Sales work has always depended on interpersonal connections. Your sales team needs to persuade your customers' minds and hearts. To do so, though, you have to reach those people first. Today's technology gives new and exciting ways to help you reach people, to bring them in, and enable those connections. Take advantage of the tools available to give your team its best chance at sales success.
1. Your Website Presence
Your starting point for technology-based marketing should be your company website. You create and build this to represent your organization to the world. In many cases, you also convert marketing reach into eCommerce sales in the process. Your website should use SEO techniques and email marketing to reach and retain the widest possible audience and process payments in multiple currencies to increase your sales potential.
2. Social Media Expansion
Social media presents a unique opportunity for businesses. You can connect and relate to your customers directly, and spread your marketing message with every interaction. To do so, though, you need to build out a combination of social media marketing buys and original, interesting content. Every message has the chance to reach through an intricate web of contacts that starts with your most loyal customers and spread through their followers as well.
3. Mobile Advertising
Mobile marketing works in a number of ways. As you build your customer list, you can text out advertisements, coupons, and sale alerts to help encourage immediate action. Beyond this, the most tech-savvy organizations build out (or contract with others to build out) mobile apps that keep customers connected to their business. Smartphones are essentially everywhere now, so giving your customers ways to maintain contact through them to you is a no-brainer for your business.
4. Point of Sale Enhancements
If you maintain a physical sales space, you are competing with online retailers to reach customers. One way to help do so is to build technological enhancements within your store. Customers can use virtual reality and augmented reality to "try" products before they buy. Kiosks connected to the internet can further help customers research your products or learn more about uses and applications. The more you provide on the site, the more reason your customers have to come.
5. AI Applications
Finally, artificial intelligence (AI) has started to establish itself in the marketing and sales space. One simple application is with a virtual assistant on your website. These use technology similar to Siri or Alexa to help customers navigating your website. This can take a customer from a passive shopper to an interacting shopper, and help you close more sales.
Embracing available technology is not a way to give up the personal touches that have always made for the best sales force. If you use it well, it helps bring your potential customers to you. If you marry the best technology to the most effective sales team, your sales can reach farther and faster than ever before.
