Achieving and sustaining a good sales volume is harder than ever. Both new and old competitors are always coming up with innovative products and intensive marketing. If you're a freelancer without those deep corporate pockets, it's hard to keep up. However, there are some things you can do to claim your own market share.
1. Use Your Personal Experience
A successful sales career means a lifetime commitment to learning about sales techniques, your products and services, your industry, and your customers. Your tactics may have to change with your market's tastes, but your personal experiences, technical understanding, and people skills are still your best assets.
2. Time Management
How productive you are with the time you have determines your potential for success. Learn to plan out your time constructively. Start every week and each day with a schedule dividing your time into blocks to ensure that you're addressing your priorities and all the steps it takes to get there. Of course, there are plenty of mobile apps so you can do this on-the-go if need be.
3. Show Your Character
A genuine smile and a chatty nature are good assets in sales, but real character is about more than that. You need to guard your integrity to build your reputation and confidence in your talents. Establishing customer trust will drive more sales than smooth talk, claims, and promises. Any behavior that seems false, rude, or neglectful to customers will hurt everyone involved.
4. Creativity
You may not have an in-house design team, but that doesn't mean you can't experiment and express your own bold ideas. The more your product or services stands out, the better. Just make sure it fits client branding. Whether it's edgy, nostalgic, fast-paced, scientific, or whatever your take on company market strengths should be at the heart of all your sales campaigns. Brainstorm if you must, but everything else should be original, every time, no matter what the medium is.
5. Packaging
Many small businesses fail to appreciate that packaging is part of advertising. If you want to boost sales, your product has to stand out all on its own. It starts with unique but engaging product names and interesting color schemes. You should be able to find room somewhere for at least one large, eye-catching graphic, product information, a logo, and even a brief sales pitch or slogan without making the package too cluttered. Visit a company like Mailender and take pride in the packaging supplies you use.
There's not much room for trial and error in competitive market places. Start with what you do well, take note of what you've learned NOT to do, and develop a coordinated sales system that works for you.