Here’s What To Do (And What Not To Do) For Sales Success in 2023
Follow these sales tips for a successful year.
The field of sales is a complicated one, especially in 2023. Salespeople are working harder than ever to sell, but buyers may be cutting back due to economic concerns. This divide must be bridged in order for successful partnerships to be made. Worried about how to make it happen? It’s all about focusing on the right sales outreach, using creativity, and prioritizing your brand while avoiding targeting the wrong people or forgetting to leverage data.
Intrigued and want to know more? Read our list of tips on what to do and what to avoid for sales success in 2023.
DO these things in 2023 ✅
These are some of the things you can do for sales success this year.
DO focus on proper outreach
You may think that any type of outreach is positive, but that isn’t always the best strategy. Considering the economic downturn and inflation, buyers are searching for better-curated and strategic products that best fit their needs. Likewise, sellers are working hard to meet their quotas and increase ROI. Pushy outreach can quite literally push buyers away.
The solution?
Curated, quality outreach tailored directly to buyers’ needs and situations. A buyer may delete a spammy email or hang up on an unwelcome cold call, but a personalized email with just the right value propositions may stop them in their tracks.
DO use video and other creative methods
If you really want to get your point across and ensure buyers listen, it’s not just about the message; it’s about the delivery method. If you haven’t already realized it by your low-key addiction to Tik Tok, video is the face of the future. According to statistics, video represents 69% of mobile data traffic, growing to 79% by 2027.
And remember, there’s so much you can do with video. From tutorials and branding to webinars to tutorials and ads, video is a fun and interesting way to show prospects and clients how your product can benefit them.
When creating videos, keep these sales tips in mind for success:
- Focus on your target audience and tailor your content for them. Consider age, gender, income, and other key factors so you can best create relevant content.
- Have a strategy. Making random videos isn’t always the best plan. Instead, create a strategy around how video can help bring in new clients or increase sales, then execute it.
- Grab views attention immediately. Users will scroll past a video if it’s boring or irrelevant. Make sure to capture their attention right away with the proper messaging (this is where that aforementioned strategy comes in), so they’ll continue watching.
DO keep it personal and prioritize relationships
As we previously discussed, outreach matters. But doing it the right way can make or break sales success. The key is to apply a B2C approach for B2B situations. This means that when contacting or working with businesses, a personal, tailored approach counts.
Just because you’re a business working with a business, don’t lose sight of what’s important: You’re a human working with other humans. In fact, statistics from Slideshare show that 80% of customers are more likely to buy from a company that provides a tailored experience, and statistics from SmarterHQ show that 72% of customers will only engage in personalized messaging.
This means that if you don’t provide a tailored approach or simply send mass messaging, you’re losing more than two-thirds of the market, which is a lot.
A personalized approach is just important with current customers as it is with prospects or leads. Prioritizing continuing relationships with current clients prevents churn and helps retain customers. In the current economic climate, customer retention is a big part of sales success. Maintaining loyal customers is easier if you make them feel valued with personalized content and contact.
DO use data
Data isn’t just a group of numbers on a screen or paper. It’s the key to success, helping you create a strategy and make decisions that can make or break your customer relationships.
Using data, you can track customer intent and preferences, guiding you toward contacting them in the right way with the right information. It can help you make business decisions that directly impact sales success, such as pricing your product right, improving pipeline management, and maximizing your customer lifetime value.
DON’T do these things in 2023 ❌
DON’T ignore the rise of customer experience importance
According to Esteban Kolsky, 72% of happy customers will share a positive experience with approximately six people. However, unhappy customers may share their experience with 15 or more people.
These statistics really put priorities in focus, showing us that customer experience matters. And more than ever, with a rise in social media, making sure customers are happy is key. If not, the whole world may just know about it, and customer frustrations may not just lead to churn but may prevent other prospects from becoming customers.
So, how can you make customer experience a priority? Use these tips:
- Create a customer-centric sales strategy
- Make sure your response times are fast
- Have knowledgeable staff and customer service reps
- Follow up
- Anticipate customers’ needs and be proactive
DON’T disregard the impact of inflation
Not taking into account the changing economic outlook is a huge miss in 2023. The number one tip to consider is to wait to raise your prices. We get it — sometimes, a price increase just has to happen, but consider this: 35% of people look for lower-priced items during times of inflation, while more than 50% have moved to other brands.
Now is the time to focus on and prioritize customer loyalty. For example, offer perks or sales to current customers to keep them engaged. Although they may be looking into other options, customers are also tired of analyzing value and shopping around, so make it easy for them to stay put. Create a loyalty program, focus on personalized solutions, and prioritize customer experience to ensure your buyers won’t be tempted to go elsewhere.
Likewise, this is the perfect time to show prospects exactly why your product is better than whatever your competitors are selling.
DON’T start outreach without researching first
We can’t stress this enough: quality prospects are worth their weight in gold. And doing the right research to figure out exactly who these qualified prospects are means you won’t waste your time contacting the wrong people that won’t buy what you’re selling. Look into prospects before jumping into action, figuring out if they’re your target customer. Then, consider the best strategy for contacting them before starting outreach.
Besides losing prospects from not doing proper research before outreach, you also risk damaging the company’s reputation. Once your business gets a name for improper or impersonal sales outreach, opinions have already been formed, and there may be no way to reserve these kinds of negative associations.
DON’T discount brand equity
As we mentioned above, your brand is important, and how people perceive it is key. Your brand’s image matters, especially when it comes to prospecting and customer retention.
There are four main things to focus on when it comes to brand equity:
Brand loyalty: Retaining customers and preventing churn is key.
Brand awareness: Your brand should be visible, stable, and trustworthy.
Brand associations: Consider the mental image your brand inspires and what emotions it induces.
Brand quality: Make sure to meet customers’ expectations and provide solid value.
Brand equity can mean that people respect your brand and in some cases, unconditionally. This means that while you should work hard to continue earning customers’ trust, sometimes, things like a price increase or positive change won’t reflect poorly on your brand because they assume it’s worth it.
The dos and don’ts of sales success ✌🏼
2023 may be a challenging year for those in sales, or really, for anyone, thanks to a volatile economic climate and inflation. But you can make the most of things by ensuring you’re doing the specific things that take you and your business on the road to success and avoiding the things that don’t.