It’s a problem that just about every company faces at one point or another: No matter how good the numbers are, they’re not quite where you’d like them to be. 

Maybe your agency is having a rough month, or maybe sales team victories are steady but slow. Maybe it’s February and you just realized that you’ve been tracking your sales thinking you had 30 days to work with. Whatever the reason, you’d just love to bring in some more sales before the end of the month.

With enough focus and maybe a few overtime hours, your sales team can probably pull something off using traditional sales and marketing techniques. If you want to be more proactive, though, there are a few creative tactics you can use to bring in more business in the weeks that remain.

Take Time to Listen

It might seem a little odd, but one big way to increase the effectiveness of your sales team is to start listening to their sales calls. Don’t take this as an opportunity to put your team under increased scrutiny, though. The idea is twofold: to optimize your sales process, and to see if there are any new opportunities to serve your clients in better ways. You may learn that your pricing or packages need tweaking, or your sales team needs more training on handling objections.

Set aside some time after hours to listen to recordings of random calls by members of your sales team. Make sure they know you have the same goal they do — to land more sales. Provide some positive feedback, and schedule a time with everyone to listen in on live calls as well.

This might make some of your sales team members nervous, but it will also make them focus more on what they’re doing in the call. As before, provide positive feedback and build up the things they did right. After this, you can keep moving them along the right path by taking a few select recordings of each employee and listening to them with that person so the two of you can discuss how to improve their calls. Keep it light and constructive.

Creative Sponsorships

One great way to get potential customers to remember your name is to let them see it where they aren’t expecting it. Look into sponsorship opportunities in your target cities, especially if there are any available for community-based programs. This will create a moment of recognition with potential customers when they encounter your agency name in other settings and may even bring about a feeling of fondness since they know you care enough about your neighbors to sponsor important community programs.

Work the Trade Circuit

If there are any trade shows for industries that your agency works with, book a table and do some old-fashioned networking. Be sure to take plenty of business cards and creative freebies you might have that you can hand out to those you meet. Make them memorable, and make your booth a spectacle. Spending a day or two at these shows can put you in front of a lot of potential customers that you might never reach otherwise.

Attract Local News Coverage

Making the national news is great, as long as it’s good news they’re reporting on. But most of the time, being the subject of a national news story isn’t going to bring new customers and clients to your door. Making a showing on the local news just might. Local news stations are more likely to run community interest stories, and getting your agency noticed for doing positive things in your community can really help cement a good reputation among potential customers.

Shift the Focus to Value

Anytime sales are involved, potential customers will inevitably ask about total cost. If you’re trying to net more sales, though, see if your sales team can shift the conversation to talk about value instead. Rather than trying to convince potential customers that your agency’s prices are fair, approach them with a value-based tactic:

  • Discuss what makes your agency’s offerings unique
  • Detail how those unique attributes can benefit the customer
  • Estimate how much that benefit is worth to the customer
  • Create a value comparison by putting that estimate against your agency’s rates

Customers are often less worried about the cost when you can show them how much that cost really gets them.

Host a Webinar

One tried-and-true method of bringing in more business in a number of industries is to host a seminar. Marketing webinars in particular are quite common. Many people attending a marketing webinar are already wanting something from you, and this gives you an advantage when it comes time to pitch the sale. Make your presentation engaging, educational, and very human, and you’ll walk away with a list of qualified leads.

Sell in Specifics

If you’re trying to close more business before the end of the month, have your sales and onboarding teams adjust their tactics a bit. Instead of keeping sales pitches and other tactics broad, tighten the focus and address specific targets. Use specific numbers and keep the goal of the pitch modest. 

This takes some of the pressure off of the sale since the customer knows exactly what you want, and setting a lower goal keeps the potential cost low as well. Even if you’re making smaller sales, you could make more of them. This strategy gives you a big customer pool to approach for additional services down the line.