Does Free Shipping Increase Sales?

Will I increase my sales if I offer free shipping?  Amazon does it so does it generate more sales?  How do I compete with Amazon and other big retailers?

These are some of the questions that I hear when I am coaching sales organizations with becoming the brand of choice.  It’s something that sales organizations ask all the time when it comes to generating more revenues. 

This is about the time that I burst the bubble about free shipping and making more sales.  Amazon does offer free sales and they sell quite a bit of products on their sites every day.   Sometimes I even buy too much on their site.  

Yes, Amazon does offer free shipping, but they offer fast shipping, with great updates on their app that you can see how the product moves through their delivery system.  They also offer really simple and low effort returns.  The third thing that they do is offer free two-day shipping by a use of a subscription. 

This is more than just simply offering free shipping.  We need to look at our business and our product offering to understand what we can offer as a solution to our customers so that they will want to do more business with us.  Likely we have more than one product / service offering that will benefit our customers far better than just free shipping.

This is the time we need to open our file cabinets and study our customers.  What we can do to benefit our customers better?  When we really understand our customers, we can start building partnerships with them to buy more and more of what we offer instead of one off sales.  We want returning partners that will benefit the more they do business with us.

What I teach in the sales process is that we need to ask a great deal of questions at the beginning of the sales process to understand our customers.  This is also the time that the customers start to believe we are really looking to help them and not just sell our products / service. 

We need to get the customers to buy into us if we are ever going to sell them more.  We need to make sure that we are building that influence and that is why it is crucial that we ask a great deal of questions to truly understand our customers. We need to understand their situation, their issues, and the ramifications. 

If we can solve them and get the customer to a better way, then we will reap the rewards of more sales and increased revenues.  Each customer has an acquisition cost and we need to make sure that we are selling enough to cover those costs to manage those customers.  If we do not, then it does not matter as much about the revenue because we will have too high of costs resulting in lower profits.  In the end profits are what keep businesses moving forward.

“Businesses wonder why it is still hard to be thought of as the brand of choice with customers.  How can our business make more profitable transactions and stay out of the commodity battle with low profits?  I equip your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate explosive revenues with greater profits!”

www.kevinsidebottom.com

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lWIVasmkFsoYL4h0AqIZgH6LC3qaw_gI/view?usp=sharing – client profile sheet

https://www.amazon.com/Sales-Process-Uncovered-Success-Influence/dp/0578421518 - Book

The Sales Process Uncovered Membership Page

Why Your Team Needs Investment

Have you ever wondered why your team just seems to be stagnant?  As the years go on the growth of the organization seems to hit a ceiling?  No matter how you as the leader push, the sales and growth just seem to flat line?

When I first started in sales, I was thrust into learning by so many different programs to get me up to speed with the rest of the sales team.  We had annual trainings that we took part in as a group every year.  Most of the sales team would groan about the annual sales meeting that took them out of their market from seeing their customers.

It was odd because the owner of the organization would basically have the sales trainer from outside the organization come in and train us with basically the same message the owner constantly presented us with.

It was odd that someone would do this, but as I learned when sales people hear the same thing over time it becomes real.  I’ve since learned that with all areas of our life that the more we hear the same message, the more it becomes truth.  Having an individual come in from outside the organization annually that aligns with the organization’s goals will help solidify with this. 

We would spend a couple days in sales training and at the end of the training from the individual outside of the organization, we would then be held back for a debrief.  Now the organizational leader was ex-military, but it is the same thing as watching the game film from professional sports teams.  The team discussing what they learned and what they can add to their tool box for becoming better is very useful.  

When we discuss with others on our team that we trust and they give perspectives and items they learned that we may not have caught from the training it is very helpful.  We are typically drinking from a fire hose with information that we cannot capture everything, so discussing with others will help us catch some things we missed.  

By discussing this information, the team will form bonds and will become stronger together.  This is crucial as the team will start calling each other instead of the leadership when the trust levels are high between each other to bounce ideas off of each other before bringing to leadership.  This is crucial because as the team unites in trust, it becomes more efficient and drive faster sales growth.

The last thing we did was do competitive analysis and each person from the group chose one specific area to teach on.  The easiest way for us to learn is to actually teach.  It took time to prepare for this, but was very beneficial for all of us to learn.  

Yes, this took us out of the market for a few days, but it was sharpening out axe to chop down the tree.  If we sharpen ourselves, we will be able to cut mor efficient.  Sales organizations need this investment to become better especially since they are so limited in actually selling these days.  Typically, only 36% of sales time is actually spent in the sales process with customers with all of the other activities that are required.  Sales teams need to be invested in if we expect them to grow sales!  

Do you team this favor and invest.   By doing so, you will benefit greatly!

Sincerely,

Kevin Sidebottom

“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business.  I equip your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate explosive revenues with greater profits!”

www.kevinsidebottom.com

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lWIVasmkFsoYL4h0AqIZgH6LC3qaw_gI/view?usp=sharing – client profile sheet

https://www.amazon.com/Sales-Process-Uncovered-Success-Influence/dp/0578421518 - Book

https://kevinsidebottom.kartra.com/page/5AF12 - Sales Process Uncovered Online Training

https://kevinsidebottom.kartra.com/page/68N10 - Trustworthy Online Training

What is Your Why For Your Marketing Strategy?

Welcome back.  Today I’d like to talk about what a good marketing strategy is in order to increase sales.  I will also write about what doesn’t work and why so that you can figure out how you want to move forward with your strategy.

Since the creation of mail advertising, tv, and the internet there has been a great focus on marketing.  Now that we as a society have evolved and become smarter, the old way of marketing features and benefits has had to evolve. Just buying the biggest ad in the yellow pages will not work these days.

When people meet us as sales professionals, organizations, institutions they are asking three questions.  Today let’s focus on the third question with the assumption that we have answered the first two correctly.  This third question is “How Can You Help Me?”  If we are going to market to people about us being the best option, we better be focused on answering that question correctly.

If we don’t answer that question, well they will move on down the road to the next person in line.  They will also start thinking about what we offer as a commodity if we are not answering that question.  If we become a commodity then the only differentiating factor is price.  There is no winning strategy for commodities.  We need to differentiate ourselves from the competition.

People do not buy features and benefits as the answer to the question above.  We must focus on answering the needs of the customer.  That is right customers want a solution to their needs.  To figure out what needs our offering answers, then we need to ask questions, but to who? 

The answer to that question is ask our current customers why they buy from us.  What is it that made them desire our offering?  Why do they stick with us when there are other offerings out there?  Why do people still flock to Apple for their products when there are other products out there that compete on the same performance as Apple?  We need to understand why our customers love our offerings and stick with us as repeat customers.

To do that there are tons of tools out there, but I recommend two.  Surveys and testimonials are what I recommend.  Surveys upon purchase helps in the later steps of the sales process as I teach, but also help get fresh feedback at the time of purchase as to why the customer decided to do business with us.  This is fresh insight without outside influence and time that will allow our customers to forget.  The other is testimonials.  These testimonials work so great because of the law of “Social Proof” that others will follow because of that influence. 

That is right, we need to be asking our current customers why they are doing business with us because this is the key to understand how and what we should be marketing.  We will see a trend as well with all of the surveys and testimonials that will show us the path to our marketing strategy. 

I know this seems backwards in the process, but our customers are the ones that can tell us the why so that we can structure out strategy.  Many organizations fail to understand why the customers do business with them and march in a totally different direction leading to mediocre results.  We need to understand so we can chart out course correctly to attract more of our tribe.

Answer that third question by asking questions to current customers will allow us to win at this marketing game.  Especially when there is so much noise out there to confuse and turn off customers. 

Start today to understand your  current customers and then you will overcome the competition and stay out of the commodity arena!

Sincerely,

Kevin Sidebottom

“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business.  I teach your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate more sales with high margins!”

www.kevinsidebottom.com