Christmas is around the corner. Regardless of whether we celebrate it or not, founders have one thing in common at the end of the year. We’re trying to improve sales performance as much as possible before 2016 is nothing but the past.
The end of the year is a time for summarizing what we’ve done, and setting new goals for the year to come.
Would you like more time for new projects, but you never get enough clients without constantly working on sales?
You might want to consider these 5 simple tips to improve sales performance and make your team, customers happier.
1. Don’t Bother Your Team During Christmas
As counter-productive as it might seem to a titan of productivity like you, letting your team power-up their batteries without your interruptions will make everyone happier at the start of 2017.
According to the Huffington Post, vacation time reduces stress, helps your heart stay healthy, improves your mental health and improves your relationship – check out. But you know it already – uninterrupted vacation time always helps you get back on top of your game.
Don’t abandon long-term plans and responsibilities to your clients that you can’t pull out of. But if work during holidays is not necessary for the survival of your company, cut everyone (including yourself) some slack, kick back and focus on the good times during holidays. Or simply automate things that you usually do manually for sales (check tip # 3 for more details – it’s the simplest way).
2. Special Offers And Free Stuff For Christmas/New Years
Offers and promotions can be very useful around special events, especially cheerful ones like Christmas and New Years. Think of something that your customers would appreciate around this time:
- Product price discount
- Free, valuable content for customers
- Prolonged SaaS trial access
Some companies go even further. I’ve seen at least one digital agency offer free logo/website design services to NGOs around Christmas holidays. If you can do this or an equivalent free service for people or institutions in need, it’s a great PR stunt and a good deed all-in-one. Win-win.
3. Cold Email Prospective Customers To Improve Sales Performance
Cold Emailing is a long-term lead generation strategy (you need 3 months min to set up everything and get results), but if you know your target customers well, a cold email campaign can be a quick sales performance fix.
You can organise one manually. But between solving an issue with the new feature, talking to customers and having unexpected meetings everyday, it might be hard to organise a campaign in your spare time.
That’s why you could start working with a lead generation agency like RightHello, that gives you:
- Hand-picked B2B contacts without doing any picking
- Converting email copywriting done by experienced marketers
- Support in lead management and closing new sales
If you don’t have time to do research, spreadsheeting (is that even a word?), writing or sending – request a demo here.
4. Do Something Unexpected For Long-Term Customers
Word gets around if your company does unexpected things purely for the pleasure of your customers. It’s traditional for businesses to send Christmas and New Years’ wishes to their clients.
For a B2C company that operates on low margins and has too many customers to count, it makes sense to stick to sending wishes via email or social media. In B2B however, you can score additional points for sending personalised, small gifts and handwritten cards to people that you work with.
It shows commitment, it proves that you’re willing to go the extra mile. And it’s something that people like to mention to their friends (referrals!). Here’s a great list of customer appreciation ideas for inspiration, taken from HelpScout.
5. Review *How* You Worked Throughout The Year
Do you know how Scrum Teams have a retrospective meeting at the end of each sprint? The main goal of those meetings is for everyone to talk about *how* they worked over the duration of a sprint – what went wrong, what went right, what could be improved. This leads to more effective work from sprint to sprint. If you don’t talk to your team about *how* they work, you might want to organise a retrospective meeting as holiday slowdown creeps over your company.
Learn what bothers your team and see what you can do about it. It might be more beneficial than just doubling down on your goals and working overtime until Christmas dinner.
To Sum It All Up
We mentioned 5 tips that might help your team and your customers, and increase sales performance as a result:
- Don’t Bother Your Team During Christmas
- Special Offers And Free Stuff For Christmas/New Years
- Cold Email Prospective Customers To Improve Sales Performance
- Do Something Unexpected For Long-Term Customers
- Review *How* You Worked Throughout The Year
These might provide just what your company needs around this time – a bit more happiness and free time.
