Menu 
No matter what business you’re in, at the end of the day your success depends on having good sales results. In a traditional sense this is critical for car dealers, department stores, and e-commerce websites, however in a less traditional sense this also applies to any business from affiliate websites to bakeries to attorneys to doctors. Nearly any business would be better off by having better sales results and more clients.
Yet everyday I see businesses that have poor sales results because they are missing the fundamentals. They need to get back to the basics to improve the little things that have a dramatic impact on overall sales. Here are 5 simple ways to improve your sales results:
Develop More Referrals
We’re an online marketing company, so you might expect 100% of our business to come from online marketing, right? Wrong. We get about 50% of our business from our own online marketing efforts, however the other 50% comes from word of mouth referrals and business relationships.
Think of it this way: what if every 1 new client you earned through SEO referred you to one other new client and that chain continued on and on and on? Pretty soon you would be receiving an enormous about of your business through referrals, which is exactly what we’ve developed. Is this by chance? Certainly not. Developing a referral based marketing strategy requires a high level of trust and an exceptional product or service.
Think about what you would recommend to friends or family, would you recommend that electrician who did a mediocre job or the electrician who came to your house at 9PM, didn’t charge you extra for the late night service call, and was a nice, kind, and personable person? Go the extra step to develop relationships with your clients and you’ll be amazed at how easy it is to earn referrals.
Be Noticed By The Proper People
Many businesses are camouflaged. What do I mean by that? I mean if you took 15 businesses in the same market/niche and put them in the same room, they would all blend in together. They all have similar products, similar sales materials, similar prices, and similar marketing strategies. When you go to their websites, they contain basically the same information. When you follow them on social media, lthey post the same types of things.
If you were standing in a forest, would you be the business like the other 15 that are all camouflaged in with one another or would you be the one wearing the bright orange shirt that jumps out? Make sure you stand out from your competitions and get noticed by the right people, which means having something remarkably different about your business to get the attention you deserve.
Be Extremely Easy To Contact
You need to be extremely easy to contact. What does that mean? It means your phone number and contact us link shows up on every page of your website in a prominent place. It means every piece of marketing material you put out is branded and has your contact information jumping off the page. It means when someone calls you, they don’t get a cheap answering service, an answering machine, or a phone that rings and rings and rings. It means when someone emails you, you’re the first to respond and have the best response(because lets face it, they’re probably emailing 5 of your competitors as well).
I’m amazed at how many businesses don’t follow these suggestions. It makes it appear as if they don’t care. It’s important to show your prospects that you DO care and that you care a lot, way more than your competitors. This will encourage them to contact you and land you tons of new business.
Put Your Marketing In Motion
How many times do you come up with a great new marketing idea but don’t implement it for one reason or another? It happens all the time to me, and I now make a list of all sorts of marketing ideas so I always have a bank of things to try and test. There are very few things in business more frustrating to me than seeing business owners come up with fantastic product, service, or marketing ideas and let them go to waste by not utilizing them.
Marketing is about constant change. We come up with ideas and strategies, put them in place, test them, refine them, and start the process over again. If you’re static in how you approach marketing your business, you’re going to get left in the dust of your competitors.
Don’t Just Sell, Form Relationships
18 months ago I spoke to a business owner who didn’t have the resources to properly redesign and market their website. Rather than just cut them short when I learned that and move on to the next prospect, I took the time to form a relationship with them. I followed up with an email every quarter to see how things are looking. I encouraged them to follow our blog to stay on top of online marketing news and strategies. I took probably 10 extra minutes over the last 18 months and we just finally landed them as a client now that they’re ready.
Think about when you go to the car dealership. Are you going to continually return and buy a car from the guy who uses slimy sales tactics to close the sale today, or are you going to continually return to the guy who actually takes a few extra minutes to understand what you want and to give you the chance to make a decision? Treat your sales prospects like human beings, show them how you will be the best option available to them, and spend a little extra time showing them why your business is the best. You’ll be amazed at how many more sales you’ll be able to close.