5 tips to improve sales forecasting

Sales forecast is one of the most essential tools that help you to manage your business. It enables you to both identify the opportunities as well as the problems and act accordingly.

Try the following:

1. Define and qualify your lead.
2. Find out how many opportunities are there in your sales lead pipeline.
3. Figure out the value of each opportunity and multiply it with the number of opportunities to get the base value.
4. Based on the past history, predict the average time you expect your prospects to spend during various stages of sales cycle. 
5. Work on the conversion rate. Finally, subtract the value of those opportunities that wouldn’t close from the base value.

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5 tips to understand & engage your customers

Your customer data can be one of your most vital marketing tools to understand and engage your customers. When handled properly, it can help you to devise a customer-centric marketing strategy and achieve better results.

Try the following:

1. Dig out all the hidden data in your organization - data that is available with dealers, resellers, sales/service folks, IT department, etc.
2. Collect all the data, align them appropriately & make a simple, complete, reliable and useable database.
3. Analyze the data. Get valuable insights into your customers’ mindset and their readiness to buy. 
4. Develop your marketing strategies accordingly and set metrics to measure what works the best.
5. Ensure that you improve continuously based on the customer inputs.

3 tips to improve email marketing results

Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing tools that can offer better ROI when compared to other marketing channels. Here are 3 tips that will help you to improve your email marketing results.

1. Ensure that your emails are delivered to the intended audience. Send relevant content, avoid spam words & build seed lists to confirm email deliverability.
2. Focus on your potential subscribers and offer something of value to them.
3. Send emails based on past purchases – recommend complimentary items, send loyalty offers to your subscribers and request customer feedback.

How to Create Multiple Ties with your Customers ?

A recent research note in the Journal of Marketing highlighted the importance of having multiple ties with customers. This involves being connected to your customer in more ways than just through the one product you sold.

Ask yourself - Do my customers:

1. own more than one product offered by my company?
2. subscribe to company newsletters or other publications, blogs, etc?
3. attend webinars, webcasts, etc. that are created for educating them?
4. connect with my company on online social networks - LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.?

Answering 'yes' to more than 2 of the above would mean you have multiple ties with your customer. Remember, such a relationship can help you maintain sales or even boost it in a volatile economy.

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The Art of Closing Deals with a Qualified Lead

Closing deals with a qualified lead is the ultimate goal for every marketing program. Both marketing and sales folks need to work hand in hand to keep things going well without any hiccups. However, you need to keep a few things in mind to master the art of closing deals with a qualified lead.

1. Use different modes of communication (emails, phone calls, direct mail) to grab your lead’s attention. Ensure that your marketing plan drives engagement throughout the buying cycle. 
2. 
   Use a mail merge tool to personalize emails and direct mails.
3. 
   
   Always treat your leads as your top customers. Treat them with respect and let them know that you and your company care for their needs and interests.
4. 
   
   Focus on the lead’s individual needs and segment your marketing process accordingly. This will help you demonstrate how your products/services can help your leads meet the specific requirements.
5. 
   
   Timing is very crucial. You need to pass the leads to the sales team at the right time, neither too early nor too late.
6. 
   
   Please ensure that your marketing team shares the appropriate information about the lead to the sales department.
7. 
   
   Identify the right time to close the deal by starting the sales conversation.
   
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2 Tips to Sound Different on your Sales Call

Source:eGrabber

Your prospects get dozens of calls from your competitors each week. Whats worse is they cannot distinguish one seller from the next because they all sound alike. To be successful with cold calling you must first learn to sound different than the other sales persons out there. Here are 2 tips to help you do that.

1. Change your sales opening (Ref tip on '2 Proven Sales Call Openings that Work' in the May 25 issue of our newsletter for sales and marketing professionals).

2. Dont talk about your product: Tell the prospect the opposite of what they expect you to say. Don’t talk about your product or service. Talk about what is important to the prospect.

Tests to Boost Effectiveness of Email Ads

Source: eGrabber Newsletters

Here are some of the tactics that have proven to have a great impact on email performance. It is important that you put to test some of these with your in-house list.

1. Test 2-3 different subject lines
2. Personalize email to appear to be from sales rep
3. Personalize email by user profile
4. Test different landing page content and layout
5. Offers/ discount
6. Timing of the email send

The first 3 tactics are extremely effective for boosting your ad open and click rates.