Effectively Increase Sales: Manufacturing Sales Momentum
To consistently increase sales, maintaining momentum from lead to conversion can be challenging. Many businesses don’t have a dedicated sales force or even a single staff member focused on new business development. To survive, many companies depend on word of mouth and repeat purchases from an existing customer base. Recently, these same companies may have experienced a dip in sales, slower than usual growth, or longer sales cycles – all adversely impacting their cash flow. Despite the reasons for these changes in sales levels, the more ambitious companies who once relied on business as usual are looking for new ways to subsidize their loss of revenues, or trying to ramp up their flat lined growth.
Those interested in initiating new customer relationships, making positive first impressions and developing 
leads are asking themselves how to increase sales within the limits of their constraints. If you’re one of them, here are two efficient and effective ways your website could help you create and maintain sales momentum.
1. Create Sales Momentum
If you’ve neglected to update your website with current information and photos lately, you’ve identified your starting point in your brand build efforts. Dated information, by its very nature, is not accurate and gives potential buyers the wrong impression about your company. You may have exactly what they want, but unless it’s in plain sight on your website and “speaks” to their needs, you can’t assume potential customers are aware of “what you do”. To some website visitors, outdated content or design sends a weak signal about your company, e.g. “they don’t carry current products”, or worse, it’s a strong signal as the perceived way you conduct business, e.g. negligent to product or service quality.
Once your website is up-to-date, offer something to site visitors that they can “take with them”. Something of value they could download that would showcase the advantages your company offers and help them make an informed decision. An example of a “takeaway” would be a two-page document like, “Five Critical Questions to Ask before Buying fill in the blank with your product” or “Comparing the Advantages Of fill in the blank with your product with fill in the blank with your competitor’s products”. These documents don’t have to be long, but they should be informative and parallel the sales information used to advance potential customers through the sales funnel. Use them as part of your brand build to stay “top of mind” with your prospects.
2. Maintain Sales Momentum
It’s common for valuable content to be exchanged on the Internet for simple contact information such as a person’s name, company name, and email address. “Enter your email address here to download document X.” Once you have a person’s email address and know what they are interested in, nurture the lead with content that fits their needs, via email or even text messaging. You’ll maintain that top of mind awareness so potential customers don’t forget about you after leaving your site. For example, if a person downloaded “Five Critical Questions to Ask before Buying Thermal Insulated Fabrics” follow up emails pertaining to thermal insulated fabrics could be sent automatically to this potential buyer in pre-determined intervals of time. The key is to nurture the lead with relevant content that first attracted their attention. Simply put, you will increase sales by consistently educating your customers and sharing your industry insght.
With global and immediate access to competitors’ online, industry consolidations, flat or declining revenues, companies need to leverage all the sales tools they have available. Websites are an economical, effective but underutilized resource that should be revisited by those interested in manufacturing momentum to increase sales.