10 Sales Strategies That Work for Any Organization

A well-defined sales strategy is vital for small businesses to thrive in today's competitive market. A sales strategy goes beyond simply making sales; it's a roadmap outlining how to connect with your target audience, present your product or service, and ultimately close deals.  By implementing effective sales strategies, you can increase sales, improve customer satisfaction, and position your company against competitors.

Explore why sales strategies matter and 10 examples that may help you broaden your reach, increase efficiency, and adapt quickly to changing market conditions. 

What are sales strategies?

A sales strategy is any plan you develop to make sales; however, it isn’t static. It needs to be an evolving roadmap. A sales strategy can describe your target audience and how you plan to reach them. For example, suppose you have a product that’s ideal for elementary school teachers. In this case, you’ve already identified the target market, but your sales strategy also needs to include how to reach out to them and your message. Essentially, your sales strategy will center on how you connect with your customers and how you will explain the benefits of your product to them. 

Another important part of your sales strategy is developing key performance indicators (KPIs), such as revenue targets, sales quotas, and conversion rates, to track your performance over time. This helps you understand aspects of your strategy that effectively reach your goals and areas that need improvement in the future. 

Sales strategies can also include: 

• Buyer personas

• Competitive analysis

• Organizational structure

• Selling methodologies

• Goals for expansion

Developing a robust sales strategy requires you to examine your customers. More importantly, it helps you identify their challenges and how you can help solve them or provide value. Think of it as a roadmap. It should detail your sales goals, how you'll position your product, your ideal customers, the steps involved in your sales pipeline, and any additional resources that empower your team to close more deals.

Read more: What Is Sales Management: Definition, Scope, Objectives, Careers

What are the benefits of having a sales strategy?

Well-defined sales strategies can benefit sales teams by increasing sales, helping them remain competitive, and improving customer satisfaction. A few additional benefits include: 

• Defines customer needs: Your sales strategy can differentiate customers depending on where they are in the sales cycle, giving you more control over meeting your customer’s needs. 

• Develops a process: When you use the same strategies over and over, you can begin to measure how well they work. Sales strategies help you build a process you can measure and improve incrementally as you repeat the process, which provides you with a solid idea regarding your return on investment (ROI). 

• Focuses team skills: If you know what sales channels and methodologies you plan to use, you can use that sales strategy to hire the right team with the exact skills you’ll need. 

• Prepare for the future: With a strategy in place, you’ll be ready to meet your customers’ objections and roadblocks as they arise organically. The more you prepare for challenges, the less challenging they will be when they appear.

What are the challenges of having a sales strategy?

Sales strategies can benefit sales teams, but you’ll need to be wary of some challenges. The following items highlight some of the limitations of sales strategies and what you can do to overcome them: 

• Identifying leads: Essentially, a lead is a potential customer who has expressed an interest in the product or service you are selling. A qualified lead is likely to make a purchase, generally because the product is a good fit for their needs. By adding steps, such as including the marketing department, into sales strategies for qualifying leads, you can pre-screen potential customers and spend time and effort on those likely to purchase. 

• Speaking to the right decision-maker: The decision-maker at the company is the person who has the authority to purchase your product or service. To use your time more efficiently, you want to sell directly to the person authorized to say “yes.” 

Inbound vs. outbound sales strategies 

Two types of sales strategies are inbound and outbound sales, which describe the overarching process. With inbound sales, the goal is to attract customers organically so that they reach out to salespeople. With outbound sales, sales reps reach out to customers. 

An inbound sales strategy might include a website, a landing page, or a free trial. Marketing efforts direct potential customers to the website, which acts as a sales funnel, moving prospects closer to the goal of closing the deal. Outbound sales strategies typically include cold calling, sending emails, or making appointments for sales calls. Your company might use inbound or outbound sales exclusively, or you might use a combination of both types of sales. 

Who uses sales strategies?

Any sales team member, including sales managers, representatives, specialists, and customer service reps, uses sales strategies. Sales teams use strategies to sell directly to consumers or other businesses. The sales lead or sales manager usually sets the vision of the company’s overall sales strategy. 

10 sales strategy tips

Finding effective sales strategies for your product or service often requires experimenting to see what tactics your target audience responds to. The following tips can help you start executing a robust sales strategy. 

1. Clearly define your goals.

When you understand what you want to achieve, you can more effectively measure progress along the way and visualize potential roadblocks. To set the best sales goals, make sure they are SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. 

2. Incorporate storytelling.

You can tell your clients all the facts about how great your product is and how the studies have shown it will solve their problems, but what they likely remember is the story you tell to demonstrate those facts. By incorporating compelling stories about your product or service into your sales strategy, you will likely connect with your customers on a deeper level and have more impressive results. 

3. Turn to social media.

Keeping a social media presence can be an excellent way to connect to your audience and help you expand your business. Social media can also be useful for learning about and connecting with new potential customers and engaging customers in new ways. You can showcase information about your product, drive customers to your website, and even generate leads. You can also use paid ads on social media to drive sales.

4. Consider cold calling. 

Sales teams sometimes overlook cold calling as an outdated sales strategy. Still, it can be an effective way to have a direct and meaningful conversation with a potential customer. Cold calling allows you to reach new potential markets you have yet to connect with in other ways. 

5. Focus on benefits to buyers.

When talking to potential customers about your product or service, focus on how it will improve the customer’s life. What challenges are you helping them overcome? By showing customers that you understand their pain points and have a solution, they may be more willing to trust you. 

6. Do something your competitors don't.

You want to focus on what differentiates your company or product from your competition. Defining and demonstrating this quality to potential clients can help you grow your target market. 

7. Offer a free trial. 

Make a free trial or sample of your product available for any customer wanting to take a closer look. Who doesn’t love getting something for free? More importantly, a free trial lets you bring customers close enough to your product to see how it will benefit them and improve their lives. If you can excite your customers about the possibilities of your product, you may have an easier time converting them into paying customers.  

8. Create urgency. 

Close the deal by creating a sense of urgency with your customers and explaining why now is the best time to purchase. For example, you could explain how much money they could save by the end of the week if they started using your product right now. Or, you could offer them a limited-time discount or trial, giving them added value for purchasing now. 

9. Embrace customer feedback.

Listen to your customers when they tell you something isn’t right about the product or pricing. It allows you to address their concerns, but listening to your clients can help you pinpoint the issue's core faster. Also, when customers know you’re interested in their concerns, they feel respected, and this typically makes them more amenable to working with you to solve the issue.

10. Build and maintain relationships with your customers.

Maintaining relationships with your customers after you make the sale keeps the door open for future sales. It takes significant effort to transform a lead into a customer. You can maintain that connection by reaching out occasionally to see how things are going without repeating the entire process. 

Read more: What Is a Sales Pipeline and How Do You Build a Successful One?

Get started with sales on Coursera.

Sales strategies are an integral part of the sales process, supporting your efforts to reach customers. They create pathways to help you understand your customers' needs and build relationships that keep them returning. 

Consider earning your Salesforce Sales Development Representative Professional Certificate on Coursera. You don’t need any previous experience, and it takes about three months to learn job-ready skills like identifying your audience, personal branding, sales development, cold calling, time development, and more. After earning your Professional Certificate, you may have enough qualifications to land a sales or development representative job.