It is common for creative business owners to become too focused on the creation process and ignore other important aspects that create a successful business like marketing, advertising, sales and customer experience.
Sales is an important aspect of every business because it is needed to generate revenue. Developing a sales process, especially for creative business owners with no experience in sales can lead to mistakes that can affect your business in a negative way.
This blog post explains common sales mistakes, how they harm your creative business and ways to avoid them.
1. Poor Pricing Strategy
Many creative businesses make the mistake of trying to compete with their prices, this is so common because of the common misconception that when a product is overpriced its value which isn’t always the case.
Overpricing your service as a creative business owner can make customers reconsider paying for your services while underpricing your service can lead to the potential loss of your business because of dangers like the inability to cover operation costs and failure to reach your financial goals.
It is important to implement value-based pricing to help you set an appropriate price that generates adequate profit for your business.
2. Poor Customer Mapping Journey
To build a profitable business, you need to understand your customers better. A customer journey map helps you visualize a buyer’s journey through your sales funnel.
From the action, they take at every touchpoint, to the actionable approach to making a sales decision.
A customer journey map helps you identify better techniques to introduce your service to a customer as it covers stages a customer makes before making a sales decision like problem identification, sorting for a solution, evaluating options and making a sales decision.
This captures your customers’ needs, interactions and pain points, this can help predict customer behaviour and improve their journey by making it easier to make a purchase.
3. Poor After-Sales Service
After rendering your services, the relationship with your customer shouldn’t end. It is easier to get a returning a new customer than acquire a new one.
It is therefore important to nurture current or previous customers and one way to do this is by offering after-sales services.
Some examples of after-sales services include:
- Thank your customers after a purchase or payment for a service is made.
- Contact your customers after a few days to ask if they are satisfied.
- Asking them for a recommendation.
- Suggesting another service that can benefit them.
Offering after-sales service is now easier because these processes can now be automated.
Conclusion
Sales do not happen immediately after you meet your target audience, a relationship has to be built and nurtured at each touchpoint.
It is also an important part of your creative business because it is the major way businesses generate revenue.
Sales research, customer mapping journey, implementing a working sales funnel and recognising common sales mistakes are ways in which you can learn and over time develop an effective sales strategy and processes.
Key Takeaways
- Sale is a process that requires building and nurturing a relationship with your customers until they make a purchase decision.
- After-sales services are also very important to acquire new customers.
- Creating a customer mapping journey is helpful to improve touchpoints and promote sales.
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