The use of this site and the content contained therein is governed by the Terms of Use. When you use this site you acknowledge that you have read the Terms of Use and that you accept and will be bound by the terms hereof and such terms as may be modified from time to time.
All text, graphics, audio, design and other works on the site are the copyrighted works of nasscom unless otherwise indicated. All rights reserved.
Content on the site is for personal use only and may be downloaded provided the material is kept intact and there is no violation of the copyrights, trademarks, and other proprietary rights. Any alteration of the material or use of the material contained in the site for any other purpose is a violation of the copyright of nasscom and / or its affiliates or associates or of its third-party information providers. This material cannot be copied, reproduced, republished, uploaded, posted, transmitted or distributed in any way for non-personal use without obtaining the prior permission from nasscom.
The nasscom Members login is for the reference of only registered nasscom Member Companies.
nasscom reserves the right to modify the terms of use of any service without any liability. nasscom reserves the right to take all measures necessary to prevent access to any service or termination of service if the terms of use are not complied with or are contravened or there is any violation of copyright, trademark or other proprietary right.
From time to time nasscom may supplement these terms of use with additional terms pertaining to specific content (additional terms). Such additional terms are hereby incorporated by reference into these Terms of Use.
Disclaimer
The Company information provided on the nasscom web site is as per data collected by companies. nasscom is not liable on the authenticity of such data.
nasscom has exercised due diligence in checking the correctness and authenticity of the information contained in the site, but nasscom or any of its affiliates or associates or employees shall not be in any way responsible for any loss or damage that may arise to any person from any inadvertent error in the information contained in this site. The information from or through this site is provided "as is" and all warranties express or implied of any kind, regarding any matter pertaining to any service or channel, including without limitation the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement are disclaimed. nasscom and its affiliates and associates shall not be liable, at any time, for any failure of performance, error, omission, interruption, deletion, defect, delay in operation or transmission, computer virus, communications line failure, theft or destruction or unauthorised access to, alteration of, or use of information contained on the site. No representations, warranties or guarantees whatsoever are made as to the accuracy, adequacy, reliability, completeness, suitability or applicability of the information to a particular situation.
nasscom or its affiliates or associates or its employees do not provide any judgments or warranty in respect of the authenticity or correctness of the content of other services or sites to which links are provided. A link to another service or site is not an endorsement of any products or services on such site or the site.
The content provided is for information purposes alone and does not substitute for specific advice whether investment, legal, taxation or otherwise. nasscom disclaims all liability for damages caused by use of content on the site.
All responsibility and liability for any damages caused by downloading of any data is disclaimed.
nasscom reserves the right to modify, suspend / cancel, or discontinue any or all sections, or service at any time without notice.
For any grievances under the Information Technology Act 2000, please get in touch with Grievance Officer, Mr. Anirban Mandal at data-query@nasscom.in.
Imagine, you have an excellent marketing team, management decisions and a great customer service, but still you are not growing as business. It is possible that there is something wrong with sales strategy.
“It’s not about having the right opportunities. It’s about handling the opportunities right.” – Mark Hunter
The goal of every sales organization is to close more deals faster. In order to accomplish this, every organization needs a strong and effective sales strategy. Building and developing a solid sales strategy will help you to generate more leads and win more deals.
Sales strategy is not just for large organizations or multinationals. Small businesses as well need a good sales strategy to stay in the game and win.
We will walk you through the importance of sales strategy and how to build one that can help small businesses such as yours to make a real quantifiable growth.
What is a sales strategy?
A sales strategy is an approach by an individual or a business to sell their products or services for generating and maximizing revenue. It supports your sales efforts and helps you to achieve desired results.
In other words, a sales strategy involves understanding your unique selling methods, identifying your target market, knowing your competitors, analysing trends and staying organized. A well-defined sales strategy shows you a clear path for achieving desired sales goals quickly.
Why is it important to have a sales strategy?
Having a solid sales strategy is important for the growth of your company. One of the biggest mistakes we often make is forgetting to build a sales strategy. Creating a sales strategy can help you get more customers, build strong customer relationships and sell more products/ services.
A well-crafted sales strategy helps you to address the needs of customers at every stage, allows you to focus on areas that lead to closing more deals and enables you to find the right people for your team.
An efficient sales strategy can benefit your business by providing a clear-cut guide to streamlining your sales and marketing efforts.
Whether you deploy inbound sales or outbound sales, you can have sales strategies that can give you results.
Inbound sales strategy focuses on attracting prospects to your business and building strong relationship. The prospect is already aware of your business and initiates the contact.
One of the most popular ways to attract prospects is to provide best online contents such as blogs, e-books and other insightful information.
Prospects are actively looking for a solution or information regarding their challenge. They are almost ready to purchase from you. At this stage, you can clearly communicate how your product or service meets their needs. You can actively demonstrate the features and benefits of your product / service offerings connecting with their needs. Depending on these interactions, prospects convert into customers.
In outbound sales, the seller actively seeks a potential buyer, then reaches out to the prospect via cold calls, emails and finally sell their product / service through a process of follow-ups and demos. Outbound strategy depends on having the right Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) for your business.
Once you have your Ideal Customer Profile, you can generate a database of potential leads that match that profile and reach out to those leads to find whether they are interested in your products and services.
You can employ various prospecting methods including social media, digital marketing, cold calling, and email to get your prospect’s attention. Once you grab your prospects attention, you will need to understand their needs to close a deal and build a strong relationship with them.
How to build a successful sales strategy plan that fits your business?
Every business must have a unique approach that suits their business identity and model. To build a plan that fits your business, you have to determine the following:
These are the basis of an executable sales strategy. At the end, your sales team will have clear priorities, measurable outcomes, strong guidelines and clear goals toward which everyone can work.
How to build a sales strategy?
Now you have a sales strategy plan and it’s time to put your strategy into action. Here is a 7-step process to build a successful sales strategy:
1. Understand your target audience
The goal here is to attract more customers who have similar challenges as your current customers.
The best way to reach your target audience is to look at your current customers and understand why they purchased your product / service. Ask yourself,
What caused these customers look for a solution like our product or service?
Why did they purchase our product or service instead of a competitor?
Create a customer persona of your actual buyers to achieve consistent sales. In addition to understanding general demographics information such as business size and team size, you can collect details like why they approached us. For example, you can go for a customer survey to understand your current customers better.
2. Implementing SWOT analysis
SWOT (Strengths Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threat) analysis is an important tool to analyze your current situation considering your business strength and weakness and help you develop a strong business strategy.
It helps you to identify whether you’re able to expand your business further. SWOT analysis can be performed by anyone familiar with your business processes.
SWOT analysis highlights your areas of strength which you can use to make the most of the opportunities that you have in the future. It also shows your weakness so that you have the opportunity to address some of the weaknesses and threats that your business has or may face.
You can use your strength and improve your weakness to take advantage of opportunities and work to minimize threats.
3. Aligning sales and marketing
Aligning sales and marketing plays a crucial role in the success of your business. It helps you in customer acquisition and increasing your revenue. To properly manage every lead, you need sales and marketing to be united.
To get better at their work, both teams can share their learnings so that both could benefit from each other.
Few ways for both teams to work together
Arrange for regular joint meetings for both teams
Ensure open communication between both the teams
Facilitate sharing information between both the teams
Once you have aligned both the teams, produce a consistent message that both teams can use. Now you can send your consistent message to all your prospects for winning more deals.
4. Define a sales process
A sales process is a repeatable set of steps that a sales team can perform to turn potential leads into paying customers. It acts as a roadmap for your sales team so they can know what steps to take next, to close a deal.
Having an effective sales process shows a clear path for sales team to follow and gives them much more consistency in winning deals.
Related blog: Sales Process – A roadmap to close deals faster!
5. Get the right team
To achieve your sales target, you need the right sales talent. Creating an ideal hiring strategy and using it during the interview process is an excellent way to identify the best candidates.
Another way is to have a happy and healthy sales culture. Happy salespeople convert more leads and are generally more successful.
Once you have identified the right people train them on the necessary skills such as cold calling prospects, handling objections, and negotiations.
You can train them with necessary resources such as sales email templates to close more deals.
6. Action plan
Set up a workflow that involves all tasks involved to achieve your goals. Assign the tasks to right persons and provide a timeline for the completion of these tasks. Your timeline should be in sync with your revenue goals.
7. Best tools and software
Provide the best tools and software to your salesperson to close more deals with less work. A customer relationship management (CRM) software enables you to achieve this.
With a CRM software, you’ll be able to automatically capture and record lead information.
You can even create automated sales campaign and send blog posts or invitations to free webinars based on predefined intervals. This would encourage the customer to purchase your product or service.
You can also track your sales team’s performance using its real time Custom Analytics (Live Reports). You can even track whether daily sales happened or not and who (sales person) is in connection with whom (lead) and who is performing well on a daily basis.
That the contents of third-party articles/blogs published here on the website, and the interpretation of all information in the article/blogs such as data, maps, numbers, opinions etc. displayed in the article/blogs and views or the opinions expressed within the content are solely of the author's; and do not reflect the opinions and beliefs of NASSCOM or its affiliates in any manner. NASSCOM does not take any liability w.r.t. content in any manner and will not be liable in any manner whatsoever for any kind of liability arising out of any act, error or omission. The contents of third-party article/blogs published, are provided solely as convenience; and the presence of these articles/blogs should not, under any circumstances, be considered as an endorsement of the contents by NASSCOM in any manner; and if you chose to access these articles/blogs , you do so at your own risk.
The lack of alignment between sales and marketing functions in an enterprise is an age-old problem, frequently lamented, yet rarely addressed or solved. A new survey shows the lack of alignment is actually becoming a bigger problem today and the…
I didn’t expect to hear much about innovation at the India Shared Value Summit last week, but I was pleasantly surprised when Shafi Saxena of News Republic reminded the audience of the two pillars of Design Thinking: empathy and creativity. Those…
If we’d ask, “What’s the one thing you cannot live without every day?” We are pretty sure a majority of you would answer that it’s your smartphone. And why not? A smartphone keeps us connected, helps us travel with maps, lets us buy stuff online and…
