8-Steps to Double Your B2B Sales

Published on this site: November 17th, 2006 - See more articles from this month

If you've ever found it difficult to free up time from the normal daily grind of `putting out fires' to learn how to increase your sales dramatically, these eight marketing steps will save you months of digging.

These steps explain how to attract more business, how to sell more to your existing clients, and how to reactivate business that has drifted away. And the best part is, there's no need to make major changes to your business and no need to spend more money on ads.

What are these steps?

1. Increase the total number of customers you serve.
   
   Getting new clients is essential. A business that fails to grow stagnates and dies. Unfortunately, getting new clients is often the only marketing method many businesses focus on. That's a mistake. Whether you hire sales reps, telemarketers, use word of mouth, referral systems, ads, or some other marketing approach to get new clients, seeking new business is often the slowest, most expensive, and most risky method of making a buck. The next seven marketing steps require less effort and less money to implement and can be just as profitable.
   
   
2. Increase customer retention.
   
   Recognizing and eliminating clients from drifting away is the same as increasing your revenues. Think about it. If you normally have an annual 30% loss of clients and you bring that to zero, that's the same as giving yourself a 30% increase in sales to your bottom line -- all without taking on a single dollar of expense. It's like getting free money.
   
   
3. Increase inquiry to sales conversion.
   
   Say you're now closing 50% of the inquiries you get. If you improve your sales skills and the way you initially target prospects to insure only the highest probability prospects respond, you can increase your closing to 100% - with no increase in costs to you. This also is an instant profit increase without taking on a penny of expense
   
   
4. Increase the frequency of purchases.
   
   The more frequently your clients buy from you the more money you make. Period.
   
   
5. Increase the amount (dollar volume) of purchases.
   
   You can do this with point of purchase incentives. You can imitate Mc Donald's and package multiple items together as a "value" or you can choose to encourage your clients to "Supersize".
   
   
6. Increase your marketing and advertising effectiveness.
   
   Eliminate the 32 common marketing mistakes everyone is making and adopt principles proven to boost results 300% to 2100% or more. Marketing
   decisions are made under uncertain conditions. It is impossible to know the exact response from clients without some form of testing or the response of competitors. However, there are 32 sales-killing mistakes that are commonly repeated. Eliminating these mistakes will boost your profits.
   
   
7. Find new uses for your products and services that you had not considered before now.
   
   
8. "Package" and profit from your specialized knowledge.
   
   Taking a systematic approach to your marketing as outlined above will increase your sales. And yes, this absolutely is a lot of work to do. Especially when you consider there are over 800 ways to attract new business. Trying every one of those 800 methods to find which one works best for you would take more time than any of us has left to live on this earth.
   
   There's a better way... over the past 29 years I've spent countless hours studying sales and marketing. I've collected thousands of cases studies and examples of ways others have used many of these methods successfully. This research has benefited me tremendously. And it's a real time saver for work I do for myself and for clients.

I recommend you find case studies you can adapt to your business too. Collecting case studies is a huge time saver over trying to employ these eight marketing steps into your business from scratch. When you follow all eight steps, you will find it's easier than you thought possible to double your sales.

Andre Bell : is a copywriter and marketing advisor. For additional
marketing resources to increase your sales visit Andre's site at
http://www.AndreBell.com/