7 Practical Strategies to Increase Sales in 2022

Stagnation is a dirty word in the business world. You don't want your business to be stagnating. You want it to be expanding.

And to do that, you need to increase your sales. So you can make more revenue. So you can pay off debts if you have them. (Did you know 79% of small businesses had debt they owed in 2021?) And so you can grow your business.

65.3% of businesses are profitable in 2022, and you want to be one of them.

But how?

Buckle up because we're about to tell you how to increase sales with our seven practical strategies.

The Importance of Sales Improvement Strategies

Whether your business is struggling or just trying to avoid stagnation. It's important to have strategies to improve your sales.

Without strategies to direct your business forwards, you won't have the direction necessary to expand your business successfully. Your business isn't going to grow just because you want it to.

Instead, you need to plan how you'll make it grow. And really, that's what strategies to improve sales are – they're a plan.

But why do you need your business to continue to expand?

There are many reasons why, but here are a few.

• We mentioned previously that 79% of businesses owed debt in 2021. If you're in one of those businesses, expanding your business will help you be able to manage that debt.
• Inflation. The rate of inflation in the U.S. was 9.1 in June 2022. When inflation rates increase, money is essentially worth less. So you'll need to make more of it to compensate for higher costs elsewhere.
• To increase profit margins. If you're making money, you're winning. But you'll want to expand if you're barely staying afloat or just interested in making more money for your business.
• You're looking to acquire something specifically for your business (more employees, an office space, etc.) and you need to expand the business to ensure it's sustainable (even if it's something you need for your business to have a more comfortable working environment).

That being said, your plan is only as effective as your strategies to increase sales are, so make sure when you're choosing strategies, you're picking what works for your business. And if strategies aren't working, adjust your plan. Pick new strategies. Find what works for you and your business.

We've included a table below to outline how to develop strategies to improve sales briefly.

How to Develop Strategies to Increase Sales

Challenges with Business Strategies to Increase Sales

Although business strategies to increase sales volume are important, they're easier to create and implement. We've outlined some of these challenges below.

Identifying Reasons for Past Success and Failures

To understand the best ways to increase sales in the future, you need first to understand the reasons for your sales successes and failures in the past. Although with proper records and reports, it's easy to go back over the numbers and identify the successes and failures, it can be harder to identify why those sales succeeded or failed. And digging even deeper, understanding the nuance involved in how these successes can be replicated and failures avoided, or to what extent it was out of the salesperson's hands.

That being said, this is an important part of analyzing or reviewing sales for any reason. So, although it can be challenging, it's not impossible, and it may (i.e., should) be something you're already doing.

Adapting

Much like the challenge outlined before, this is another one that's difficult but possible, and you should already be doing – and that's adapting. You must be able to adapt to the trends, technologies, and strategies of the time. Adaptive selling is a strategy in itself (although it's adapting more individually). If you're unable to adapt, you won't be able to keep up with those around you who can.

That doesn't make adapting any easier, though.

Learning New Technology/Techniques

Sometimes to improve your sales, you'll need to learn how to use new technology or techniques. And that can be difficult, particularly if you generally struggle with technology or have difficulty catching on to the new techniques.

Making these changes may even result in an initial dip in your sales. However, as long as you've implemented good technology and techniques, you'll be able to see those sales rise as you and your sales team master them.

Creating a Plan to Implement Strategies

Now, before you learn how to use those new technologies and techniques, you need to create a plan on how to roll out these new things. And this is because you don't want to overwhelm your sales team with too much that's new all at once. Instead, you want to stagger how you roll them out, potentially using waterfall goals. That way, your sales team can focus on learning just one new thing at a time, mastering it, and then moving on to the next.

7 Marketing Strategies to Increase Sales

Now to the reason you've gathered here today: the strategies to increase sales. We've outlined seven below that if used correctly, will undoubtedly help you and your sales team bolster sales.

1. Use a CRM

If you don't already have a CRM, you need one. It'll make your job much easier and allow your sales team to sell more simply because it provides automation to different processes along the sales process. It simply allows your sales team to have more time to sell things. Data will be recorded automatically instead of manually. You can automate email campaigns, SMS campaigns, and drip campaigns. You can make and record phone calls. You can take notes. And everything will be in one place, so all your information can be organized and compiled in one place, rather than manually gathering all the information you have and analyzing it wholly on your own.

2. Adaptive Selling

Referenced above, this strategy requires salespeople to analyze the situation and adjust their selling strategy accordingly. A customer-oriented approach ensures you put the customer's needs first. The adaptive selling strategy will make a customer feel like they can trust you and what you do.

Therefore, this strategy is a great one to employ to help close deals and make the sale. It's essentially catering an experience to your customers.

Just beware that you don't come across as slimy, manipulative, or disingenuous when using this strategy. Instead, you want to come across as helpful, honest, and doing what you can for the customer because you put their needs first.

3. Assigning Salespeople Roles By Skill

If you have salespeople that excel at certain points of the sales cycle, then think about dividing your sales team up by expertise rather than having salespeople focus on individual customers. By doing this, you'll be playing into your sales team's strengths, allowing them to perform at their best for most of their time at work.

The only downside to this strategy is that it can be harder to garner trust between salesperson and customer when the salesperson changes throughout the sales process.

And sales already have an issue when it comes to trust. According to a HubSpot 2016 survey, 33.6% of people find the information they get from sales somewhat trustworthy, with only 6.7% finding it very trustworthy, but 69% said their sales experience could be improved by a salesperson that listens to their needs.

4. Setting Sales Goals

When aiming to increase your sales, you should consider specific goals. Rather than just the vague idea of increasing sales, have specific targets you wish to hit. For instance, how much do you want to increase revenue this year? How many more sales a quarter should your team be closing? You can get into the nitty gritty of your sales process and create goals dealing with that. For instance, you can make goals around lead generation, cold calls, the length of each sales cycle stage, etc.

5. Don't Overlook Cold Calling:

The often dreaded cold call can be overlooked and avoided by sales teams. We suggest you don't. Although they're not necessarily fun to perform, they can be effective. According to a RAIN Group Center for Sales Research report, 82% of customers accept meetings from salespeople who initiate contact by email or call, and 69% had taken a phone call from a new salesperson in the past year this study was done.

If you want to learn more about cold calling, we suggest you check out our blog posts What is Cold calling? [A Guide on Mastering the Art of Cold Calling] and Cold Call Script [Examples, Templates, Tips & Tricks].

6. Use SMS Messaging

One strategy that can be incredibly effective but isn't always considered is SMS messaging for text sales. Text messaging to engage with your customers can be even more effective than emails. Think about it. What do people typically get less of and check more? Texts or emails? And texts can be used to welcome customers, pass on helpful information, promotions, surveys, etc. Anything you could use an email for, you could also use a text message for anything you could use an email for.

Ensure you understand the laws surrounding text messaging for sales (just like you would for emails) before using this strategy. Different places will have different laws, so ensure you understand the ones relevant to you and your business.

7. Focus on the Customer

This goes along with adaptive selling, but make sure while you're selling, you're focusing on your customer – what they want, need, and the limitations they have (like budget), for example. You want to build trust with your customer, and you won't be able to do that if they can tell you don't have their best interest at heart. Plus, you'll have to cut through the stereotype of the pushy salesman. The statistics show that 84% of salespeople believed they weren't being pushy, while 50% of customers found them to be so.

So, be careful with the way you go about selling. You may be coming off pushy without realizing it. This may be even more true if your customer doesn't trust you and doesn't believe you're looking out for them.

Sales Strategy Solutions

There are a variety of sales platforms that you can use to help bolster your strategies to increase sales. We've outlined four of those solutions below.

1. CRMs

It's no surprise that CRMs are included in our list, considering purchasing a CRM was one of our strategies. They're great tools for the sales organization, task automation, lead generation, data analysis, etc.

There are a variety of CRMs available on the market. If you are looking into purchasing a CRM, there are a few things you'll want to consider, like cost, features, and integrations.

Not to be biased, but one excellent choice for a CRM is Ringy. Ringy offers a free demo and a free trial to see how it works and if it's the right choice for you.

This sales strategy solution can be used to aid in all seven strategies we laid out.

2. SMS Messaging Software

Although this can be a part of a CRM's capabilities (like Ringy's), you can also purchase SMS messaging software for your business specifically. This type of software can be used to develop, automate, and send mass and personalized individual text messages. Obviously, SMS messaging software fits nicely with our strategy of using SMS messaging.

But, using SMS messagingworkss well into some of our other strategies, like adaptive selling and focusing on the customer. You can send personalized texts to your customers, quickly answer any questions, fire off any questions you might have for them, etc.

This software can be used to create automated campaigns, as well. But we've covered that already.

3. VoIP:

The acronym for voice-over-internet protocol. VoIP allows users to make calls (and SMS messages) over the internet with an IP phone, Analogue Telephone Adapter (ATA), or computer. So, you can make phone calls and send messages from your computer. This is another function available on CRMs like Ringy, too.

Having calling and messaging capabilities from your computer can make it easier to complete strategies like

• Adaptive selling
• Not overlooking cold calling
• Using SMS messaging
• Focusing on the customer

It can be handy software to have because it means records of these phone calls and messages will be hosted on your computer, where presumably other information on sales is stored.

With a CRM, this organization is even more contained because it stores everything to do with sales on its platform.

4. Sales Apps

There are a variety of other different sales apps that you can use to help you in the sales world. They can be used for navigation and maps in outside sales, to facilitate inside sales by allowing for e-signing on documents, and for organizational purposes they can help the sales process for all types of sales.

The right sales app can help with several strategies on our list

• Adaptive selling
• Assigning roles by skill
• Setting sales goals
• Focusing on the customer

If you do purchase a CRM, sales apps can be used to fill in any potential gaps. For instance, DocuSign can be used to e-sign documents, and Microsoft Teams or Zoom can be used to host online meetings.

Sales apps that weren't necessarily developed for sales but can be useful for them can also be categorized under this category, like Google Maps (hey, we did mention navigational apps above). However, CRMs, SMS messaging software, and VoIP apps can be considered sales apps, too.

If you want to know more about sales apps and which ones we'd recommend, check out our blog post, How to Choose the Best Sales App For Your Business [Top 4 Tips].

Comparative Table of Sales Strategy Solutions

We've compared the sales strategy solutions in the table below.

FAQ

Strategies to increase sales in restaurants

Although the strategies we've established can basically be used for any type of business, there are exceptions to every rule. So, let's make them more specific to show which ones can be used to increase sales in restaurants.

1. Use a CRM: This may be more relevant for your marketing team than your sales team
2. Adaptive selling: This may be more relevant to your marketing team than your sales team. However, those who deal with customers in your restaurant will need to adjust their serving style depending on the customers.
3. Assigning salespeople roles by skill: This may be more relevant to a marketing team than a sales team but can also be applied to servers.
4. Setting sales goals: How many customers do you want to serve in a day? How many people do you need to walk into your restaurant monthly? How many reservations do you want throughout the week?
5. Not overlooking cold calling: You don't often hear about restaurants cold calling. It's a different type of sale. However, you could potentially do it if your restaurant has just opened.
6. Use SMS messaging: This is an excellent service to use for customers to remind them of reservations, let them know about new menu items, etc.
7. Focus on the customers: When you're serving customers, make sure you're giving them a great experience that they're at the center of.

Strategies to increase sales in insurance

Now let's get into which ones are relevant for insurance sales and how.

1. Use a CRM: You can use a CRM to manage prospects and customers
2. Adaptive selling: This is especially important as you learn more about your customer's situation and the type of insurance packages that would be best for them.
3. Assigning salespeople roles by skill: Maybe you have some people who are great at insurance cold calls, closing, etc. You can take advantage of these skills.
4. Setting sales goals: How many more insurance packages do you want to be sold this year than last? Is there a new package you're looking to leverage? How long does it take a prospect to travel through the sales cycle? Is there a stage that could be shortened?
5. Not overlooking cold calling: This can be a great insurance sales strategy to make prospects aware of your offer.
6. Use SMS messaging: This can be a great way to connect with prospects quickly if you have questions about their situation to create a customized plan for them, or to plan an impromptu meeting, etc.
7. Focus on the customers: Insurance can be stressful and very personal for the customer, so make sure you're focusing on them and what they need.

In Conclusion

It's important to develop strategies to improve sales for your business because it's important to stay expanding. You may need to expand

• Because you owe debt
• Due to inflation
• Because you want to increase revenue
• Because you have specific things you want to acquire for your business

And we've laid out seven strategies to get you started.

So, get started with strategy one and contact Ringy to discuss your CRM needs or request our free demo.