7 Ways to improve your sales results, right now

Here are 7 marketing tips and ideas, to help you improve your marketing results.

1. Don’t close sales – Open relationships instead

For years, sales trainers used to tell people about the art of closing a sale. In these more enlightened times, we understand that business is all about people. We know that if we want to earn a client and encourage their ongoing patronage, we need to treat them like humans.

This means building outstanding relationships with them.

For example: If you believe that you offer a great service, you have a professional obligation to tell prospective clients, so they don’t make a mistake and hire the wrong provider. You know that you will look after them, but you can’t be sure another provider will.

So, show them that you’re committed to helping them. Focus on them and their needs.

Operating from this mindset is a great deal more effective, than seeing them as an opponent you need to beat with closing techniques.

2. Look for the gold in your inbox

Find the last 10 emails you opened, which came from businesses that were trying to sell you something. Now, look for what it was that caused you to open them.

Most of the marketing emails you receive gets deleted. Those that compel you to open them provide you with useful clues, on how to get your marketing emails opened.

3. Develop more word of mouth referrals

Think of the people and businesses that you recommend to friends. In each case, you will find that the service they provide is remarkable in some way. [We talk or remark, on things that are remarkable].

If you want to attract word of mouth referrals, you need to offer a service that inspires or motivates people to talk about it. This means going beyond what’s expected.

Here’s the thing: When it comes to earning word of mouth referrals, good enough isn’t good enough!

Think about that for a moment.

4. Be extremely easy to contact

If you want to attract more sales or client enquiries from your website, make sure it’s as easy as possible for people to contact you. The main thing to remember is that your contact page should be visible from every page on your site.

If you use a contact form, only ask for the details you must have. Every additional field you add to a contact form loses you a percentage of enquiries.

5. Get noticed by the right people

Many small business owners are uncomfortable at the prospect of standing out. The challenge with that mindset, is that you can’t be outstanding unless you stand out.

That’s not just a play on words, it’s a cornerstone of successful marketing. Your prospective clients or customers can’t see you if you’re hidden in the background.

So, step out from the masses and tell your marketplace who you are and why they should listen to you.

6. Match your marketing to your marketplace

Most of the popular marketing sites are operated by people, who make THEIR money selling low price affiliate marketing products, software or books. If you try and apply the same ‘killer’ techniques they use, when marketing your service based business, you will find it far less effective.

I spoke recently with an accountant whose blog wasn’t generating any leads whatsoever. Her problem was that her site looked and sounded just like an affiliate marketing site. We changed it so that it reflected the service she provided and the inquiries immediately started to flow.

Tip: Read this – Why too few people readyour blog and how to fix it.

I have seen that same error hurt many, many service providers. If you’re using pinch pages, squeeze pages or other affiliate marketing techniques on your service based website, consider a more suitable approach. Immediately. If not sooner!

7. Put your marketing ideas into action more often

Those great ideas you have for developing a new product or service can’t help you, if you don’t use them.

There are few things in business more frustrating than seeing someone successfully put an idea into action, which you had years ago but didn’t run with. Similarly, many business owners wait until January to make important changes to their marketing, when it should be acted on as soon as possible.

Start off by actioning just one of your marketing ideas and see what happens. Test the idea. Measure the feedback. Learn from it and move forward. When you take this progressive, pro active approach, you will be amazed how much more effective your marketing becomes.

I hope you found these ideas useful. More importantly, I hope there’s something here, which you can put into action.