your resources, keep a close eye on potential losses, and strive to seize the market more quickly. All of this implies that you are operating at your best capacity and that your work is effective, improving your bottom line.

As a business, you would want your customers to always seek you out rather than your competitors. 

You must be effective if you wish to outperform your rivals, you are compelled to evaluate your strengths and flaws by rivals. You would also recognize your weaknesses and devise solutions to  overcome them.

Another advantage of competition is that it encourages consumers to purchase a product. They become more optimistic as a result of the pleasant treatment and excellent service they receive. Additionally, your business will treat its consumers well since, if not, they will go to a rival.

1. Marketing

A key approach for ensuring your company’s growth is marketing.

The success or failure of your business depends on how you sell it. A tool for creating and maintaining demand, relevance, reputation, competition, and more is marketing.

 Typically, marketing promotions aim to increase brand awareness, product and service sales, and content engagement. The benefit of marketing for your company is that it facilitates customer engagement and aids in convincing them to make purchases from you by informing them about new products.

Additionally, your business plan’s marketing strategy contributes to the creation and maintenance of demand, relevance, reputation, competition, etc.

In other words, Marketing is crucial since it enables you to present your goods and services to potential customers. 

2. Technology

System, product, and service efficiency is increased because of technology. It assists in managing contacts and employee records, maintaining data flow, and tracking and streamlining operations. In reality, by running operations more efficiently, the company is able to save costs and expand quickly.

A company may now comprehend its operations perfectly and its future cash and investment demands thanks to technology. It greatly contributes to the saving of resources like time, which can then be used to expand its productivity and operational scope.

Technology helps your company save money by saving time, such as the hours needed to manually produce reports. Furthermore, relevant and current information makes it easier for you to spot issues and possibilities right away and take proactive action.

It also enhances decision making.

Decision making in any business is a critical process. You need technology to streamline the decision making process. There is a need to keep track of customer and market data. Technology in the form of business relevant software facilitates error free reporting. You have a guarantee of accuracy with metrics drawn from the finance, marketing and customer engagement departments.

Most of the time, technological advancements speed up workflow and offer crucial systems for information organization.

3. Innovation

A quote by Jamie Notter – “innovation is a change that unlocks new value”

In today’s fiercely competitive environment, innovation is essential to achieving your company’s success, especially as customers become more demanding and savvy.

Innovation provides you that competitive advantage, enhancing business production, expansion, and profitability.

The foundation of long-term economic growth and prosperity is innovation.

It’s not necessary to make a discovery that will rock the globe. It could mean making small, gradual improvements throughout your firm.

Such improvements include strengthening your customer relations and sales.

If you don’t make improvements to your goods and services, you run the danger of losing clients to more creative rivals.

If you continuously innovate, you can quickly establish a competitive advantage and win your target market.

Being static over time might be really harmful to your company.

In order for businesses to adapt and face the challenges of change, innovation is frequently required. 

Here at EZAdvisory, we leverage these important factors to build data-driven strategies to Grow Businesses & Brands.

Visit us at https://thebusinesshq.xyz/

Let’s deep dive into one of the foundations in business growth: Helping the customer make the
decision. Yes, you have a great product. Yes, customers are seeing your advertisements and
are interested in buying from you? The phrase “Take all my money and give me your product”
only happens in the movies. There is still work to convert that potential customer – business
lingo “Leads” – into a purchasing customer.

Optimize your Sales Cycle

The sales cycle is the process your business takes in the period of delivering your product to the customer, it involves several stages. Stages such as lead generation, prospecting, contact, and lead qualification, nurturing leads, making offers, countering objections, and closing deals. Different companies define their sales cycles and stages differently because of numerous factors, such as industry type, target markets, customer type, among others. These differences result in the peculiarities a business encounters in closing a deal. However, having a defining your business sales cycle affords you the opportunity to:

● Easily train new sales reps.
● Provide sales representatives with a structured roadmap in closing deals.
● Structure your sales team rightly, assigning the best fit to each step.
● Stay on top of team performance
● Optimize team performance, using the KPIs here to deliver a better sales cycle month on month.

If your company has a sales cycle that lasts less than a month, then you have a short sales cycle. On the other hand, if your company’s sales cycle takes more than twelve months, you have a long sales cycle. Ultimately, the key is the goal of a salesperson should be to minimize the cycle time as much as possible without sacrificing the rapport with the prospect.

Don’t Overwhelm Customers with Options

Marketers often believe today’s consumers as web-savvy, refined individuals who pounce on whichever brand offers the best deal. Marketers believe that brand loyalty, is gradually fading, this is the reason why they inundate customers with their messaging, believing that the more interaction and information provided, the better their chances of holding on to these increasingly distracted and disloyal customers.

From the customer point of view, the increasing volume of marketing messages isn’t validating, rather it’s overwhelming. Customers feel pulled in a million different ways by marketers’ relentless efforts to engage. Research now shows that there can be too much choice; and when this occurs, customers are less likely to buy anything at all, and if they buy, they are not satisfied with their selection. A confused mind does not order. Effective communication needs to be engaging and easily understood, the customer must be able to visualize your message so they can relate to your product. Limit the options presented to the customer to three or fewer, and then help them in the decision process. A prime example is a comparison between the Google homepage and Yahoo homepage. Google is the number one visited site on the internet, yet they’re still able to limit their homepage to a single action: Would you like to search the internet? While Yahoo’s homepage isn’t. It is not search emphasized neither is it news emphasized. Everything is loaded onto one page; the result is too many options. Which do you visit the most?

Guide the Customer Through the Process

The stages of the buying process, as earlier stated, varies with business type, however peculiar your buying process is, you have to guide your customers through this process. Here are four (4) typical stages of the buying process and how to guide the customer to choose you.

● Need Recognition: A customer enters the buying process by recognizing his/her need for a particular item. They are aware of this pain point and casually begin to look for topics about their pain point. To guide the customer, at this stage, you need to write an informational post about the pain point your product solves. Blog posts, guest articles, information, etcetera are an example of material you post where customers and
everyone spends most of their time online. That is, get your solution in front of the target audience.

● Information Search: during this phase, the customer actively searches for more information about the pain point and how to solve it. The customer performs search and visits reviews sites to learn more. At this stage TOFU content is advisable, content
similar to the need recognition stage above, such as blog posts, infographics, lists, guides, etc. however at this stage you implant important keywords into your content.

● Option Evaluation: During this stage customers evaluate the options they’ve learned about to determine which is the best solution for their problem, i.e., they already have an idea about the solution they need. They just don’t know which specific solution/brand is best. The brands that present the best offer in their opinion are what they would go for. To catch consumers in this phase, you need to engage in MOFU marketing and optimize your website so customers can find your best offering easily when they visit. Create content like FAQ pages, landing pages and buying guides on your website.

● Purchase Decision: This is the stage where the customer is ready to pull the trigger, they
have chosen the brand to go with, and the offer that best suits them. All the research
they’ve made had led to one point, that is, you. How do you help them during this
phase? Clear the pathway to make the purchase, simplify the buying process, including
testimonials and reviews that reinforce their belief that they are making the best choice.
Remove bugs in the cart and checkout process, also optimize your website to target
buyer keywords.

Most people get it wrong that feedback collection is reserved only for multinational corporations
and governmental agencies, who usually set it up because it is required by the law. Most
businesses pay lip service to customer welfare only by celebrating the customer service week in
October.
Feedback collection is a double way street, your customer gets to express themselves about the
interaction with your business, and you get first-hand information on the effectiveness of your
business.
Customer feedback is the information provided by your customers about their satisfaction or
dissatisfaction with their experience with your brand, service, or product. Listening to the voice
of the consumer allows you to be quick to change in the business arena, and be able to stay
ahead of the competition.

1. You will be able to improve your product or service. Aftermarket research and introduction of
your product, you need to keep a constant eye on the acceptance level of your product over
time, feedback helps in this regard as it keeps you abreast of consumer opinion and answers
the question of whether your product still solves customer needs.

2. Feedback helps you gauge customer satisfaction; customer satisfaction relates to a lot of
company financial details. A high customer satisfaction grants you a high market share, which in
turn results in high revenue for the company. A simple customer satisfaction gauge of 0-10 is a
reliable metric that estimates consumer loyalty and retention to your brand which helps predict
the company’s future financials.

3. Feedback shows the customer you value their opinion, and include them in the business
process. customers will know that you are in business not only for the financial remuneration but
also for the welfare of your customers. Communicating with your customers through feedback
builds a relationship that keeps your customer loyal to you, as one of the co-builders of your
business, when they see their opinions molding your product.

4. Feedback helps create the best customer experience, satisfied customers with you and you
will be able to use your loyal customer reviews to market to other potential customers. Apple
and Nike have been able to build a reputable brand because their customer experience and
loyalty bring in more customers.

5. Feedback gives you data to help in making business decisions, basing business decisions on
guesses is no longer expedient in this highly digital and competitive world. Customer insights
will help you understand market direction and predict market changes. Your product
management will improve and be more responsive using customer feedback.

Method of Getting Feedback
1. Surveys
Surveys are one of the great ways to directly ask customers for information. Surveys are either
open-ended or close-ended. There are several questions you could ask your customers. Survey
forms are one the best ways to gain customer feedback, free survey services are provided by
SurveyKing, Qualtrics among others. For the best responses, your survey questions should;
Only ask questions that target your goals
Use open-ended questions
Avoid leading questions.

2. Feedback Boxes
A feedback form/ box is a reliable method to gather customer feedback, a feedback form is an
easily accessible tool customers can utilize to give feedback. Minor issues that your survey
question might overlook would be captured by a feedback form. You should constantly check
the feedback box and make sure every feedback gets a response within 24 hours. For bugs and
technical issues, make sure your engineers respond to the issue and advise the customer on
how to resolve the issue.

3. Social Media Feedback
Social media is one of the best ways to get prospects and customer feedback. Reaching out to
your followers to get feedback is a way to see the responses to your product. Monitoring your
brand name mentions gives you the ability to quickly react to customers’ needs and deliver
value, quickly resolve customers’ negative feedback and, also improve your overall content and
communications strategy. The issue with social media feedback is the bandwagon effect on
either positive or negative feedback, therefore you must always be responsive on your social
handles to respond to negative feedback.

Increased brand awareness is a crucial task for companies with an established position in the market. Brand image can be a deciding factor for your target audience. Competition is fierce, and grabbing the attention of your potential customers is vital for your business to thrive.

Brand awareness is the level of recognition a brand has among its target audience. The levels of brand awareness answer the question – how familiar is your target market with your brand? Brand awareness is one of the major assets your brand can build. High levels of awareness can increase the value of your product or service. Building brand awareness builds competitive advantage and impacts marketing and overall business performance positively.

For example, Coca-Cola’s Coke is often used as a synonym for soft drinks, no matter the producer. This shows the level of the association the target market has for the particular product. This strong level of association builds trust in a brand and trust results in the customer capital of the company.

These are some of the different ways to increase your brand awareness.

• Social Media Advertising

Social media is the marketplace nowadays, it is normally a place where you promote your products, but it is a great avenue to increase your brand awareness in a widespread and effective manner. A part of this process is inviting influencers, influencers who have established an audience that trusts them can increase your brand awareness when they mention your brand in their content.

A good social media awareness building method is posting valuable content and including your brand name in these contents, by this people will associate your brand with valuable content and during discussions, your brand name will come up. Another is to provide freebies on your social media pages, free stuff drives people and potential customers to your brand. On a final note, craft your own social media hashtag that can easily be associated with your brand, your hashtag will help in propelling your brand.

• Co-Marketing  

Co-marketing is a brilliant method to increase your brand awareness, as it takes advantage of another brand awareness. This way both brands will have greater outreach in reaching potential customers. An aspect of leveraging on another brand is delivering valuable content on popular brands’ blogs. Guest posting is a way to get your name into the public sphere of your industry. Local partnership is a strategy that will help push your brand image, join other businesses in seminars, festivals, donate to a charity event, or sponsor a local event in your location having your brand widely publicized therein, all these are sure to move your brand to recognition. Contact both online and offline magazines, news sources, or other publications to see if they’ll publish your content (it is sure the response will be positive if your content is valuable enough). By this means you’ll open your brand to the audience of these publications.

• Creative Identity

Craft a unique identity for your brand, create a superb and compelling story around your brand, this will make people connect deeply with your brand.

Interact your followers on the social media space, post content that lets your followers drop comments, engagements allow your followers to remember you and drive more followers to your brand. Give your social interactions the personality of the identity you’ve created, with this people can easily associate the identity with your brand. Oftentimes infuse humor into your interactions.

Hire a recognizable face for your brand, this allows you to humanize your brand, think of Heineken and the 007 brands, Nike and Michael Jordan. Otherwise, you can create a mascot for your brand, mascots will give life to your logo, for example, MailChimp uses a Chimp named Freddie, Reddit uses a character named Snoo.

Making your product exclusive is one of the ways to create a unique identity around your brand. You could offer exclusive deals to your customers, and discounts for referring other customers, or you give them bonus content that they can brag about.

Other avenues to increase brand awareness is through:

• SEO Advertising
• Branded Packaging
• Catchy Slogan
• Surveys
• Referral Programs

Would you like to explore avenues to increase the brand awareness for your business, reach out to us here