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1) Research what your customers want
Many companies try to sell a product or service to customers that are simply not interested. It does not matter if you offer the best in quality and value, if you are unable to get people to buy it. The key point to remember is that you need to listen to what your customers want, but more importantly never stop listening. A good way of drawing such information out of your customers is to ask them, this can be face to face interviews or through an online survey.

2) Be properly prepared
The large majority of business people have been in this situation at some point in their career, walking into a meeting unprepared. The cardinal sin in sales, is lack of preparation, how prepared are you?. Do you have samples of your product ready for demonstration? A brochure of your services? You need to be in the best possible position to make your sale so make sure that the literature you give them is up to date, handing over a old brochure will only be detrimental and this will not win anyone but an antique dealer over.

3) Do not be pushy
Do you pressure your customer against the wall in order to make a sale? If you do, they will probably resient you enough not to do business with you in the future, instead they could just go to your competitor. To make a sale and get them to return to your business time and time again you need to gain their trust. Make them feel comfortable with the knowledge that you can meet their business needs. Educate them about what you can do for them and who you are before the meeting, so direct them to your website to build face and recognition with your services and your team profiles. In the meeting have a clean informative hand over pack. After the meeting ensure that you communicate a consistent message and ensure your branding deliveries a professional image i.e. branded HTML emails, letterheads etc.

4) Do not forgot to follow up leads
As with most sales processes the majority of prospects will not immediately buy, this can be a result of unanswered questions. Or they could be evaluating your product or service with your competitors. It is therefore extremely important that you do not leave them to make on their own accord to make up theirs minds because you might as well not bothered in the first place. Remember when you receive an enquiry send them your up to date company brochure, when you do an estimate for a project give them a phone call.

5) Look for new customers
Are you happy with your current customer base? If so thats great. But what would you do if overnight they got up and went to your competitors, would you start looking for new customers now? If you only started at this point, you are too late, your business would face horrific consequences. You need to be continuously looking for new customers, you may be busy now, but you have to ask yourself will you be this busy down the line. To find new customers you need to have ongoing campaigns, whether it is an online campaign on your website or you are sending out direct mail flyers these drives need to be undertaken.

6) Make customer service your top priority
Everyone person at some point has and will encounter situations in which, they have received shockingly poor customer service. The outcome from such experiences will result in you either tell all your friends and family about the bad experience and discourage them from using it for themselves. Or they will never use that particular company ever again, or both.
So make sure that your business treats customers well, make customer service your top priority educate them what to expect, provide them with information and follow them up.
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