3 Tips to Kick Off Your Sales and Generate More Revenue
Posted by Anthony Pagliaro on Tue, Jul 26, 2011 @ 11:30 AM
Are you looking for a way to help kick off your sales immediately? With these three tips, you could increase your revenue within hours, days, or weeks, all depending on how engaged you become.
1) Listening
Are you listening to your customers? Are you engaging with them outside of when they call you for customer support?
Nearly all businesses now have some sort of social media presence, but not everyone is actually using it. If you’re not already signed up for Twitter, get signed up; this is an absolute must! Even if you’re not interested in Twitter, your customers are. They talk about what they like, what they don’t like and although it may not be directed at your company specifically, you still want to know what your customers think so you can target their needs and be of better service to them.
In order to do this, you need to sign up for twitter and find your customers. An easy way to find a client on Twitter is searching for them using email addresses you have in your customer database. If you don’t have many emails, then you need to search for people that you generally market to. Your next step is to actively find what people are saying on Twitter.
Use Twitter’s Advanced Search function to lookup key words that pertain to your business. Search if anyone is mentioning your business name and engage with what they are saying by re-tweeting, replying to them, or sending them a direct message. The search function has a variety of filters you can choose from, so make sure to spend some time with it.
2) Engaging
Engaging with you customers is the next very important step. It’s one thing to listen to them, but by engaging with customers, it shows that you care about them. Facebook and LinkedIn are no longer for personal use. They are an important business medium that can be used everyday. Facebook is great for a B2C company whereas LinkedIn is more suitable for a B2B company. Although both should be used for either type of company, give special focus to the one that applies to you.
Publish content on your social media pages that adds value to your customers and prospects. People who see you adding valuable content consider you a reliable resource and someone trustworthy enough to buy from. If you are providing content that people enjoy, engage with people by asking questions.
Use Facebook to launch a contest. Everyone loves participating in contests in hopes to receive a promotion or free product or service you offer. Hold a contest in which someone who likes your Facebook Fan Page can win something. For more details on holding contests, click here.
3) Email Newsletters
Some people think email newsletters are outdated. Absolutely not! Newsletters are a platform in which you consistently provide your most valuable content each month to your customers and subscribers. If you provide rich content, people look forward to your monthly newsletter. In fact, it's very important to stay consistent with your newsletters and make sure to get them out every month. Once a quarter is too little and more than once a month can be too frequent, but every industry is different, so play around with this in the beginning stages.
Make sure your newsletters are short and concise. Do not put entire articles in your newsletters. Write a few sentences to engage the reader to click a link that takes them to a full article. This way you can track what content generates more interest and further market to people based on their preferences.
Now these are just a few tips that could really make an impact on your sales if you take the time to do it. There’s a lot more that you can do using your social media presence to spread the word about your product or service. If you have the time, take some webinars or speak with social media experts, as it can really have a positive impact on your business.
How has listening and engaging on daily basis impacted you?
Anthony Pagliaro
The Maynard Group
831.465.7728
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