As discussed in the previous article, if the business can’t make good sales, it can’t be successful no matter how hard it tries to cut the costs. By managing the sales through systematic methods, sales become predictable rather than random. Here are several major categories of sales management:
- Sales Channel
- Sales Pipeline / Funnel
- Recruitment, training, compensation or commission for salespersons
We analyzed how to select and manage sales channels in the previous article. Here we continue to share more details on the sales pipeline and sales funnel.
Sales Pipeline, also referred to as Sales Funnel, is the process before a product or service is actually sold. For example, if you want customers to buy something in the store, the first step is to set up a brand in front of the store to let customers know what kind of products the store sells. The second step is to find a way to attract customers to come in. This can be achieved by window display, or distributing flyers, or posting a big sale banner on the window. The fourth step is to communicate with customers, demonstrating the function of the product and its value to customers. The last step is the payment transaction.
In different sales channels, there will be different sales pipelines and sales funnels. Business owners and managers must carefully consider these pre-sales activities and design a set of effective sales methods and steps after selecting sales channels. Pre-sales activities can generally be divided into several categories:
- Customer Awareness
- Interest
- Decision
- Take Action
Customer awareness — refers to making customers aware of the existence of your brand or products and services. It can be customers seeing an advertisement, hearing people talking about it, and finding your webpage on the Internet.
Interest – potential customers are asking for more in-depth information to see if it fits their needs, say looking at product information, visiting the webpage, and even calling or visiting the shop.
Decision – this is the most important part of the entire sales pipeline because the prospect is making a choice decision. When a potential customer needs to make a decision, there is a lot of information to analyze (such as information provided by you, competitors, substitutes, etc.). If a salesperson can point out the competitive advantages, it will be easier to make the sales.
Take action – guide potential customers to take action, which can be to buy a product, try-out, or even sell peripheral services.
So, how can these help managing sales?
The above are sales designs, which can be prepared in advance. If business owners and managers have a set of meticulous designs, get ready for every step, be prepared to deal with the response of potential customers, etc., then the success rate of sales will be greatly improved. And the “success rate” must be based on data.
There’s been a lot of online advertising and sales in the past ten years. The most important thing in online marketing is data analysis, and a lot of useful data can be collected online. In fact, offline sales also have a lot of data, such as: the flow of people in the exhibition, the flow of people in the store, the number of flyers distributed, the number of customers calling inquiries, etc. These are conducive to analyzing sales pipeline and sales funnels, and as a proof of whether the sales activity is effective.
Data analysis
As reflected at its name, there will be a certain loss in each step of the “sales funnel”. It is impossible for every potential customer to see the advertisement to be interested in the product, let alone every interested potential customer will buy. Business owners and managers must analyze the churn rate in each step.
If the churn rate in the first two steps (customer awareness, interest) is high, it means that the company’s marketing strategy has to be improved, which may be something to do with advertising content, target audience, advertising channels and so on.
If the churn rate in the last two steps (decision and action) is high, it means that the sales skills have to be improved, which may refer to understanding the needs of customers, the sales story is not good enough, the Call for Action is not attractive enough and so on.
Tips for you:
Collecting data on sales steps can be used to analyze what goes wrong, and is also a great tool to measure the workload of sales and marketing staff. Bosses, data collecting is definitely not a waste of time!