Sales are the lifeblood of every business. Without customers, there would be no revenue, leads, profit, or business.
Whether you are a start-up or an established business, from time to time, all business owners will experience a seasonal deficiency in sales as more attention-seeking platforms are sprouting out on the internet to draw away your customers from your business.
Here are six root causes of why you aren’t getting enough sales and how you can resolve it.
1. Wrong Targeting
One of the common problems of falling sales is that you are targeting the wrong type of customers, especially those who are a terrible fit for your service/ products and are not genuine with their intention.
To learn more about the four stages of customer awareness, click here.
You must identify your ideal customer base by finding out the answers to each of the factors described under the four types of market segmentation. See the image below.
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Right targeting means that every marketing communication and message you develop speaks directly to your ideal customer base.
Wrong targeting is when you decline to invest time and resources in crafting your ideal customer description.
A marble sculpture created during the renaissance period between 1501 and 1504.
Italian artist Michelangelo sculpted “David” out of a discarded block of Marble using his vivid imagination and handcraftsmanship.
Similarly, if you want to target the right customers, you must start with the end in mind by forming a vivid and graphical description of your ideal customer. And then document the inscription on a word document.
Use the four types of market segmentation as a guide.
2. Lack Of Qualifying Questions
Assume that you have a vivid description of your customer base: age, gender, income, status, interest, and psychology. The next thing is to identify the market size. You can find the audience size. Both Google and Facebook Ads Manager tools can give you those figures
Excerpt from Google Ads
Exerpt from Facebook (meta) Ads
To apply the industry benchmark, expect less than 10% of your audience size to be interested in your Services & Products. And out of that 10%, only 3% may urgently buy something from the marketplace at a given time.
To extract the 3%, you must develop qualifying questions to remove the window shoppers from the serious buyers
Do not approach your marketing with a shotgun approach. You have to laser in by asking qualifying questions. All you have to do is to come up with five questions.
If you’re unsure what type of qualifying questions to ask your prospects, you must check out your competitor’s website.
Every industry niche and business model will have a set of qualifying questions. For instance, a car salesperson’s qualifying questions might be: –
- What brings you here today? …
- May I ask why you’re considering a new car? …
- What brings you here today? …
- Do you have a specific make or model you are interested in? …
- Do you have a specific make or model you are interested in? …
For our industry, we also ask qualifying questions. Check out these pages to get some ideas
3. Outdated Marketing
We assumed by now that you had crafted your Avatar as vividly as Michaelangelo sculpted “David”. Moreover, you have developed five qualifying questions to filter out the tyre kickers. Your next step is to market your business.
The fastest way to market your business and get instant exposure is through PAID Advertising through Social Media Marketing (SMM) such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok, and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo.
You can also invest in Search Engine Optimisation for your website. This task involves setting up Sitemap and Search Console on Google and performing On-Page & Off-Page SEO so that when your prospects search for your business, it will appear on the 1st Page of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
Without these fundamental marketing tactics, your prospects may find it challenging to find your business, regardless of how excellent your service is in the marketplace.
Alternatively, you may post Content on various social media under the free posting section to get traffic, views, and likes. Such platforms include LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube, but remember that the audience may not have the sense of urgency to buy anything as yet in the marketplace.
4. Failed To Address Pain, Needs, Wants & Aspirations.
You may have everything right from Point 1 to Point 3, but if you fail to capture their attention, you will not make a sale.The solution is empathy – the ability to speak their language and push the right buttons to close the sale.Unless you have a trained Salesperson, Sales Team, or a commission-based Closer, the chances are that you will lose many potential deals.There are Two steps to resolve this.- Engage a copywriter to instigate an Action.
- Integrate your Copy into a Sales funnel
To enhance your sales system, you apply NLP buyers’ keywords in your Copywriting and Sales Script.
5. Lacking Certainty
Presuming that you have executed your business and marketing plan fantastically, closing a sale should be a breeze.Your prospects are eager to buy and about to reach out to their credit cards as long as you or your staff do not stuff up by saying something that turned them off.There are four reasons for mishandling (and losing) potential sales: –- Lack of confidence caused by the Seller’s mindset.
- Lack of product knowledge due to laziness to keep up/ learn.
- Lack of Sales training.
- Lack of attendance: failed to pick up the phone and call back.
You have put in so much money and effort to get qualified prospects to reach out to you; that’s a 90% progress to the finish line. And all you or your team have to do is applied the 10% effort to close the deal.I presume you don’t have any issues with the above four points. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be in business in the first place. Therefore, the weakest link could be any of your team members – anyone who picks up the phone and talks directly with your customer, be it your receptionist, accounts person, or admin support personnel.In our opinion, you and every team member should get some Sales Training, either from you or attend a Business Growth Workshop, otherwise, do not let them talk to your customers, or it may turn some of them off.Check out the next date to attend a Business Growth Workshop
6. Lack of Follow-Up.
Not all enquiries, sale calls, or leads convert into sales, as it can depend on many factors mentioned in previous points.
However, there is a solution to turn this around > Follow-up.
I had lost many businesses because my team and I didn’t follow up on genuine enquiries and did not ask why they didn’t buy from us. We were on the same boat: we were too busy, and there was too much firefighting in the business.
However, sales is a relentless journey of attrition, and it is a common problem for all business owners.
If your business does not hunger for sales, leave it as is. But if you are discontent with your revenue, then systemise your Follow-Up protocols with your staff members.
If you have a full-time salesperson, the Follow-Up task is easy.
However, few businesses can sustain an FT salesperson, and many of your team members are fully stretched and optimised by their workloads. This brings you back to the same problem – lack of Follow-Up on sales calls, attending to the phones, and online enquiries.
To defeat this issue, here are two recommendations:-
- Build a Purchase Funnel in your business model to automate your sales system.
- Your funnel is an investment, not a cost. You can do this by productising your services.
- Your funnel is an investment, not a cost. You can do this by productising your services.
- Build an E-commerce platform with a CheckOut Page so your business can receive sales, bookings, or registration 24/7.
Case studies
- Hotel businesses
- Medical and allied health clinics.
- Medical and allied health clinics.
Business Ignite can help business owners set up their purchase funnel. Check out our services.
CONCLUSION
Once you better understand why you might not be getting the sales you had hoped for, you have the power to make a change. You need to practice and assess every step of your sales process, whether it’s in-person or online.
Having clarity on who your target audience is, being able to ask the right questions and sparking curiosity can help set you up for success. It’s also essential to keep your marketing current, identify pain, needs and wants within your customer’s journey, commit to certainty and, most importantly, touchpoints that increase follow-up opportunities.
To be successful in sales takes time, patience and lots of practice! Need help? Join the business Growth Workshop or Mastermind where expert coaches will walk you through each step of improving your sales process this coming year. Alternatively, if you need help with marketing, click here
