What is Digital Sales Management?

Digital marketing is THE way to get your brand out there. Research indicates that 88% of consumers research their products online before they make a purchase. This is through either bricks and mortar shops or online retail outlets.

As you can see, the evidence is there to show that digital marketing works – incredibly well. However, you can have all the people in the world who are interested in buying your product. But if you don’t make these people want to buy from you – and actually follow through with their purchase – you mind as well not have spent anything on digital marketing in the first place as you’ve effectively wasted this money.

So, to go with your digital marketing strategy you need a well-thought-out digital sales strategy to get them clicking ‘buy’ on your e-commerce store, picking up the phone to contact you or engaging in an e-mail exchange. But how do you do this? What’s the ‘sweet spot’ that turns a prospect into a paying customer?

The answer is digital sales management.

The nuts and bolts of digital sales management

Simply put, ‘digital sales management’ is about managing one’s digital sales. However, it’s a bit more complicated than this as there are a number of processes that are involved in getting prospects to conclude digital sales.

First of all, digital marketing is closely tied to digital sales. Online marketing functions to get people interested in what you’re selling. Digital marketers can use tools like social media marketing as well as SEO and PPC advertisements to get people to know about your product and/or service.

So, for example, when a prospect shows that he or she is interested – on Facebook – about buying what you have to offer, you have to give them away to leaving you their contact details so that you can further engage with them. You do this by offering the prospect some sort of value, something that they can’t get anywhere else. These value-added offerings could take the form of:

• A special offer where you discount your products and/or services,
• A free e-book on a must-know topic, or
• A coupon where you get one product free when you buy another one.

The next step is to make contact with the prospect to follow up about their interest. It is possible to do this in a number of ways. For example:

• Telephone, or
• E-mail.

We recommend that you first contact the person telephonically. The reason why we say this is that it’s a proven fact that people are more likely to ignore text-based communication than they are someone on the other end of the phone.

If you can’t get hold of them, send them an e-mail, SMS or similar communication. However, don’t leave it up to them to contact you. Keep on contacting them but do so in a very subtle manner. Send them a series of five or six emails about the value that your product and/or service will add to their lives. Make them realise that they can’t live without what you’re selling.

This is called the sales funnel and there are strategic steps that prospects need to go through – in this funnel – for it to achieve what it set out to, which is to get people to click ‘buy’.

There are many digital sales management tools and techniques that you can try in your business. Some of them may work while others won’t. However, you need to work through them all systematically so that you’ve given each of them its best chance of working.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

The Digital School of Marketing’s latest educational offering – the Sales and Digital Marketing Course – will teach you everything you need to know about helping to convert a prospect to a solid lead. For more information and this and out other online digital marketing courses, please visit our website.