The Customer & The Sale

What are the most important sales lessons that all businesses should be following? Our panel of experts give their top tips to boost sales, across any business.

HR Shiever - Managing Director, Citrix Online, Pacific Region

1. When it comes to growing sales, businesses often need to take one step back to move two steps forward. I recommend that every three to six months, companies review in detail who their top customers are and develop profiles of those businesses. 2. Then, get on Google or even the Yellow Pages, search for similar businesses that meet those same profiles, and start a sales campaign targeting those companies.

3. Embracing the right technology is also critical to ensuring that your sales team is as productive as possible. One such tool that is quick to implement, easy-to-use and delivers instant return on investment is online meeting software. Online meetings give your sales staff a powerful alternative to the face-to-face meeting and allow for much richer conversations than a simple phone call. By securely sharing their computer screens with prospects or customers in real-time, your sales team will be able to walk through presentations and deliver engaging product demonstrations online from their office computer. Consequently, they’ll be able to travel less but reach more people, improve sales cycles and, ultimately, increase sales revenues.

Carl Harman - State General Manager Victoria/Tasmania, nabbusiness

1. Genuine customer service. Take the time to know your prospective or existing customers as this will save you time and money in the long run. Some call it 'qualifying', and at NAB we talk about making genuine contact with our customers and taking the time to understand the full scope of their business needs in the context of the industries in which they operate. This ensures you are meeting all of your customers' needs and giving them the right products/solutions, which in turn increases your customer loyalty and advocacy.

2. Responsiveness. Be both pro-active and re-active. Find a legitimate reason to touch base with your customers periodically and demonstrate how you can add value. If your customer calls you, take accountability for the call and the outcome and ensure you manage their expectations around timings and processes. Under-promise and over-deliver!

3. Don't underestimate the power of referrals. Take the time to identify who your key advocates are and why they are advocates. You should be asking these customers for referrals and potentially emulating what you do for them to build satisfaction and more advocates.

Gavan Ord - Business Policy Adviser, CPA Australia

1. Boosting sales should not be your sole objective. Increased sales don’t automatically translate into a successful business if you don’t collect the cash from the sale. So it’s important to have in place a strategy to increase the cash from sales by improving the timeliness of receiving such cash.

2. One common strategy to boost sales is to engage an experienced salesperson. To motivate sales staff, you should offer them a commission, but be careful. Payment of the commission should be linked to receiving the cash from the sale, not when the sale is made. Linking the commission to receiving the cash will motivate your sales staff to not only make the sale but also to chase any outstanding debts on your behalf.

3. It is also important to boost sales in products that give you the highest margin, as this will increase your profit. It makes no sense to boost sales through heavy discounting, as this may leave you worse off. To boost sales of high value items, you could consider placing those high value items in a high visibility/traffic location.