18 Proven Strategies for Increasing Sales for Your Business

Even when a company offers the right products and services at the right price, making a sale certainly isn’t guaranteed. The key to success lies in harnessing best practices for navigating the sometimes-tricky path that ultimately nudges a customer to say “yes.” This article outlines 18 top strategies for increasing sales, and provides detailed advice—on everything from refining pricing strategies and building referral programs to collaborating with complementary brands and embracing technology—on what you can do to optimize the sales process.

What Is Sales Performance?

Sales performance is a critical measure of how well a business is achieving its revenue goals and meeting its sales targets, such as revenue or customer acquisition goals. A company’s sales performance reflects the effectiveness of its sales strategies, the skills of its sales teams, and, ultimately, the ability of the business to convert potential leads into bona fide customers. Business leaders tend to keep a close eye on their company’s sales performance by measuring key performance indicators (KPIs), such as conversion rates and average deal size.

Key Takeaways

• Developing detailed buyer personas is important to creating targeted marketing strategies.
• Highly effective content marketing strategies pay off, often resulting in increased brand awareness, better lead generation, and a boost in sales and revenue.
• Companies should regularly review their pricing strategy by analyzing their costs, evaluating competitors’ prices, and conducting surveys to determine customers’ price sensitivity.
• When auditing a company’s sales tools, business leaders should ask: How well is the technology helping to increase sales, improve productivity, and streamline workflows?

18 Top Strategies for Increasing Sales

It’s not surprising that the top goal for sales professionals is to exceed their targets, yet 54% of salespeople say selling got harder in 2024, according to a HubSpot survey. As a result, many struggled to meet their goals, with 60% of salespeople in a Revium survey saying they fell short of their quotas last year. Common challenges that prevented salespeople from successfully closing deals included relying on poorly defined customer profiles and using inconsistent prospecting habits. As for the 40% who managed to meet or exceed their quotas, they did so through persistence, refining their sales habits, and use of targeted strategies, proving that it is possible to manage challenges and increase sales. The following 18 strategies are designed to empower business owners and sales teams to make big and small adjustments to their approaches, with the goal of attracting and retaining more customers.

1. Make Payments Easy

In December 2024, the average shopping cart abandonment rate across ecommerce stores was nearly 74%, according to Dynamic Yield. Indeed, customers can quickly become frustrated with lengthy, cumbersome payment processes or extra costs for shipping, taxes, and fees, and many are willing to walk away from a purchase. With that in mind, businesses should evaluate their payment processes and consider the following strategies.

• Offer several payment options: Beyond credit and debit cards, give customers the option to pay with digital wallets and bank transfers. Installment plans that allow customers to spread out payments over time can also encourage them to move forward with a purchase.
• Provide incentives for purchasing immediately: Limited-time discounts and free shipping offers can spur purchases. Also, make sure all costs are clearly displayed up front, including any additional fees, to increase transparency and reduce checkout hesitation.
• Use secure, well-known payment gateways: Consumers are concerned about potential security breaches and fraud, so it’s important to build trust by partnering with reputable payment providers, giving customers peace of mind about parting with their sensitive data. Allowing customers to store payment information securely can also allow for quick and easy one-click repeat purchases.
• Send follow-up messages: Following up with an email to remind customers where they left off with an abandoned shopping cart and providing more information about the products they were viewing might entice people to pull the trigger. Sending customers digital invoices or payment links via email or text messages allows them to pay without having to log into a website.
• Simplify the checkout process: Reduce friction in the payment process by minimizing the required steps, eliminating unnecessary form fields, implementing auto-fill options to lessen the effort involved, and offering a guest checkout option to allow customers to make one-time purchases without needing to create an account.

2. Define Your Target Audience Using Buyer Personas

Many marketers lack crucial information about their target audience—and without this valuable data, they struggle to develop highly personalized content that resonates with their potential customers. In fact, only 35% of marketers say their customers get a very personalized experience with their brand, according to a 2023 HubSpot report. Developing detailed buyer personas—semifictional representations of customer segments based on market research and data about existing customers—can help companies create more targeted marketing strategies, personalize their messaging, and ultimately drive higher conversion rates and sales growth. To create effective buyer personas, businesses can:

• Research customers: Distribute surveys, conduct interviews, and analyze data from your customer relationship management (CRM) system to gather a variety of information about existing customers, including their preferences, behavior patterns, motivations, and pain points.
• Create customer categories: Segment current customers based on common characteristics and behaviors, such as demographic information, purchasing habits, and patterns in how customers engage with the company’s website, social media content, and email campaigns. Analyze page visits, time spent on the site, and conversion rates to gain insights into what resonates with different customer segments.
• Incorporate knowledge about customers in marketing and sales outreach: Test these personas by creating targeted marketing campaigns. Tailor your content, messaging, and offers to resonate with the specific needs, challenges, and goals of each buyer persona.
• Analyze and refine personas over time: Buyer personas aren’t static; they should be continually reevaluated as new customer data and insights emerge. Regularly analyze how personas are performing by tracking key metrics, such as conversion rates, customer feedback, and sales outcomes. Continue to conduct periodic surveys and interviews with customers to gather fresh insights, and adjust personas as needed based on changes in customer behavior, market trends, and product offerings.

3. Provide Excellent Customer Service

A whopping 85% of customers would go out of their way for companies that provide good customer service—and 51% even believe that customer service is more important than price, according to 2024 research conducted by industry expert Shep Hyken. Indeed, providing exceptional customer service is critical to earning customer satisfaction and loyalty—and making customers happy is the key to attracting repeat business. When customers feel valued and receive prompt and helpful service, they’re more likely to make additional purchases and spread the word about their positive experiences, enhancing a brand’s reputation and expanding its customer base. To improve customer service, businesses should:

• Personalize customer interactions: Tap into customer data to cater to customers’ specific needs and preferences to build stronger relationships, foster trust, and increase repeat sales. For example, sending personalized emails or even making follow-up phone calls after customers make a purchase can make them feel valued and appreciated.
• Leverage technology for greater responsiveness: A quick customer service response should be a high priority for a business. Implement integrated omnichannel support systems, chatbots powered by artificial intelligence (AI), sophisticated CRM platforms, and intelligent routing technologies to provide instant, personalized support that meets customers’ expectations for speed and convenience. And if an automated system can’t resolve a customer’s problem, a human customer service agent should be ready to intervene.
• Invest in employee training: Provide comprehensive training on product knowledge, communication skills, and problem-solving to ensure that staff can handle a wide range of customer issues efficiently and professionally. Empowering employees to make decisions and resolve issues in the moment, such as offering a refund beyond the “return by” date or a spontaneous complimentary upgrade, also creates a more satisfying customer experience.

4. Start a Referral Program

People tend to trust recommendations from friends and family, so creating a referral program is a great way to increase sales by leveraging the power of word-of-mouth marketing. In fact, 2024 research shows that customers who joined a cash-back app through a referral made more purchases than customers who joined through other methods. In addition, the researchers found evidence of “referral contagion,” showing a snowball effect, with referred customers bringing in 30% to 57% more new customers through referrals than nonreferred customers.

To create a well-designed referral program that encourages existing customers to spread the word about a company’s products and services, consider offering enticing incentives to current and future customers. For instance, a company might offer a double-sided reward, such as a 20% discount on purchases for both the person making a referral and the new customer who makes a purchase. Keep the referral process simple, providing clear instructions for using personalized referral codes. Automating the program through a referral software platform can help streamline the process and ensure that rewards are distributed and tracked efficiently. Additionally, promoting the program across various touchpoints, such as the company website, email newsletters, and social media, can increase visibility and prompt more referrals.

5. Collaborate With Complementary Brands

Partnering with complementary brands is an effective strategy for increasing sales by increasing exposure and allowing companies to tap into each other’s customer bases. Brands that cater to similar customers but offer noncompeting products and services can work together to leverage each other’s strengths, credibility, and existing customer relationships to increase sales on both sides.

Successful collaborations can take many forms, depending on the industry and business goals. For example, a fitness studio and healthy-meal delivery service could form a partnership to offer bundled discounts on workout passes and deliveries of personalized meal plans based on members’ fitness goals. A local clothing boutique might partner with a jewelry brand, raising exposure for both businesses. And a beauty salon could partner with a skincare brand to offer free samples and discounted products when a facial or hair appointment is booked.

6. Stay on Top of Customer Trends and Competitor Strategies

Consumer preferences are constantly evolving as people become influenced by economic conditions, social norms, and advances in technology. If a business fails to keep pace with these changes, it risks becoming outdated or irrelevant. To keep track of consumer trends, regularly gather customer feedback through surveys, social media engagement, and focus groups; analyze purchasing patterns; and monitor online discussions to gain insights about shifting preferences. By staying on top of consumer trends, businesses can adjust their product offerings, marketing strategies, and customer service tactics to meet the needs and expectations of their target audiences. For instance, if a trend analysis reveals that consumers are increasingly demanding eco-friendly products, a company might consider adopting more sustainable packaging practices.

Monitoring competitor strategies is also important so a business can differentiate itself—for instance, by improving products, lowering prices, or enhancing customer experience—to gain a competitive edge. If a competitor launches a new product feature or service that customers are clamoring for, it’s important for a business to enhance its own offerings so it doesn’t fall behind. To assist with market analysis, monitor competitors’ digital marketing efforts and conduct feature-by-feature comparisons of your own products against competitors’ items. For example, a smartphone manufacturer might compare its camera quality, battery life, and processing power to similar features on rival devices when looking for opportunities for improvement.

7. Audit the Effectiveness of Your Marketing Channels, Marketing Messages, and Content Strategy

Businesses must make sure their content strategies reach the right audiences with the right message. A marketing audit helps identify what’s working and what’s not, so companies can adjust their messages to align with customer needs and determine which channels are most effective and deserve more resources. This ensures that companies won’t waste time and money on channels and strategies that yield low returns. After all, highly effective content marketing pays off. In fact, 87% of marketers surveyed by the Content Marketing Institute say effective content marketing helped them create brand awareness, 74% say it helped generate leads, and 49% say it helped generate sales and revenue.

To audit the effectiveness of a company’s marketing channels, messages, and content strategy, regularly conduct A/B testing on various elements, including email subject lines, calls-to-action, and the timing of sending out social media posts, to identify what resonates best with the target audience. It’s also important to monitor customer engagement and feedback through surveys, social media listening tools, and customer reviews. Technology should play a crucial role in auditing marketing effectiveness, because it tracks user behavior, conversion rates, and campaign performance in real time.

8. Map Out Your Sales Funnel

Creating a sales funnel chart provides a clear, structured view of a customer’s journey—from awareness to purchase—and helps companies improve lead conversions by determining where prospects are dropping off in the funnel. A well-thought-out sales funnel also allows businesses to align their marketing and sales efforts through a shared understanding of the process and to identify areas for improvement. Mapping your sales funnel can be done by following these three steps.

1. Define the stages of the sales funnel: Break down the customer journey into distinct stages, such as awareness (when potential customers first become aware of a product or service); interest (when they express curiosity in learning more); consideration (when prospects evaluate your offerings as a potential solution); intent (when they express an intention to take action); and purchase (when they convert to customer status by buying a product or committing to a service).
2. Identify key touchpoints and content for each stage: Determine what content or offer might move prospects closer to the next step. For example, social media ads might move a prospect from the awareness to interest stage, and a discount might move a lead from the intent to purchase stage.
3. Analyze and optimize the funnel performance: Track key metrics, such as conversion rates, drop-off points, and customer feedback, to analyze how prospects are moving through the sales funnel. By pinpointing where prospects are getting stuck, companies can adjust their messaging or offer new incentives to increase their sales.

9. Empower Your Sales Team

Salespeople are the troops on the front lines, working hard to recruit customers while also inevitably encountering rejection. Empowering the sales team increases motivation and morale, makes salespeople feel more confident during their customer interactions, increases efficiencies in closing deals, and allows sales professionals to take ownership of their goals and develop innovative solutions to challenges. To empower your sales team:

• Provide comprehensive training and development: Equip your team with the necessary product knowledge, industry expertise, and sales techniques they need to succeed through regular training sessions, workshops, and mentoring programs. For instance, two experienced salespeople might conduct a role-playing exercise to show more junior salespeople the best ways to approach prospects and deal with difficult questions.
• Foster a culture of recognition and incentives: Reward sales team members for their efforts and achievements, both individually and as a team. This might include regular shout-outs at staff meetings and performance-based bonuses.
• Give employees freedom to make decisions: Allow the sales team to offer customized, creative solutions to problems based on customer needs, such as discounts within a predefined range or proposals with extra perks for clients—without needing a manager’s approval.
• Provide access to the appropriate tools: Advanced CRM tools, sales automation software, and analytics platforms can streamline the sales process and improve the ability of sales professionals to nurture leads.

10. Solicit Customer Feedback

It’s important for companies to solicit customer input to show that they’re actively interested in their customers’ needs and value their opinions. These insights can inform how a business might improve product features or step up their customer service tactics to encourage more sales. One of the most popular ways to collect voice-of-the-customer feedback is through surveys via email, website pop-ups, or in-app prompts. Social media platforms also offer opportunities to gather feedback through polls or interactive posts, and feedback forms on websites allow customers to share their thoughts. For more in-depth insights, organize focus groups and conduct interviews. And remember to monitor feedback provided in less direct ways, such as in call-center conversations, online chats, product reviews, and social media posts. Responding quickly to a customer complaint can soften the blow of a bad experience and encourage the consumer to give the business another try.

11. Identify Upsell and Cross-Sell Opportunities

There’s no question: Upselling and cross-selling tactics often convince buyers to spend more. In fact, HubSpot’s 2024 report found that upselling and cross-selling each generated 21% of companies’ revenue, on average. Upselling—the practice of encouraging customers to purchase a more expensive version of a product or service they’re already considering—typically involves highlighting the additional features of a pricier option to show that it’s a worthwhile investment. For example, a person reserving a standard hotel room might be upsold to a suite with an oceanfront view, a balcony, and more interior space. The best ways to upsell include emphasizing the benefits of a higher-end product or service and offering limited-time discounts.

Cross-selling, which involves suggesting complementary or related products to customers based on their current purchases, can also increase the transaction value. For example, a customer who buys a laptop might be cross-sold virus protection software and a laptop bag. Effective cross-selling strategies include bundling products for a discount and offering complementary product recommendations at certain touchpoints during the buying process.

12. Review Your Pricing Strategy

An effective pricing and quoting strategy is necessary to make sure the business is attracting and retaining customers while maximizing profitability, meeting market demands, and keeping prices in line with the value of the products and services being offered. To accomplish this, set up a regular review schedule—perhaps monthly or quarterly—to analyze costs related to production, distribution, and marketing expenses, and verify that these expenses are covered and yielding a reasonable profit. Additionally, check out competitors’ prices for similar offerings to be sure you’re not scaring away customers with exorbitant prices or leaving money on the table by pricing items too low. And to get a better feel for customers’ price sensitivity, conduct customer surveys, analyze purchasing patterns, and run short-term tests of different price points through promotions or bundled offerings. Data analytics and pricing optimization software can help crunch the numbers to further inform pricing decisions.

13. Refine Your Unique Sales Proposition and Brand Identity

Companies must continually analyze and hone their market positioning and corporate narrative to distinguish themselves from competitors. To achieve this, businesses should:

• Understand the target audience: Start by conducting thorough market research to gain a clear understanding of the target audience’s needs, preferences, and pain points. Then use these insights to tailor your messaging and offerings to resonate with potential customers.
• Analyze competitors: Study competitors to identify gaps or weaknesses in their messaging. Focus on what your business does differently or better, whether it’s providing superior quality materials, more innovative solutions, exceptional customer service, or advanced features that competitors aren’t providing.
• Clarify the brand’s mission: Clearly define the brand’s core values to create a strong identity that speaks to what the company stands for beyond its products and services, such as sustainability or customer-first service.
• Create a compelling narrative: Develop an authentic brand story that connects emotionally with your audience. This might include describing the brand’s origin, its leaders’ passion for solving particular problems, or the impact the company is having on the community.

14. Identify Opportunities to Stand Out

Increasing sales is all about being top-of-mind for customers when they’re ready to make a purchase. To identify opportunities to stand out, companies can:

• Analyze market gaps: Understand your target customers’ pain points, areas where their needs aren’t being fully met, and where existing solutions are subpar. This can reveal opportunities to offer a better solution. For instance, a grocery store owner might notice that customers are complaining about long delivery times and high minimum-order amounts from existing online delivery services. To capitalize on this opportunity, the owner might consider promoting the store’s ability to deliver groceries within two hours with no minimum order required.
• Leverage emerging technologies: Keep track of technological innovations that could offer new avenues for differentiation. For example, automation tools can streamline a variety of processes, including customer service, inventory management, and sales, freeing up resources that could be reinvested in enhancing products or creating exceptional customer experiences.
• Partner with influencers: Collaborating with influencers who have built loyal followings can help a business reach new audiences and generate buzz for the brand. For example, a cosmetics company may engage with beauty influencers to demonstrate in videos how to apply its products and show off the results.

15. Optimize and Monitor Your Brand’s Online Presence

Most consumers will turn to the internet to research products and read reviews before making buying decisions. In fact, 24% of consumers say they refuse to shop from brands that don’t have an online presence, according to a 2023 report by Square. Therefore, it’s important that customers encounter a user-friendly, mobile-responsive website that provides high-quality content. Implementing search engine optimization is essential to improving visibility in search results and directing organic traffic to the site. Active engagement on social media platforms is also critical to increase brand awareness, connect with customers in real time, share relevant content, and ultimately foster a loyal community. Paid advertising on social media can further amplify a brand’s message.

Monitoring and maintaining a strong online presence requires paying close attention to customer behavior and feedback. Analytics tools can track website traffic and conversion rates, providing key insights into where to focus marketing efforts. Social media listening tools can also help track customer sentiment online, allowing companies to quickly address any negative feedback that arises and adjust their strategies to satisfy customer preferences.

16. Encourage Repeat Business With Email Marketing

Sales professionals say email is among the top three most effective sales channels, along with in-person meetings and phone calls, according to the 2024 HubSpot survey. After all, the number of worldwide email users is expected to grow to more than 4.8 billion by the end of 2027, the Radicati Group predicts. Plus, consumers have actually expressed interest in getting email from brands, with 86% saying they want to hear from the businesses they frequent, and 60% listing email as their preferred method of communication, according to a recent Square report.

A well-crafted email is a prime way to solicit repeat business, reminding customers about the value of a company’s products and services and providing incentives to make additional purchases. Keep the messaging casual and conversational and the subject line and preview text short and direct, so readers can grasp the point while they’re skimming through their inboxes. In addition to sending promotional offers, consider providing informative content, emphasizing your expertise on relevant topics in your industry, or highlighting any recognition the brand received recently. To maximize email effectiveness, focus on personalization by segmenting email lists based on purchase history, demographics, and engagement levels, and creating tailored content that speaks directly to different customers’ needs. Analytics can track open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, and unsubscribe rates to provide a sense of how your audience is responding to your messaging.

17. Monitor Your Sales Analytics

Businesses can’t afford to roll out sales strategies without keeping tabs on whether these tactics are resonating with customers. Without proper analyses, businesses run the risk of charging forward with ineffective sales methods that could alienate their customer base or leave significant growth opportunities untapped. CRM software can play a pivotal role in tracking and measuring sales data in real time. These platforms offer dashboards and reporting features that give businesses the ability to analyze key sales metrics, such as lead conversion rates, average deal size, and repeat purchases, so they can assess team performance and uncover problems early in the sales pipeline. For instance, if a particular lead generation channel is underperforming, a company can immediately adjust its strategy, whether that involves revising its messaging or shifting resources to other marketing channels.

In addition, companies can enhance their sales efforts by harnessing the power of predictive analytics, using AI and machine learning algorithms to analyze historical data, such as customer purchasing behavior, and predict future trends. This quick, proactive approach allows businesses to optimize their inventory levels and craft more personalized marketing campaigns with the goal of driving sales growth.

18. Audit Your Sales Technology

Technology evolves rapidly, so it’s important for companies to keep assessing whether their tools are aligned with their current needs. An audit of sales technology helps identify gaps and bottlenecks in the sales process, as well as disconnects between platforms. To conduct a successful audit, start by assessing how well your various sales technologies—including CRM, automation, and analytics systems—are integrated to determine if data is flowing smoothly and teams are able to access the necessary insights from a unified dashboard. Survey the sales team to review usage and adoption rates, and verify that staff are comfortable using the tools and are taking full advantage of key features. Finally, assess the return on investment for each tool. An audit should also examine KPIs, such as lead conversion rates, sales cycle timelines, and revenue growth, to determine whether the technology is delivering measurable improvements or whether any particular tools need to be replaced or upgraded.

14 Questions to Ask to Improve Your Sales and Marketing Strategy

As sales leaders work to refine their strategies, it’s important to step back from time to time and ask the right questions to assess a company’s internal processes, as well as any evolving market dynamics that might be impacting sales. The following questions can serve as a compass, steadily guiding businesses toward smarter, more effective strategies that align with business objectives and meet customer expectations.

• Who is my target audience?
• Is my marketing message reaching my target audience?
• Is my marketing message persuasive?
• Is my product or service competitively priced?
• Is my product or service reasonably diversified from my competitor’s?
• Do promotions and discounts actually result in an increase in sales?
• Are potential customers abandoning purchases at a specific stage of the sales funnel?
• Is it easy to buy my product or service?
• Are there complaints about customer service? Am I incorporating this feedback?
• What KPIs am I using to measure performance?
• Is my sales strategy adaptable? Is it scalable?
• Do I have the right tools and technology to support the kinds of sales I want to achieve?
• Is my sales team properly equipped to pursue leads and close the number of deals necessary to meet business goals?
• How am I positioned in the market relative to my competitors?

Enable Your Sales Team With CPQ Software

Without the right tools, sales teams may find themselves manually cross-checking pricing and inventory data, a tedious, cumbersome process that can slow the sales cycle and even derail deals. Enter configure, price, quote (CPQ) software. NetSuite CPQ solves these challenges by automating the sales proposal process, ensuring quick, accurate configuring, pricing, and quoting of products and services based on real-time inventory levels. The Live Quotes feature enables salespeople to deliver emails with quotes that customers can interact with. For example, if a customer acknowledges that they want to move the quote to an order, Live Quotes delivers that message to the sales rep via NetSuite’s integrated CRM system. The guided selling function helps salespeople ask a series of questions to clarify what the customer needs and often results in adding recommended products and services to orders. Meanwhile, in addition to integration with its CRM system, NetSuite CPQ integrates seamlessly with NetSuite ERP and ecommerce software, providing a front-end sales solution designed to help sales reps quote and sell configurable products and services quickly and easily.

Improving sales performance requires a multifaceted approach to create streamlined, customer-centric sales strategies that result in lead conversions. Best practices run the gamut from understanding customer preferences and auditing sales technology to refining a company’s unique sales proposition and optimizing the sales funnel. Ultimately, boosting sales entails more than adoption of a single strategy: Companies must use the right tools, empower their sales teams, and continually reevaluate both their approach and their performance to set the business up for long-term growth.

Sales Performance Improvement FAQs

What are the three keys to increasing sales?

The three key elements to increasing sales are understanding the customer, optimizing the sales process to eliminate bottlenecks and improve leads, and leveraging technology and data to analyze customer behavior, sales performance, and market trends.

What are the four Ps of a sales strategy?

These four pillars of a successful sales strategy align sales efforts with customer needs:

1. Product: A solid sales strategy focuses on delivering the goods or services that provide clear value to customers and stand out from competitors’ offerings.
2. Price: A well-conceived pricing strategy, including the timing of promotions and discounts, considers many factors, such as competitor pricing, perceived value, and the budget of target customers.
3. Place: Identifying the most effective places to make a product accessible to a target audience is important, whether that’s in physical stores or online.
4. Promotion: A well-executed promotion strategy uses marketing and advertising tactics to increase awareness and spur demand for a product or service. These may include digital marketing, content creation, social media campaigns, or discounts that persuade people to make purchases.

What’s the first thing you should do when sales decline?

The first thing business leaders should do when a company’s sales decline is conduct a thorough analysis to identify the root of the drop-off. This involves studying various factors that might be contributing to the decline, such as changes in customer behavior, market conditions, product issues, or sales team performance.