If you have a business, you’ll have to get comfortable selling. And not just comfortable — you need to become the master of sales. This is the only way to turn potential customers into existing customers. In this blog, I will share some of my top tips for how to increase sales and bring in new customers. These are tactics and strategies that have improved my sales strategy and helped my business grow year after year.

By the way, if you prefer watching a video over reading, I talk more about how to increase sales on YouTube!

How to Increase Sales: 5 Actionable Tips

Okay, are you ready to bring new customers into your sales funnel? Keep reading to learn how to boost sales and improve your sales pitches.

1. Learn Everything About Your Product or Service Line

If you’re trying to sell something, then you need to know it inside and out. This includes all of its features, how they work, and the problems they help solve. (More on this in a moment!)

You should also know the pricing. If the pricing depends on different variables, you should have a general understanding of how the cost can change based on those variables.

Know Your Competitors

Knowing your own products or services is one thing. But if you want to increase sales, you need to be very familiar with what your competitors are offering too. This is because there’s a good chance that at some point in the sales process, potential customers are going to ask how you’re different from your competitors, why your pricing is different, and why they should choose you over them.

You can’t answer these questions if you don’t know what your competition is up to. This is a key component of doing market research and getting more sales.

Not only will this demonstrate that you’re knowledgeable about your product or service, but it will also help you feel more confident during the selling process. And when you’re confident with your sales pitch, you instill confidence and trust in your prospective customers.

This encourages customers to put their faith in you. As a result, you’ll get more sales.

Know Your Customers

You need to know your products or services. And you need to know your competitors. Lastly, you need to know your customers if you want to increase sales!

This means familiarizing yourself with their wants, needs, goals, and pain points. Part of earning customer loyalty is being able to anticipate their needs without your customers having to explicitly explain them. This shows them that you’re in tune with what they’re trying to achieve.

How can you learn more about your customers, though? Well, it starts with active listening. Every time you speak with a prospect, you should be making a note of what exactly they’re struggling with. Eventually, you’ll notice patterns because these people are going to have a lot of things in common.

Additionally, you can learn more about your customers by hopping on social media platforms. What are these people talking about? Look at the comments sections of your competitors’ posts — you’ll learn a lot there. Check in with your online marketing team to see how else you can get a sneak peek of what your target audience is talking about. Their marketing strategy will probably provide you with a ton of valuable insight to help you increase sales.

Customers want to know that you understand them. If you can demonstrate this, then you’re going to increase sales and bring in more paying customers.

2. Demonstrate Value by Solving Their Problems

If you want to understand how to increase sales, this is one of the best things I can teach you. Clearly convey how your product or service solves a problem that your customers are having.

This is what they’re paying for — solutions! They’re handing over money so that your product or service can make their lives easier. Demonstrate value, increase sales.

Let’s go through an example. Maybe you’re selling computer monitors. Guess what? So are a lot of other people. Why should your target market choose you and not one of your many competitors?

You can get through to them by (1) acknowledging a problem they’re having and (2) explaining why your product is the best fit to solve that problem.

A lot of desk workers deal with eye strain. Does your monitor address this with a special filter that’s more gentle on their eyes?

Or, maybe you know that a potential customer is dealing with back and neck pain from being hunched over and looking at their monitor all day. If your monitor is adjustable in all different directions, you’ve just solved their problem!

This is how you can go beyond selling to provide value. And that’s mandatory if you want to increase sales.

3. Ask Questions Before You Give Answers

This goes along with knowing your customers, but it deserves a little time in the spotlight because it’s vital if you want to increase sales.

Let’s go back to our previous example of a computer monitor salesperson. Someone walks into your store and asks how much your monitors are.

You couldn’t possibly start rattling off numbers yet — you need more information.

What kind of workplace setup do they have? Do they spend more time standing or sitting? What size monitor are they considering? What kind of monitor do they currently have? Why do they need a new one?

It’s not about interrogating them, but asking questions offers a couple of benefits. First, it helps you better understand the customer so that you can better serve them. And second, it helps them feel more heard.

4. Provide Excellent Customer Service

Too many companies are only focused on getting what they want. And therein lies the problem.

Your ideal customer doesn’t care about your business getting what it wants. They care about getting what they want.

This means that you, too, need to care about giving them what they want. That’s how you build a solid relationship with your target audience, onboard new customers, and increase sales.

“But we need to make money!” you’re saying. And I get it. But remember what I said before: Your customers don’t care about how much money you make. They care about whether or not you can solve their problems. If all you’re focused on is making money, you will not increase sales. Period.

Put yourself in their shoes. We’ve all had the experience of talking to a sales rep and feeling like a number — like all they want is our money. That doesn’t feel very good, right?

Wondering how to increase sales? Focus on providing value and solving problems, and the money will come.

What this ultimately comes down to is providing excellent customer service and putting the customer first, above your own needs and goals. You have to genuinely care about giving them a good customer experience.

5. Get Customer Feedback to Improve Your Sales Strategy and Increase Sales

Too often, a business will close the deal, get the sale, and move on to the next prospect. But your job isn’t done just because you’ve collected the cash, and this certainly won’t lead you to more sales.

Building a business is about (1) getting new customers and (2) keeping your existing customers happy.

If you have people who have been paying you for a long time, find out why. Ask existing customers what specifically they like about your business. And perhaps even more importantly, ask them what could be better. That is how to increase sales.

This is amazing information that will help you improve your relationships with existing customers (and also help them feel heard). And you can use it to better sell your products or services to new customers.

If you want to know how to increase sales, start with the customers who have already spent money on your products or services! Repeat business is usually a goldmine of information. (While you’re at it, ask for customer testimonials. You’re going to need these if you want to increase sales.)

Get More Sales with Practice and Patience

Increasing sales can take time, and that’s one thing too many businesses aren’t willing to spend. They want to improve their bottom line, and they want to do it now.

However, you aren’t going to rush or force people to spend money on your products or services. That’s not how you turn strangers into loyal customers, and this will do nothing to help you increase sales.

Get to know as much as you can about your offerings, your competition, and the people you want to sell to. Offer solutions to their problems. Ask plenty of questions. Provide a stellar customer experience. And get feedback from the customers already buying from you.

As a wonderful byproduct, if you do all of these things, you’ll also improve your marketing strategies, be able to come up with better social media advertising, generate word of mouth, improve brand loyalty, and increase brand awareness. And that, in turn, will help you increase sales even more. Pretty cool, right?

These tactics will help you increase sales and get more customers than you ever thought possible!