Strategies for Successful Sales Growth

Happy 2022! I know we are all hopeful that the New Year will bring less uncertainty for our personal and business health.

Even with all the shortages and logistics issues we faced in 2021 I think many of us started to see an optimism from customers. I know that most of our customers are moving forward with attending trade shows, hosting events and increasing their employee outreach.

Because of that, our fourth quarter saw a very nice uptick in requests and orders that we expect to continue into 2022.

As we do every December, we’ve been discussing what has been working and what hasn’t been as successful in 2021 and how we are going to adjust our sales strategies for 2022.

Connecting with Existing Customers

This of course is low hanging fruit. One of our goals has been to expand our business within our existing customer base. This could be increasing the number of departments or divisions we work with or by expanding the products and services we provide them.

This year we did a very good job of expanding our services with several of our regular customers. Primarily by introducing our fulfillment capabilities, including custom packaging.

If you are not taking advantage of offering additional services to increase your sales then we recommend you spend some time to determine your best options. We have a local company that produces printed materials and has pick/pack fulfillment capabilities. In addition, many of the top vendors in our industry have increased their offerings in this area as well. Other complimentary offerings include direct mail services, trade show services (we have many options to assist in booth design and construction) and loyalty and incentive programs to name a few.

Remind Customers Often of the Products and Services You Provide

We have offered these services for years, but most of our clients seem to forget!

For example, one of our clients was consistently requesting large quantities of promotional products be sent to their warehouse. So, after one such request, we probed as to what they were doing with the products. They informed us that their warehouse house repackaged and sent them out with marketing materials to their retail locations in the United States.

They didn’t realize that we could do these services for them. We explained we could produce a custom box, the products, print the marketing materials, package and ship.

After further discussions we secured the complete project. And our client was thrilled by the whole process. They were especially pleased with the custom box which was printed inside and out and was better than anything they had previously produced. As it turns out, they do these programs quarterly but had never discussed with us because they didn’t realize we could be their one-stop shop!

This situation reminded us that we have to consistently remind our customers of all of our capabilities. If we do, we can grow our business with our existing customers and become an even more valuable partner for them.

Schedule Regular Customer Reviews

Another initiative we will continue in 2022 is annual, semi-annual or quarterly evaluation meetings with our customers. These meetings provide a great opportunity to meet and discuss how the team is doing and review their program needs for the coming year or quarter. And if we can’t get an in-person or virtual meeting then we send a survey. We send a list of questions asking for feedback as to how our team is handling their needs and then ask specific questions about their upcoming programs.

We have used all these techniques with great success and each has led to increased opportunities and growth.

Re-connecting with Dormant Customers

I am sure everyone has a few (or maybe many) customers that have fallen off the radar. Maybe your primary contact moved to another company or maybe the promotion budget had been cut the last couple of years, or maybe they just stopped doing business with you and you let them (I’m guilty of this for sure).  

Now is a perfect time to reconnect. For example, we had a sales team member retire during the pandemic. We reached out to many of her customers, but not all. And we were reminded of that fact just this week. One of her clients reached out in need of awards we had done for them three years ago.

In reviewing the account, we realized they had “fallen through the cracks” and we had not reached out to them since mid-2020!

Consistently Touch Customers and Prospects

This situation showed us that we need to evaluate how often we are or are not “touching” our customers and develop a new process to prevent these lapses in the future. However, with the new year, it gives us the perfect opportunity to reach out to all our customers and wish a happy new year and begin the reconnection process.

Another successful communication we will continue to use is informing our customers that we will be attending industry shows. We request information on their upcoming programs and let them know that we will research options specifically for them.

New Product Showcase to Engage Customers and Prospects

If they don’t have any specific “needs” we will also be continuing our successful “new product showcase” after the shows. This can be done in person or virtually. We pick our top 10 or 15 items that we think are relevant and review and do a “show and tell” with our customers (active and non-active).

While we may not be able to re-awaken all our dormant customers, each year we are able to bring some of them back into the fold!

Keep a Healthy Pipeline

We all know that our business ebbs and flows. This past year one of our long-term clients moved the majority of their business to a competitor. They had turnover during the pandemic and the new director wanted to make a change.

The change could have been a devasting one if we weren’t always “wooing” other companies. Because of our consistency in reaching out to some key prospects we were able to secure several large accounts this past year. One of them could spend three times as much as the customer that “down-sized” our position.

That opportunity took more than three years to secure. How did we even start the process? This particular opportunity started with Linked In. I had a current customer employee move to the company and then another moved to the company. I reached out to both to congratulate them and requested an introduction to the decision makers. After several introductions and meetings, this year we secured business from several divisions. Of course, we are continuing to ask for introductions into other parts of the business as a part of our on-going quest to fill our pipeline with opportunities. However, in less than six months we have secured more thank $100,000 in business from them. Persistence and consistency pays off for sure!

Of course, referrals are an integral part of maintaining our pipeline. We regularly ask our customers and service providers (accountant, lawyer, banker, etc) for warm introductions to people they think are a good fit for us.

And, with in-person events starting to come back, we will regularly attend networking events for different organizations in our area to secure leads for our pipeline.

Of course, we will continue to evaluate our processes so our selling success continues!

Happy Selling!