Sales Hacks to Boost Start-Up Growth
Rising startups and bootstrapped entrepreneurs are going through the stages of finding, retaining, and expanding customers. Making money is the pressing need for these businesses as even the investors want to see results right off the bat.
Growth – This is what keeps every entrepreneur up at night. “ Should I focus on revenue impacting activities or operational activities? Should I focus on sales or marketing? Will customers accept my MVP?” Such questions make launching the first startup tough, and that’s just the beginning. So, here we bring the growth hacking techniques to make your startup journey a bit easier, but first, let’s understand what sales/ growth hacking is, anyways?
Let’s Understand Sales Hack
It refers to strategies or techniques used to optimize a sales process or salesperson’s time by being really creative and efficient with available resources. Sales hacks help you move along your pipeline faster, close deals more quickly, close bigger deals and generate more revenue.
Why Startups Do Growth Hacks
Sales hacks are answers to the very traditional and most important question, “ How do I get customers for my product?” So, businesses that need massive growth in a short period of time on smaller budgets and limited resources do sales hacks.
Growth Hacking Strategies For Startups
I’ve been building sales processes from scratch for the past few years and have used numerous sales hacks to grow my business and businesses of many start-ups and SMEs.
Here, I list down few sales hacks. I hope you enjoy reading and put them to good use:
1. Automate Sales
Even the best funnels do not give results without automation. So, automate as much as you possibly can. It enhances the sales pipeline and also helps teams generate both more and better-quality leads.
Sales automation tools help in maximizing sales opportunities and monitor sales progress. These are a great way to engage with customers and be used on different buyer journeys.
While it may take some time and a lot of thought to initially set up, sales automation is a game-changer once up and running.
2. Templatize the Sales Process
You need to identify and define the sales stages to create a scalable sales process. A sales process follows some general steps – Prospecting, Lead qualification, Solution development, Proposal submission, Negotiation, and closing a deal. Most of these stages can be templatized to save time, engage better and close more deals in less time.
Some common areas where it can be done: Prewritten emails or email templates, Cold call script, Product Demos, Customer profile and persona, Sales presentation, Competition Information, Offer/Proposal template, Conversation guides, and Customer references.
3. Data Scraping for Growth
Does your start-up have the target company names that you want to reach out to? Yes, Great! Now, how to dig deep into these companies and get the contact details of the concerned people?
Many online tools are available where one can find all the employees’ details from various companies – proper title, first name, and the last name of anyone at almost any company. You can do this by solely using LinkedIn and the company’s About/ Team page. Once you have the details, use the email finding tools to source out email addresses and get going with the outreach campaigns to generate leads.
4. The Power of Upselling, Cross-Selling
Upselling and cross-selling have been used as effective sales tools to generate more profit in a transaction. These are the best ways to grow at a fraction of the cost. Upselling and Cross-selling work when you have a decent sales revenue, but startups with small turnover can also use this sale hack to grow their business.
Before talking about the way to upsell and cross-sell, let’s understand these terms first.
Upselling – Buy a Robot at 50$. Buy our bestselling Robot for 25$ only.
Cross-Selling – Buy our bestselling Robot and pack of battery at 5$ only.
Now that you have an idea of how upselling and cross-selling works, it’s time to reveal the proven strategies that your start-up can use — online and offline. Since every start-up has a different set of needs, remember to take these strategies with a grain of salt.
You’ll need to do some experimentation to figure out the perfect approach for your brand.
- Suggest more products before confirming the purchase (Dips, sauces, ties, accessories, etc.)
- Give your physical product, service, or solution on a TRIAL basis (15 days, 30 days trial or demo)
- Create limited period offers (Flash sale, Special discounts, etc.)
- Offer more convenience (Free delivery, Free booking, Door pickup, etc.)
5. Lead Sourcing, Always!
A lead is where the sales journey begins, and startups should have a list of prospects to ensure quality leads in the sales funnel, always. But, most startups struggle when it comes to sales and reaching out to partnerships with other companies. Salespeople often think they’ve reached their maximum list of potential clients. Or, they don’t have the right contacts that can use their products or services. Here are a few hacks to keep a constant inflow of customer leads in the sales funnel.
- Request referrals from existing customers
- Network, Network and Network
- Capture contact data at every possible opportunity
- Give and then receive
Conclusion…
More and more startups and small businesses are adopting sales hacks that are now obvious: everyone wants to grow fast by acquiring customers in the shortest possible time. And this is possible with growth/ sales hacks.
After talking about growth hacking strategies, I would emphasize that there is no “one-size-fits-all” option. Moreover, sales hacks is not a fixed strategy; rather it is a mindset. Startups need to instil this mindset and culture to see the desired results and grow their companies exponentially.
