When you absolutely need to drive money into your business, perhaps the best thing you could do right now is stop reading this article and look at the people who are on the fence about buying from you, and then get them to buy – sometimes referred to as the ‘low hanging fruit’.

That being said, there are a number of ways to get more sales for your business, and we’ve been working with the CMA Membership Community this past week to come up with small weekly challenges to help each other to become more successful.

What we typically find in businesses is that there’s little sense of urgency around getting more sales, and that’s what we’d like to work on to improve for both the community, and for our own business.

Without the sales we simply do not have a business.

So with that in mind, here are 5 small, actionable challenges to help you drive more sales into your business.

Challenge 1: Nudge forward a minimum of 10 open enquiries

Hopefully you are keeping a track of all your enquiries, and if you are this should be a straightforward task for you.

If you currently do not have some sort of system in place for tracking potential customers (Trello, CRM, spreadsheet, list, whiteboard), then as part of this challenge you should begin mapping out that system/process.

Look at all the open enquiries you have currently and contact them today. They might not move to a sale today, but contacting them today has more chance of resulting in a sale more quickly.

Don’t forget that it’s your job to remind people that you exist, not the other way around.

Potential methods:

• Send an email
• Pick up the phone
• Visit them on location
• Interact on social media

Challenge 2: Warm up 10 cold contacts

We’re all busy, and many of the contacts we have built up over the course of our business fall away and become cold.

Look at your list of contacts and pin point 5-10 people that you haven’t spoken to for over 6 months and make contact with them.

If you have a CRM system in place, you should be able to reverse the order of ‘last contacted’, and start from there.

The other option is to scroll through your emails and business cards to help trigger conversations from the past.

Challenge 3: Chase all unpaid sales invoices

It’s not the most enjoyable job in the world, but it absolutely has to be done.

Look at your outstanding invoices and make the calls to have them paid today.

The telephone is the most effective way to chase invoices.

An additional task here is to think about how you can avoid this happening all together by being paid upfront/in advance, or on a subscription basis. You may also want to review your payment terms for the future.

Challenge 4: Remind your potential, previous and existing customers what you offer

Never assume that your potential, previous and existing customers know everything that you offer.

Send them an email/letter today summarising what services/products you offer.

You can do this in a way that isn’t pushy and simply reminds people of what you do.

Perhaps share some examples of your recent work to showcase the different work you can do.

Make it easy for people to contact you – don’t forget to highlight your telephone number and email address.

Challenge 5: Request customer referrals

Contact your best clients and ask them if they know 3 people that would like to talk to you about how you can help them.

You could do this via email or telephone.

Don’t say ‘do you know anyone’ – be as specific as you can with this and try to get people really thinking about the people they know that have a problem that you can solve:

• “Does the person you sit next to at work also suffer from…?”
• “Who else in your family would also be interested in [our product]?”

An additional task here is to think about how you can introduce a more permanent customer referral campaign to encourage people to tell others about your business on a frequent basis.

Challenge yourself to get more sales

Pick one of these challenges today and see what kind of results you get.

A number of people increased their sales very quickly in the community this past week, just from taking some of the simple actions outlined here.

That’s what’s special about the CMA Membership Community – you’re never alone.

Let me know about your results in the comments section below.

DFTBA!

Chris.