Sales volume is like the metabolic health of your business.
When you’re generating plenty of leads, and when you’re converting prospects into customers at a steady rate, your business is healthy.
When sales volume slacks, your business struggles.
Of course, there’s something to be said for having a good product and maintaining a customer-centric support team… but it all starts with sales.
If people aren’t jumping the fence, you won’t have anyone to serve.
In this guide, we’re going to show you 7 proven ways to increase your sales volume, whether you’re just getting started or have been in business for decades.
Technically speaking, sales volume is the number of product units sold over a certain period of time. This number is typically not represented by a monetary value (like total sales would be). If, for example, your sales reps sold 100 products over the last three months, then your sales volume would be 100 regardless of how much money those sales made.
The goal of increasing sales volume, then, is the goal of making more sales… not necessarily making more money.
This is important to keep in mind for your specific business model — is sales volume (units sold) or sales total (monetary value) a better measurement of your sales success?
As it applies to salespeople, sales volume is a decent measurement of productivity — more sales made usually means more work done. But this isn’t necessarily true, especially if those salespeople are negotiating very large transactions that take a lot of time.
For very high-ticket B2B sales, sales total (monetary value) is probably a better measurement of a salesperson’s output.
You can’t improve what you don’t measure.
So how do you measure sales volume?
Well, you simply keep track of the number of units you sell during a given time period.
There are different ways to break this information down…
Free High Ticket Secrets Video Series: Learn How To Make High-Ticket Sales Without Phone Calling
I keep getting retargeted by this advertisement from Sam Ovens on Facebook…
The answer to the question at the beginning — Why is there a teddy bear, in a chair, in our ball pit office? — is that the teddy bear represents Consulting.com’s (Sam Oven’s company) ideal client.
It’s a playful reminder to always save a seat at the table for your dream customer.
And so the first step to increasing sales volume is to understand your target market — or as we like to call it, your dream customer.
This is the person who you most want to serve and who will most benefit from your products or services. Because of that alignment, these people are also the most profitable customers you could attract.
Your company as a whole and your salespeople as individuals should clearly understand who your dream customer is…
In fact, according to a LinkedIn 2020 Report, the top way that salespeople can demonstrate value to buyers is by “demonstrating a clear understanding of the buyer’s business needs”.
That’s a B2B survey, but it also applies to B2C sales.
The prospect wants to know that you understand them.
So take some time to get specific about who you serve and how you serve them — here’s a template to get you started…
Identifying and understanding your ideal client won’t just help you convert more prospects into customers, it’ll also help you spend less time trying to convert people who aren’t in your target market.
Russell Brunson talks more about how to identify and attract your dream customers in his bestselling book, Traffic Secrets — get your free copy here.
I recently purchased some speakers for my computer and, after a month, they started making this incessant buzzing noise whenever the volume was turned on.
Since I’d purchased the speakers through Amazon, I called Amazon’s customer service for help.
Not only did they answer the phone within 20 seconds of me calling, they also helped me through the steps to try and fix the speakers, trusted me completely when I said that they still weren’t working, and made getting a refund and/or replacement as easy as possible.
Afterward, I couldn’t help but think to myself… It’s no wonder that Amazon is winning.
Their customer service team, for whatever reason, seems to really care about the customer and they’ve been given the authority to help the customer.
I know this is a customer service example, but the lesson applies to sales as well.
There’s a wonderful feeling that people get when they’re talking to a salesperson that seems to genuinely care about their problems, fears, concerns, or objectives — when it feels like the salesperson’s goal isn’t to sell them on something… but simply to help them however they can.
Not only does it feel good. It results in more sales and better customer-to-business relationships.
In Jeff Bezos’ words,
The lesson?
Train your salespeople to focus on the prospect’s needs and give them the authority to make decisions that help the prospect. Even if that help doesn’t result in an immediate sale, you’ve built some positive rapport.
And that’s a rare thing in our fast-paced world.
Here are two different ways to make sales in today’s world…
You can hop on the phone and convince prospects to buy your products in one-to-one conversation — this is often necessary for very high-ticket negotiations.
Or you can create a sales funnel that systematically converts prospects into customers — this is sort of like having a robot salesperson that does the heavy lifting. This can work with both low-ticket items and high-ticket items.
You can also generate leads with a sales funnel.
What’s a sales funnel?
It’s simply a series of pages that are crafted for a single purpose — usually to generate leads or sell a product or service. Sales funnels differ from websites in that they have a single-minded goal (and they’re also more effective because of that — see the video below).
This is what we specialize in at ClickFunnels — building sales funnels.
We’ve even created 20+ tested-and-proven sales funnel templates that are built to accomplish various goals: getting registrants for an online event, selling products, generating leads, etc.
Here’s what our Tripwire Funnel looks like, for instance — it’s used to convert cold traffic into paying customers…
And here’s an example of our Application Funnel, which is perfect for collecting leads for future high-ticket sales phone calls…
You can use sales funnels to make sales directly and reduce the overhead costs of having a sales team… or you can use sales funnels as the front-end lead-gen of your business and then use your sales team to convert those leads into customers.
Both ways can work great — it just depends on the business.
Try ClickFunnels free for 14 days over here and build as many sales funnels as you want!
According to Invesp, “the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60 – 70%, while the probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%. Existing customers are 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more, when compared to new customers.”
In other words, the moment after someone decides to purchase from you, they become about three times easier to sell to than other people who’ve never purchased from you before.
How do you take advantage of this?
Upselling is when you try to sell an additional product to someone who’s already committed to purchasing a different product.
This sales tactic takes advantage of the fact that people usually go through buying sprees — they buy lots of stuff all at once or nothing at all.
It works super well.
You can add upsells to your sales funnels (see the previous point) and you can teach your salespeople to upsell new customers.
This is a great way to increase sales volume because it literally increases the number of products you sell during a single transaction.
Here’s an example of a pop-up upsell that triggers when the person has already entered their payment info and committed to buying the front-end product…
Get yourself a free ClickFunnels account and try it out for yourself.
You’ll likely increase your sales volume and average order value.
If you’re a sales person or marketer or entrepreneur… or if you’ve done even a little bit of research on those topics, then you’re probably familiar with the following stats…
i.e. follow up is super important.
Even if you’re using a high-converting sales funnel and top salespeople… you’re never going to convert everyone on the first go-around.
And there are a lot of different facets to an effective follow-up process. You might text prospects, call prospects, or email prospects.
Here, though, we’re talking about what we call “follow-up funnels”.
These are simply email sequences that you send to your list for a very specific purpose — to sell a product or service, or get people to attend a live event, for instance.
(You can build an email list and follow-up funnels right inside of ClickFunnels!)
Here’s an example of a follow-up funnel from Bryan Ward, who’s the founder of ThirdWayMan — with the following four emails, he’s trying to build trust and sell his email list on a product he calls “Body of a Warrior”. Here’s the first email…
Here’s the second email…
The third email is more of the same and super long so we’ll skip it for the sake of brevity. Here’s the fourth and final email with his CTA…
Seem like a lot?
There’s actually a very clear-cut and effective process for crafting follow-up funnels — Russell Brunson outlines his process in DotCom Secrets (get your free copy here), which primarily consists of a “Soap Opera Sequence” and “Daily Seinfeld Emails”.
Ring, ring… ring, ring.
Before you answer that call — which could be from a motivated prospect — what is your first thought?
Are you thinking about that fight you had with your spouse this morning? Or who’s going to pick up the kids from school? Are you thinking about your past success and how good of a salesperson you are?
What you’re thinking about before you pick up the phone (and while you’re on the call) impacts the sales call… because it impacts your attitude and behavior.
You might think, then, that the best way to prepare for a sales call is to get yourself pumped up, to expect to make the sale no matter what, to succeed!
But that’s not true.
In fact, that exaggerated excitement usually just comes off as neediness or pushiness to the prospect… when what you’re really going for is indifference.
I’ll let Jim Camp, the author of Start With No, do the explaining…
“Treat every warm call as though it’s the coldest one you ever made. When emotions run hot and heavy in negotiations, the high-pitched voice is a sure sign of need. The rushed delivery is another sure sign. While needy negotiators raise their voices, negotiators under control lower their voices. So lower your voice in times of inner turmoil. Slow down.”
He continues…
“It is absolutely imperative that you as a negotiator understand the importance of this point. You do NOT need this deal, because to be needy is to lose control and make bad decisions.”
So what’s the solution? Jim Camp recommends “blank slating” — releasing all expectations, emotions, and neediness — before and during every sales call, whenever necessary…
“Your ability to blank slate is directly related to your ability to rid yourself of expectations and assumptions, two very bad words in my system of negotiation.”
Blank slating is the ability to allow the prospect to tell you what they need, what they’re concerned about, and how you can help. Blank slating indirectly puts you in control of the conversation.
This is probably why top sales reps listen more than they talk — much more than average or bottom reps do…
So learn to blank slate, ask questions when you’re tempted to go on a tangent, and allow the prospect to feel like they’re leading the way. In doing so, you’ll gently guide the conversation exactly where you want it to go.
This advice is simple, but it’s actually quite important if you want to have a sales team that functions properly.
Use a CRM.
A CRM (which stands for Customer Relationship Management) is a piece of software that helps your sales team manage leads, coordinate conversations, create workflows, create follow-up processes, and lots more.
Here are three CRMs to check out: Keap, ActiveCampaign, and Salesforce.
Sales volume is important — it’s a metric that indicates the effectiveness and efficiency of your company.
And it’s directly related to the growth of your business.
This article has given you some ideas for how you can increase your quarterly sales volume — understand your dream customer, focus on the prospect’s needs, use sales funnels, learn to “blank slate”, and be generous.
What’s next?
Action and implementation.
Off you go!
Free High Ticket Secrets Video Series: Learn How To Make High-Ticket Sales Without Phone Calling
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