The best laid plans often end up failing. But failing is a great thing. When something isn’t working, you jump into action and often come up with terrific ways to improve the process or the system.
Rather than pout or rage about what isn’t working, take a look at this menu of six marketing strategies and see which ones will save your butt.
- Drop Unprofitable products. Profitability is more important than sales. Evaluate your product lines and drop products that aren’t passing profit muster. Another option is to raise prices on products that are unprofitable.
- Try new sales incentives and commission structures. Sales people spend effort where they will make the most money. Take a close look at your commission structure and make sure that you are rewarding sales people for profitable sales.
- Change how you sell. Don’t just assume your current sales strategy is optimal. Consider using affiliates, partners, home parties, catalogs, internet, etc.
- Change or adjust your sales process or system. Your sales process might be out-dated. Take the time to explore new strategies such as Craig Elias’, Trigger Events or Jill Konrath’s SNAP Selling.
- Develop or focus on lead generation program. Where are your leads coming from and are they good leads. Take a good hard look at your conversions from trade shows, web sites, etc and start optimizing all of them to attract your ideal customer. For help, check out HubSpot – they are masters of inbound marketing.
- Develop a personal follow-up program. Most sales are lost because our follow-up systems stink. Map out your sales process and develop a follow-up system that touches your customer at least 7 – 10 times. For help, visit Constant Contact, aWeber and InfusionSoft and the new Nimble.
