5 booming sales trends in the new decade
- Maslow Trainers & Consultants
- Jan 24, 2020
- 6 min read
The era of selling products and services 50 years ago is a fierce contrast if put to comparison the current day of selling products and services. In an age of digitalization, where resources and efficiency are highly sought after, how do we improve our approach into capturing more sales in this technologically driven economy? Here are 5 sales trends to embrace this year and probably for years to come.
Catering to the Gen Z
In recent times, a new market that has opened is the Generation Z (Gen Z). For brief context, Gen Z freely consists of people of the age from 1996 up till now. People who are of the Gen Z are born into the digital world; whereby the boom of cell phones, DVDs and the internet were on the horizon. Having said that, new generations bring about new social trends and key issues into the world. However, some of the Gen Z’s key issues are similar to the ones that millennials face.
The approach to Gen Z is not too dissimilar as compared to other generation. However, there are several key things to take note of when dealing with the Gen Z for business. Gen Z is all about mobility and flexibility, being able to take on multiple realities (virtual and augmented reality), highly focused on social networking and are the true digital natives of our generation.
Hence, ensure that you have proper facts if you’re making an attempt to make a sale of a product or service to someone of the Gen Z. It’s easy for someone to spot your bluff especially with the advancement technology has been in being able to share information so quickly in this current day and age. Therefore, companies should always ensure the utmost transparency when dealing with any form of business, not just online businesses. Make certain that the message regarding any products or services are clear and easily comprehensible so that there will be no misunderstanding moving forward.
Go Niche or Go Big?
Whether you’re a start-up business or a Multinational Corporation, the year of covering a wide customer base is for companies that are not truly focused in what they do. They will eventually lose out to businesses that have a clear focus on their target market.
one thing that will always define you is your target market. How do you define target market? It is the particular group of people you want to get with your marketing message. For example, UberEats has been struggling to capture the Indian market due to strong competition from Zomato, a startup backed by Alibaba and Swiggy back by Tencent. Although India is a huge market, UberEats is making a loss in the over a billion population country.
So, how do you decide whether you want to go for a niche market or a wide market?
We must conduct a market analysis.
Firstly, you have to understand your product. By looking at your product, you will be able to see who can use your product, is it suitable for everyone? Who will be the main consumer of your product? What are you trying to achieve with them buying your product?
Next, we have to look at your current consumer group. Certain datapoints we can observe is, what is their age? Where are they from? What language do they speak? What are their interests? What stage of life are they at? After, we need to take a look at our competitors. Ask questions like, are they doing well? What is their current target market? How will your product differentiate itself from them?
By defining these questions, we are able to determine the target audience are able to gauge an estimate on the target market you can expect.
Data driven sales strategy
As of 2019, there are 5.15 billion people in the world with mobile devices. This representsover two-thirds of the global population. The digital era has pushed firms to be more aware on the amount of statistics and data sets that can be extracted and utilized into day to day businesses. Let’s take for example, did you notice more and more of the McDonalds’ outlets around you are installing self-service kiosks? This enables them to be constantly tracking data analytics and most significantly, drastically reducing their labour costs to provide an efficient customer experience.
More often than not, an example of data that can also be used is extracting the sales data and to provide more insight to the customers in product/services presentations. Having such data, will aid and provide the potential customer with higher levels of trust in engaging into business with you. Such numbers provide past and current real-world experiences in numbers for the future of decision-making.
Other than that, having information on such data sets can help in improving lead generation. It’ll help you to get to know the potential prospects more, and in turn be able to offer more customized products or services that would appear more appealing to the person instead. You’ll get to know how long they spend on your website looking at different products, and in turn be able to contact them in the future regarding those products that they’re interested in.
Online sales
In the past 5 years, online sales have made an impact on every industry. Does your company have a strong presence in the digital space? How much do your online sales contribute to your overall revenue? One of the biggest benefits of why an online presence is so important is because of how it’s able to reach consumers when it was previously impossible to do so. In the age where information can easily spread like wildfire, one of the key things that a business should consider when have a presence online is transparency.
With over two thirds of the world having access to the internet, data is widely available for people to conduct their own background checks on anything that may appear to be suspicious for them. Information that speaks negatively about a company can easily posted onto social media. Not only will this damage the reputation of a company, but it will in turn affect the sales of a company as well. Companies should be as transparent as they can moving forward, not only for the betterment of their reputation but for their business as well.
Empowered customers
One of the critical things that define a business now on the online space is the customers. In the past, the customers may come and leave if they decide to not continue paying for the experience that they are having working with someone or a business. In this current age, customers have the empowerment to inform the public if they have had a pleasant experience working with you or if it was a nightmarish experience. In most cases, the latter is more prevalent than the former. Customers in this digital age have the authority to share their experiences on social media or review platforms. Therefore, businesses should aim to provide a pleasant experience for the customers.
Before we move into providing an enjoyable experience for the customers, we must understand their buying experience. The buying experience for a customer will define businesses moving forward and in the future for this era. So, what is the buying experience? It is defined as “How your target buyers perceive the experience of buying a product or service in your market”.
Firstly, we must consider looking at the buyer’s perspective. Understand the steps that need to be taken to the purchase, what they require at each step along the way, and their level of satisfaction throughout the buying experience.
Secondly, we must be concerned about the buying process. The buying experience consists of the entire development that the buyer engages in as they move from the current state of affairs to the purchase. The steps that come in during a buying process can vary differently based on industries. B2B markets would have many more steps in the process as compared to the B2C markets. CRM software can breakdown such steps into more precise and accurate steps.
What steps can we take next?
Despite all the advancements in the technological space, the human touch towards a business is never going to die. Having a sales team that is well-trained in these areas are surely to be well equipped with the latest skills and most importantly, have a digital mindset. If you’re facing issues in closing deals this new decade, we at Maslow Trainers & Consultants can help future proof your team. It will enhance your teams’ skills and help you to improve your mindset. You can get a bird’s eye view on your current method of sales and have a clearer picture on how to maximise your productivity and improve your efficiency in capturing sales for you and your company.
References
Written by: Philip Darien
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