So your small agency has gotten off the ground, the sales are coming in and you’re doing good. But could you be doing great?
It’s an amazing feat making consistent sales and steady income but it’s a good idea to up the ranks and start boosting your sales performance & processes to ensure the future success of your agency.
Optimising your sales performance is crucial for your agency’s success for several reasons, but to name a few: Revenue growth, financial stability, cost efficiency and client acquisition and retention.
If you’re ready to take that next step and switch up your agency’s sales process then read on for 7 sales techniques you can implement to boost your sales performance.
The first step to really nailing your sales process is to clearly define your goals. Goal setting will help give your agency a clear direction.
However, getting specific about them will assist with filling out the steps of the sales process in detail and hone in on the strategies that will work best. For example, setting a goal for a specific amount of growth in monetary values rather than just aiming to ‘increase ARR’.
As an agency owner, you need to create goals that are specific but also measurable, so you can track your results to see whether the current sales techniques and strategies are working or not.
Lining up the goals with the overall agency objectives is also key. They all need to play to the same tune, so make sure you cross-reference the two to ensure they’re both heading in the same direction.
You have your goals, now you need sales reps to hit them!
Closing sales is no easy task and it’s definitely a skilled role, so recruiting the right talent is absolutely crucial. Take your time in creating a thorough and engaging vacancy listing, and hire experienced and charismatic salespeople.
It’s worth taking the time to make sure these hires are the right fit as they’re the ones who will be using these sales techniques and carrying your agency towards its sales related goals!
Once you’ve got your sales talent you should provide quality training and development for them on an ongoing basis. Especially if you’re part of a smaller agency that is growing, as the steps in the sales process and the techniques used will evolve as the agency grows.
You also want to ensure that the sales techniques you create are used by all of your sales reps and providing regular training on it will help create consistency within your agency’s sales techniques.
You’ve gotten the hard steps out of the way now it’s time to implement a new sales process for your agency.
Create a standardised sales process that will be used agency wide, and have it documented somewhere for your sales reps to easily access.
Creating standardised steps in the sales process means that you can ensure properly qualified sales, and efficiency and success amongst your sales team. Other benefits include:
Diving deeper into creating that robust sales process, you need to map out each stage of the client’s journey and what that should look like.
It’s important to set clear expectations for your sales team, and mapping out each stage of the sales journey is one of the ways you can do that. Be sure to include detailed descriptions and instructions along each step of the pipeline, so your seals team know exactly what they’re doing and how it’s meant to look.
Leave no steps of the sales process open to interpretation.
As we mentioned in our last post, crafting the perfect sales pitch is a huge part of setting up a successful interaction between our sales reps and a prospect and it shouldn’t be taken lightly.
As part of developing an airtight value proposition, you need to identify the USPs (Unique Selling Points) of your agency services. Ask yourselves:
Pinpointing your USPs will help your sales teams communicate the value that your agency will provide, as well as highlight what’s unique about your agency.
Once you’ve compiled these, then it’s time to bulk them out and craft a compelling value proposition. Again, this must focus on what value and/or benefits your agency services will provide to your target audience, so always lead with benefits, not the features.
Start the pitch with a captivating opening, demonstrate your expertise in the industry to help create trust and use sales techniques that create urgency to encourage the prospect to take action!
Of course, shiny new clients and closing sales are very exciting. But it’s important to nurture the relationships you have with your existing clients. It’s all good making tons of new sales, but if your existing clients are churning at the same rate, then your agency’s future won’t be sustainable.
Implement a CRM system to help with keeping up-to-date information on your clients. Having certain bits of information to hand when speaking to clients will help with building relationships. You can also use this information to track things such as churn risk and happiness scores. This information can include:
The frequency you interact with clients plays a big part in providing value and nurturing them too. Sometimes clients won’t speak up about needing help, which may result in them neglecting the product or finding a different solution altogether. Sometimes they may not even know that they need help either!
However, holding regular meetings with them ensures that they’re being updated regularly with new features and that they’re utilising your product and/or service to receive the most value possible.
Once you’ve nailed your agency sales techniques and process, you’ll need some leads to sell to.
Utilise SEO, content marketing and social media to get your brand out there, generate leads and drive traffic to your site.
Once you’ve got your leads, you need to act fast to try to close them. So creating a lead nurturing strategy to convert prospects into clients beforehand is a good idea.
A lead nurturing strategy is a way of guiding your prospects through the steps of the sales process, while simultaneously building a relationship with the prospect.
Make sure this strategy focuses on:
When everything is set up and flowing nicely, the final thing to do is to track and analyse your sales metrics. This step is as crucial as the others in the sales process, as it will tell you what’s working and what isn’t.
Having a process in place to monitor your key metrics (things like conversion rates and revenue growth) will allow you to easily analyse the numbers and pinpoint the areas of success on which you can expand on.
You’ll also use that data and analytics to identify any areas in which improvements and amendments can be made to optimise the process for success!
As your agency picks up traction and starts bringing in consistent sales, it’s easy to feel as though you’ve made it and rest on your laurels. However, to truly skyrocket your growth, elevating your sales game and processes is the key.
Optimising your agency sales techniques isn’t just a ‘nice to have’ it’s a must! Just to recap on the 7 sales techniques you’ll need to take your agency from ‘good’ to ‘great’:
Implementing these strategies is not about short-term gains but playing the long game to secure your agency’s long-term success.
Happy strategising!
👋 The Insites Team
12th May 2020
25th March 2022