Challenging times force all of us to improve our marketing and sales effort, managers must be more creative, smarter and more transformative. In a challenging time when marketing costs are soaring - the price of media jumps, especially on social networks, and as a result the cost of acquiring new leads increases. We must not forget the that a potential prospect is bombarded with email, ads and other types of messages. So what can we do? How to use such challenging times revise our marketing messages to enable an increase in the number of inquiries and leads, and ultimately generate more meetings and more sales.

Tips for boosting your Sales challenging times

1. Choose your target audience - stop, think again who is the most relevant audience for you, target the most potential audience to convert (gender, browsing habits, buying and more).

2. Marketing materials is more binding than ever - refresh and emphasize your marketing materials, it is important that it is adapted to the media channel and of course to the target audience.

3. In every trial of new  marketing materials or a new marketing channel, use AB TESTING. Don't make any assumptions until you measure.

4. Change while moving - don't hesitate to stop what doesn't work and change: marketing materials, messages, photos, mailings, inquiries, scripts and more. Don't wait too long, constantly try to understand what motivates the potential client here and now.

5. Present the product/service in a unique, interesting and original way, try to differentiate, while emphasizing added values ​​and benefits for the potential customer.

6. Maximum optimization -  constantly monitor and measure conversion ratios at the level of marketing channel, touch (representative), continuity and closing, all while examining the cost of marketing and sales acquisition.

7. Content, content, content - the king has been alive and kicking for quite a few years and is always there. People are interested in quality content. Create the compelling content and make sure to be in the relevant media for maximum exposure at the lowest possible cost.

8. Partner marketing (producers of leads) - use another source of leads, contact potential partners who work in your field and try to cooperate with them. There is even a chance that you will be surprised by the results that some of them can produce for you during this period.

9. Examining budgets - it may be right to lower budgets, and stay in channels where the conversion ratio is relatively high and the marketing acquisition cost is lower.

10. It's time to maximize the existing record databases (according to the CDP model) - map the customers that you did not make progress with in the past for a reason, build a work plan, assign them according to priorities and arm your sales representatives with tools such as: unique offers, promotions and more... 

11. Professionalize the human resource - emphasize on briefings, team meetings, apprenticeship,  encourage listening to customers and get online and offline feedback  from customers and prospect. Precisely in this period you need more than ever your human resource focused on results.

13. Refreshing the sales kit - go through the objection bank again with all the representatives, getting to know competitors, product/service benefits,  collect and prepare a great question-answer-objection list and fill that will common questions and great answer for every objection that was raised by a customer/prospect. 

14. Lead management - manage the leads in a more controlled manner, require the representatives to work according to work routines and SLA, and gain an optimal lead management process with follow-ups.

Conclusions 

Harness the direct managers - they are the ones who will be able to move the bottom line, give them tools, motivate them and above all trust them and give them the responsibility to lead the process!