People often ask me to review their web sites and advise them on how to generate more sales. The mistakes made most often can be divided into three main categories and by fixing these you can dramatically change the success pattern of your web site.

While these step are simple they do involve a bit of work.

1. Lack of targeted web pages:

People tend to regard their web sites as a unit instead of looking at each web page separately as a mini web site. Many of the web sites I visit may have a semblance of search engine optimization on their front page and nothing on the rest.

By targeting each of your web pages to specific keywords or phrases you are creating a net that will generate traffic from all over the place.

Each page should be optimized separately for search engines using generally accepted search engine optimization techniques:

* focusing each page on up to three keywords or phrases
* a keyword targeted TITLE tag
* using META keyword and description tags in the HEAD section
* using headline tags (H1 to H6) to highlight your headlines and sub headlines
* using the image alt tag to add more keyword density
* using descriptive text links

to name a few.

Treat each page as a mini web site.

2. Funnel your traffic to your sales pages:

Whether you want people to buy on-line, to request a quote, to make an inquiry or to subscribe to your newsletter the process is essentially the same.

Decide what is the most wanted response (MWR) you want from your web site and then each web page must be designed to achieve that response. Your most important web page is the web page where you will get your MWR, whether it is your shopping cart, your quote request form or subscription page.

Every page on your web site should channel visitors to this page - in effect you create a funnel with 5, 10 or 100 pages designed to funnel people to the pages where you get your MWR.

3. Build your mailing list:

When a visitor fulfills your MWR, i.e. buys your product, requests a quote, makes an inquiry, you have achieved your initial goal. However, what if they don’t? You’ve lost them. Unless you have an second best MWR in place.

This will normally be to get their email address legally so that you can follow up with them and promote your products or services. So have an alternative ready. This could be a free ebook about your business, your products or services. If you are in, say tourism, it could be a guide to your area. Whatever is suitable to your audience.

But get their email addresses!

As I said the steps are simple but it will take some work to implement it

A good leader is needed to control the sales team with a wonderful sales management system, for we know that the sales team is like the soldiers in front of a battle. Without a good commander and management system, the army in front cannot win the battle. If you are the sales manager, how will you control your team, and how to manage your team members?

Sales management system includes the planning of a sale, and the ways to carry it out, also, after sales feedbacks. That’s the functions of the sales department of an entrepreneur. From the eyes of the manager of the sales department, training, planning, executing etc. are the things to be considered, especially the executing of the sales plan to achieve a good sales record.

Therefore, the executing team is the core of the sales management department, and training, planning, etc are the sections to support the team. Hence, the sales management should be focused on ways to achieve good sales record.

It is said that the team of the sales department should be built up like a wolf group, with the spirit of wolves. So, training is important for the team, too. There should be a person in charge who is an expert on training sales skills. That is the first step to build up a good team.

In addition to the general functions, there should be some ways to collect daily information from the team members for a feedback. Summarize the daily work, and plan for the next day’s.

All of the trivial, also important in some aspects, should have the executive section as the center of them. In order to realize it, there are many forms related to sales group, and praise meeting is necessary, too. Apart from these two points, evaluation rules should be made very clear to the team members, which will work as a spur.

Take all of these aspects into consideration, and manage the team with the management skills that you have, you are surely to be a top sales manager.