Is your business suffering from poor sales? 

What is your first thought when you look at your sales and they are not meeting your expectations or desires?

Damm customers? Damm staff? Competition? Price?

There are a number of reasons why your sales may not be at the levels you desire or want.

BUT

If you are like most business owners you will think or say we need to promote more, do a new advertising campaign, cut our prices to drive sales.

If you are thinking about running a promotion then this leads to another range of problems as most business owners will first think of the where they will advertise.

When in fact they need to first think about their message (what problem are they solving) and then what market they are solving this problem for. Then you can work out where you should be advertising or doing other things

But……

How many times have you spent more on advertising or ran a promotion and still there has been no increase in your sales?

Numerous I would suggest.

The reason is that you are not addressing the bigger problem at all. You are not thinking about what is involved in your sales, who your clients are and how best you can serve and help your clients.

Here are 14 reasons why your sales are declining or stagnating. When you look at all these reasons you will see that by just advertising you are not going to fix the problem.

Ask better questions get better answers and uncover the real problem you must address to improve your sales

1. Customers not buying enough:

We all know this is the reason your sales are not what you want them to be but why aren’t your customers buying more.

Do all your customers know about all your products and services?

How well do you understand your customers business? Are there any products that you sell that will add extra value to their business.

Do you have an upsell system that your staff follows or recommends to your customers?

Do you a set of questions your staff asks to learn more about your customers business?

2. Not enough customers

Maybe you don’t have enough customers.

Do you have a good understanding and avatar of your ideal customer?

Have you clearly identified your target market and then developed a strategy to attract them to your business?

A good place to start is to review your current clients and see their unique characteristics. Particularly look at your top performing customers. Remember the 80/20 rule where 80% of you sales will come from 20% of your clients.

You need to identify the key points of your top customers and then go looking for similar customers. What are the challenges and problems they face and how can you solve them.

Then put together a plan to approach similar customers and solve their problems for them.

3. Market is competitive

How competitive is your market?

What is the market competitive on? Price, Service?

Think about how you can differentiate yourself from your opposition.

Businesses can differentiate themselves on one of 3 things: price, innovation, service.

What are your strengths that will allow you to differentiate yourself from your competition?

Can you cut 50% off your prices?

Can you offer a new and different product? Maybe a combination of products as a special package that solves more than one problem?

Is there something with your service that will differentiate you?

You need to make the differentiation in such a way that customers cannot compare you directly to your competition

Change the buying decision for your customers by adding extras or packing items together. Don’t allow your client base to make a decision on price.

Always offer them something extra or different then what your competitors are doing.

4. Not enough prospects

Are you focussed on your target market?

Do you know your perfect buyer?

Maybe you have too narrow a focus with your market. Is there a new market you can offer your product or service to?

Have you looked to other areas to offer your products.

Think about the buying process of your customer? Who do they use before and after they use your product?

Maybe there is an opportunity to do a Joint Venture with another company.

Have you analysed your client base to determine the characteristics of your preferred customer?

Have you tailored your message to provide a solution to the problems your clients face?

5. No clarity on the target market

You don’t know who your target market is.

You think that you have to sell to everyone and as such you are failing to offer a solution that appeals to your target market.

You are running around trying to be everything to everyone but you are not doing anything for anyone.

Your sales people visit everyone and so are wasting their time (and ultimately their motivation) talking to clients who are not going to buy from you. They are becoming disappointed and as such not listening to the customer.

Maybe your staff are visiting areas that have changed over the years or clients who haven’t moved with the times and as such are missing out on calling on other clients.

Maybe there are new areas your sales people should canvas for clients.

6. Poor lead conversion percentage

How is your conversion rate? How many sales calls are being converted into sales?

Do you convert well? You may have a conversion problem not a sales call (or traffic problem if it is your website.)

How well does you sales staff, website or email marketing convert leads? Are they converting at an acceptable level.

If your conversion rate is poor then:

You may require extra training for your staff, reviewing your sales procedures and policies, updating your website lead capture programs, testing different messages with your email and other marketing  programs.

Always be testing, reviewing, updating and learning. Learn what works and what doesn’t work and refine.

Training, procedures, scripts, follow-ups, systems, automation all need to be reviewed.

7. Weak salespeople

How are your sales people performing? Are they doing the job and role that you expect?

Maybe your sales people are not trained or experienced enough to be able to generate sales. Maybe they are not asking for the sale or closing the offer.

Maybe they are not asking the right questions of your customers to be able to generate a sale.

Maybe they are not following up or following through with customers to see how they can help.

Do you have scripts and training to help them overcome objections.

Do you have a consistent message that all your staff use

Do you use education marketing as a way to help your customers and help you sales staff

Are your staff able to see the big picture with what you are trying to achieve with your business?

8. Inadequate sales leads

How is your lead generation process? Do you have a consistent process that brings your business qualified leads?

Have you built a pipeline for your business that brings you leads?

Think about the information (through your content marketing) and problems you are solving (your lead magnets) and see if you are answering the most pressing problems of your target market.

Then once you have captured the email of a potential client are you nurturing the relationship with your email marketing?

Does your email marketing give your prospects the opportunity to access your full range of products and services? You do this by including special articles or offers in your email and having interested clients click the various links.

Do you move your leads from marketing qualified to sales qualified.

Have you automated your process that this happens every day, every opportunity.

Have you developed a lead score system st that you can reward your most loyal clients?

By aligning your lead magnets, content and email marketing across your specific goals and targets then you can begin to offer your clients more personalised service.

9. Lack of referrals

Maybe you are not getting enough referrals from your current client base.

Do you have a referral program in place?

You need to develop a system where your current clients will refer new business to you.

Look to implement a referral program that rewards and supports your current clients.

This way you can grow your sales by using your current client or customer list.

10. Lack of repeat business

How often does a customer buy from you?

Once and then you never see them again for 6 months. Or do they buy every single month on a consistent basis?

How well do you follow up with your customers after they purchase or do you leave it until they call you again?

Do you ask your clients for reviews so that they can be posted to your website?

You need to follow up with both prospects and current clients.

Check with your current clients to see what other products they would like you to provide or ask questions about their business to see what extra products you can help them with.

Do you send your clients special offers and news with a regular newsletter . Make sure the newsletter has a business focus not just a promotional catalogue.

11. Lack of differentiation

How do you differentiate yourself from your competitors? More importantly how do your customers see you as being different to your competitors?

You can differentiate yourself either on price, service or innovation.

If your customers see you as being like your competitors then they will make a decision on price.

You need to see how you can differentiate yourself from your competition

Is your service quicker or guaranteed?

Can you package a range of products in a bundle?

12. Poor messaging

Are you talking about your customers problems and the solutions you provide or are you talking about yourself.

What is the message you want to communicate to the market and what response do you want from your target market. How do you want them to respond.

Do you have one single message or do you tailor your message to suit different clients?

13. No brand recognition or weak brand

In your market do you have no or small brand recognition?

Do you compete against bigger and more well known brands.

You need to think about how to overcome this;

Try testimonials

Look for something in your product, manufacturing, service that you can offer to overcome the concerns.

The majority of these problems will not be solved by advertising.

In fact advertising may lead to further problems as you may end up wasting money n a campaign that does not work.

Think about why your sales are not performing. Then build a set of actions that you can implement to improve your sales.

You will find that your solution does not involve spending money but being more efficient and effective with what you are currently doing.

A simple refinement and focus could yield you substantial rewards and increases not only for the short term but also for the future.

Allowing you to build a substantial and sustainable business that can you support and fulfil your financial goals.

Your declining sales could come from a number of areas.

So before you commit more money, time and energy to advertising review your sales process. A simple fix in a number of areas may lead to improved sales for you.

Do you have a sales and marketing process or system in your business that you can tweak or adjust when required to increase sales?

Here’s to your success and prosperity.

Thank you to the following contributors:

Photo by Daria Nepriakhina on Unsplash

Photo by Artem Bali on Unsplash