“When you stop growing you start dying.” – William S. Burroughs
Almost every business organization includes growth as a key component of their strategic plan.
This objective inevitably translates into “we need to sell more.”
It is very easy to overcomplicate this – do not feel bad, most organizations do!
However, it does not have to be that way if you remember the simple sales strategy framework in this article. As you will see, we can map every marketing and sales tactic back to one of four core strategies that increase sales.
Many Tactics to Consider
We know that marketing enables sales. Therefore, developing and executing a growth strategy should be a shared responsibility between the two functions. When you consider that growth strategy truly sits at the intersection of marketing and sales, it makes logical sense that both should own it.
If there is not a dedicated growth leader, then the responsibility typically falls to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), or Chief Sales Officer (CSO) depending on the size and structure of the organization.
Regardless of who it is, the objective of the growth strategist is to integrate the go-to-market functions of an organization, and develop/execute a coherent strategic plan to grow the business. There are a myriad of different marketing and sales tactics to consider, deployed in many different combinations and flavors.
Here are some examples of common growth tactics:
- Increase inbound or outbound marketing
- Rebranding
- Sales team expansion
- Sales training
- M&A to buy market share
- Upselling and cross-selling
- Innovation of new products or services
- New market entry
- Pricing
- Distribution
- Channel partnerships
- Etc.
This small sampling from the nearly infinite menu of marketing and sales tactics is a great illustration of why you need an experienced growth strategist on your team.
The 4 Core Strategies to Increase Sales
All go-to-market tactics have the objective to directly, or indirectly, increase sales. Despite the confusing array of options and the many complexities of executing these tactics, every one of them maps back to a few core strategies.
There are fundamentally only four ways to increase sales:
- Increase the number of clients. Identifying and turning more prospects into new paying clients.
- Increase the average transaction. Getting each client to spend more at each purchase.
- Increase the frequency that the average client buys from you. Getting each client to buy from you more often.
- Improve the efficiency and effectiveness of each step in the marketing and sales process. Driving greater “funnel velocity” and conversion throughout the buyers journey.
A Bias To Simplicity
An experienced go-to-market leader begins to build a strategic plan for growth by first evaluating these four strategies in the context of the organization and the marketplace. With the identification of a strategy, or combination of strategies, they will then begin layering in appropriate marketing and sales tactics to create the plan.
There is always a tendency towards complexity when strategic planning. I hope that this simple framework with the four ways to increase sales will provide some structure to your planning, and help you focus on the most appropriate tactics for your growth strategy.
-Onward