When it comes to sales, you either meet your target by selling the product or you fail. There is no in-between in sales, even though the sales cycle in itself is comprised of many in-between stages. The entire process starts with finding prospects for leads to leads qualification followed by evaluation, closing and extending further to referrals. There is no denial of the fact that without a proper sales cycle the sales of product are on destiny’s fate. That’s why organisations lay a vital emphasis on designing a brilliant sales cycle and more importance on creating market awareness for the planned sales cycle. In this article we discuss about the five tips to creating market awareness for your sales cycle.

1. Research the market

Before you start aiming to create market awareness for your sales cycle you should do good research on the market and its entire vector. To research the market you need to do various case studies over a set of people and deliver webinars, know the reaction of people and study the various kinds of reports and statistics already available pertaining to your sales and marketing. Research is not a one-time activity. It should and must continue throughout the sales cycle.

2. Investing in data

We have always learned that knowledge is power but in this digital age, data is power. Gather as much data as possible. Know as much as you can. About your customers, market, their interests, their likes, dislikes, purchasing capacity, purchasing factor, what drives them to buy and what causes them to skip an offer. Knowing this all is so important and almost indispensable. How data helps your sales cycle, is a question which every organisation should understand and with analytics offered these days it has become more than easier to understand this relation.

3. Social media

If you sell, you must have a website, an online presence or medium to attract majority of buyers these days. Check if your sales cycle is giving importance to social media marketing and be prepared for the absolute heart winning content to create a positive brand. The awareness is linked to the outreach and the outreach happens if the content is good. The word of mouth promotion helps a lot and that is possible only when your sales cycle offers terrific content for all stages of the sales cycle.

4. Justify the need for your product

If there is one thing which works like a charm in sales, it is the age old formula of justifying the need for your product by addressing reasons for its uniqueness. Explain to customers why the product is different and better than rest of the products and how it fulfils what other products don’t. You don’t need to run after the unique selling point for your product. It’s not about creating hullabaloo all around. You just need to make your potential leads know the product’s features. Thus the sales cycle should strongly include the detailed description and explanation of product’s manufacturing, greatness and value.

5. Train your sales team

A sale is a multi-layered phenomenon. It starts with aggregating potential leads, trying to convert leads to customers and making the final hit which is selling the product. The sales cycle that is most important is the part where sale is done. By this time, a lead is well aware about your product, he is aware of advantages of your products and likely to be partially aware about why he should already buy the product. Yet, the most fragile phase is when customer actually does the purchase. The reason behind fragility of this phase is the fact that customer so far has gained all information about your product and hasn’t offered anything to you in return. While purchase he is making the payment! Thus his mind is worried with trust issues, doubts, and paranoia sometimes. With a trained and specialised sales team, this fragile phase can be dealt with. A trained sales person or a team should know this customer behaviour and understand how to tackle it.

Conclusion

In the end, creating market awareness involves lots and lots of planning and quality content and message throughout. With above five tips, the sales cycle can be further enhanced and made effective. It will pay off with good sales figure for sure.

Also see: Building a sales team: What to consider as a small business