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Sales Plan for New Small Businesses, Zero Experience Required

Don’t let fear and lack of experience hold you back from starting your own business. While many companies fail in their first year, others thrive for decades. It’s time to overcome the shame of failure and turn your dreams into reality.

Developing a successful company requires hard work and careful planning, especially a sales plan. Every step counts. Pay attention to your customers’ signals and adapt quickly to changes. Being organized, thoughtful, and sometimes even selfish with your time is essential.

Now, let’s dive into developing your sales plan—a vital tool for growing your business. Remember, sales are the lifeblood of any business. Without selling your product or service, your business won’t thrive.

Plan and Execute for Sales Success

To achieve sales success, two key factors come into play: preparation and execution. These concepts are fundamental whether you aspire to develop a local business or create a world-class company.

Preparation goes beyond a simple business plan. It involves creating a mission and a roadmap that will serve as your guide at every step of your venture. This preparation is essential for both short-term and long-term goals. It sets the foundation for successful execution.

Note: If you’re starting your first business, it’s advisable to focus on establishing a strong presence in the local market. Aim to become a leader in your industry within your local community. As you gain valuable experience and a deeper understanding of business processes, you can start planning for expansion.

Execution, on the other hand, is all about taking appropriate and consistent actions. It is the practical implementation of your prepared plan. Preparation and execution go hand in hand, forming an endless circle of mutual influence. A well-developed plan leads to better execution, resulting in a higher success rate.

Remember, the key to sales success lies in the synergy between preparation and execution. Invest time and effort in both areas, and watch as they reinforce and propel each other towards your desired goals.

Prepare your sales strategies

1. Know your customer.

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2. Create a creative process for creating leads.

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3. Prepare to resolve not to sell

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4. Always stay ahead of the competition

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5. Analyze and understand your metrics

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6. Technology as your ally

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1. Know your customer

  • The first and most important is to define who your customer is.   That is the first step in creating sales strategies. Then, understand their needs and wants; that is the base of your business. Think about it; first, you need a customer, but what will you do with the person if you don’t know how to help them? Defining their pain point is the next most important step you need to take. Once you have a clear idea of their need or want, describe how your product is the best solution. 
  • The idea of ​​creating an ideal client is to use it as a guide. Defining your ideal client is equivalent to making the mold where many similar clients fit very well. You choose a single template: a 21-year-old medical student in New York, living in a one-bedroom apartment with no roommates, interested in rock music, likes to dress casually, etc. You define every detail, including demographics, geolocation, psychographics, and others, as if you were creating what a natural person in the market should be on paper. 
  • The main idea of ​​developing an ideal client is to create a niche. In other words, you will not make a sales strategy for millions of people. Instead, you develop a sales strategy for a particular population represented by your ideal client (ideal customer, buyer persona- same thing).
  • To grow your business, you must gain ground little by little. Defining and winning niche by niche is the best strategy.
  • Visit the social networks where your ideal customer is most likely to visit. Then, interact, analyze what they express, understand their suffering, and find a better solution than what your competitors have done.

2. Make a creative process to acquire leads

  • Research your competitors ‘ actions before developing your strategies to create leads and analyze their results. For this, specific programs tell you the keywords they use the most and their SEO results. Next, use search engines’ keyword research (sadly, they are not cheap but worth the investment) and analyze your URL. Some free search engine keyword research programs exist, but the information is minimal. 
  • Start thinking about how you will make people know that you exist. You do it through direct contact (email, social networks, SMS), Google ads, or other search engines.
  • It’s best just to get organized. Develop a sales funnel to help identify the steps you must take to interact with your ideal customers. Of course, that sales funnel has to undergo changes and adjustments as you see that specific strategies have not worked. The main idea is to adjust to the client because the client will not adjust for you.
  • Remember something fundamental; we are in a world of continuous changes. Don’t wait for the strategies you’ve developed to work forever. Instead, adjust yourself to the times.

3. Prepare to resolve not to sell

  • You are in a time where the differences between generations are becoming more marked. The strategies you use for millennials are not the same as those you will use for generation x or any other. Each of these generations has different convictions. Therefore, do not focus on selling but on solving.
  • People want you to help them. But, unfortunately, people have heavy loads to carry every day, and without a doubt, they are in constant search of help to facilitate or eliminate their needs and satisfy their wants. 
  • Your sales strategy should be focused on the individual and not on your problem. Intertwine their issues with the features of your product. Make it seem like your product is their best option and worth buying (because it is!). Don’t push your product, be more sophisticated when presenting your product as a solution.
  •  Put yourself in the shoes of your ideal client; when you get up, do you say: “Today, I’m going to buy a new bag.” The reality is that it doesn’t happen that way, even if you want it to. People buy things to ease their pain. However, you can use the power of suggestion and good marketing to solve a problem the customer didn’t know they had.
  • It is much better to show an ideal clients what their lives would be like without the problem. Then, educate them to understand that your product would give them greater value and minimize their problems.

4. Always stay ahead of the competition

  • Do not start a company thinking you are less than your competition and will not last. Instead, create a company thinking about how to beat your competition. For this, you must investigate your competitors, analyze their keyword tactics, and find out what niche they are targeting.
  • Shape your product or service to make it look better than theirs. The best way to do this is through incredible images and videos. Then keep through the rest of their senses.  
  • Prepare specialized campaigns to address complaints from that niche.
  • Emphasize your ideal customer in all your campaigns.
  • Look for a message to draw attention toward your products—the idea is not to win a battle with your competitors but to gain their customers. 
  • Analyze your company very well and clearly understand its advantages and disadvantages. Companies do not close due to external problems but internal ones. Strengthen your company, including building a good team. Find people who have the talent to elevate your company.

5. Analyze and understand your metrics

  • You are starting a business. Your idea may be noteworthy. Like any company, it may initially have some setbacks, but don’t let that stop you. If you don’t take a metric analysis of your steps, you won’t know where you’re failing or excelling.
  • To achieve your long-term goals, you must know your business from every angle; metric analysis gives you that information.
  • Google Analytics can be used as an effective means for your analysis. It gives you the information you need for future strategies. For example,
  • A means like Google Analytics helps with:
    • The management and collection of data.
    • Data visualization and analysis.
    • Integrations.
    • Obtain valuable information about the performance of your business.
    • Use data to make better decisions.
    • Reports.
  • In addition, it offers reports on:
    • Target Audience paths.
    • Advertising metrics.
    • The acquisition of new leads.
    • The behavior of users.
    • Conversions.
    • What is happening in your business in real time?
  • You can know what changes occur month by month, quarter by quarter, or year by year.
  • The main thing that this type of analysis gives you is a perfect tool to know where you are and how to get where you want. If you don’t know what is happening in your strategies, sales, promotions, and everything you do, your business will not have a safe growth path.

6. Technology as your ally

  • Technology is more advanced every day, and its uses are endless. You need to integrate technology into your daily routine. Don’t stop incorporating technology into your business. That would be a huge mistake. Not only would it be a mistake not to use them, but not to use the latest programs or the latest technology.
  • As you have understood, the development of a company is not complex as long as you are informed, organized, and prepared for changes. Planning a company’s sustainability begins by looking for sales limits and solutions. Developing long-term plans includes detailed sales and marketing strategies. You can’t sustain a business without sales, and you won’t have deals if you don’t have good planning.

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