Want to immediately boost sales volume and revenue? Discover 12 actionable tactics to rapidly get more prospects, accelerate your funnel, and sell more units starting today.
Why Growing Sales Volume Matters More Than Anything
When it comes to key indicators of a sales department’s health and future prosperity, few metrics matter more than sales volume. While revenue is the ultimate goal, sales volume is the fuel that powers top-line growth. Here’s why increasing your sales volume should be priority number one:
Revenue Growth Relies on Sales Volume
Simply put, you can’t scale revenue without scaling units sold. The more products or services you sell, the more money your company makes. Growing sales volume expands the entire economic engine that drives your organization.
Let’s break this down mathematically. If your average deal size is $1,000 and you currently close 100 deals a month, your monthly revenue is $100,000. To increase revenue to $150,000, you’d need to make an additional 50 sales at $1,000 each.
See the direct link? More volume equals more revenue.
This illustrates why sales volume is the central lever for boosting revenue. Rather than trying to squeeze more dollars out of each existing sale, put your energy toward selling more units overall.
Of course, you can and should optimize deal size, customer lifetime value, upsells, and cross-sells too. But volume is the core driver that makes everything else possible.
Higher Volumes Mean You Can Invest More in The Business
Increased sales volume puts more money in your pocket. These newfound profits enable crucial investments in other parts of the business.
With larger cash reserves from selling more, you’re empowered to:
- Hire additional sales reps to further accelerate growth
- Roll out new products, features, and services
- Upgrade existing technology and infrastructure
- Expand facilities and office space
- Enter new markets and geographies
- Acquire companies and improve economies of scale
The list goes on. More resources unlocks a positive flywheel effect. You sell more units, generate greater profits, invest back in the business, which sets you up to sell even more units. Rinse and repeat.
Increased Volume Helps You Beat Competitors
Competing solely on product, price, or features is an uphill battle. Customers today have endless options at their fingertips. Trying to differentiate on these table stakes factors alone leads to margin erosion and commoditization over time.
But sales volume is hard to replicate. The more units you sell, the more you can optimize each customer touchpoint. Increased volume strengthens your brand, fuels referrals and word-of-mouth, and makes your company ubiquitous.
Take Starbucks for example. Its drinks certainly aren’t 10X better than competitors. But with 32,000+ locations and 1 billion weekly customer visits, Starbucks’ sheer sales volume cements its brand dominance and makes replicating its scale nearly impossible.
Volume also boosts customer confidence in purchasing from you. If 100,000 people bought the same mattress, it reduces the perceived risk of buying it versus a mattress with only 1,000 buyers.
The rich get richer here. Market leaders with huge sales volumes use their advantage to spend more on R&D, marketing, and new locations… thus perpetuating market leadership.
In conclusion, fixating on sales volume growth compounds over time. The benefits multiply across the entire business, creating separation from the pack. Sales volume lifts all boats, making it a top priority for any ambitious company.
Key Metrics to Track for Sales Volume
When increasing sales volume is the goal, what numbers should you be monitoring to gauge progress? Here are four pivotal metrics to track:
Total Units Sold
This starting point metric shows sales volume at the highest level. Simply tally up the total quantity of products sold over any period.
While simple in nature, total volume indicates whether broader growth initiatives are working. It also helps spot potential red flags like declining unit sales. Segment this metric by product line, territory, customer cohort, or other dimensions for additional insights.
Tools like sales dashboards and business intelligence software make tracking total sales volume a breeze. Set relevant targets and monitor this KPI over time. Volume sold this month vs. same month last year is an apples-to-apples comparison.
Volume Sold By Time Period
| Quarter | Total Units Sold |
|---|---|
| Q1 2021 | 5,000 |
| Q2 2021 | 6,000 |
| Q3 2021 | 5,500 |
| Q4 2021 | 7,000 |
Monitor sales volume growth on a rolling basis. Did you sell 5% more units this quarter versus Q2? How about month-over-month or week-over-week? The more granular the comparison, the better.
Number of New Customers
While optimizing sales to existing accounts is important, growth demands acquiring new customers continuously. Track both monthly and cumulative new customer gains.
Segment this metric by channel, geography, sales rep, and other filters. If a particular segment is underperforming on new customer acquisition, it warrants investigation.
Since new customers expand your overall potential market, this metric can signal whether you’re tapping into new sources of growth successfully. It also helps ensure customer concentration risk doesn’t increase.
New Customer Additions
| Month | New Customers |
|---|---|
| January | 250 |
| February | 275 |
| March | 260 |
New customer growth sets the foundation for cross-sells, upsells, and renewals down the line. You can only farm existing accounts so much. Thus new customer acquisition should be an ongoing focus.
Sales Per Rep
Divide total company sales volume by the number of sales reps for average volume per rep. Then compare each rep’s volume to this benchmark.
This reveals who your top performers are versus underperformers. Which segments of your sales team require additional training, resources, or attention to reach their potential?
You can further break this metric down by geographic region, product line, industry vertical, or deal size band. Uncovering where and why certain reps excel helps replicate best practices company-wide.
Sales Volume Per Rep
| Rep | Volume Sold |
|---|---|
| Michael | $800,000 |
| Sarah | $600,000 |
| John | $400,000 |
Since sales people have quotas, blending volume sold with quota attainment rates also provides valuable perspective. Which reps are over or underperforming against expectations?
Optimizing sales volume per rep benefits managers when planning territories, account assignments, and compensation plans too.
Average Deal Size
Average order value helps contextualize sales volume generated. For example, selling 1,000 units at an average of $10 per order is far different from selling 1,000 units at an average of $500 per order.
Is your average deal size rising or falling over time? Increasing ASP signals you may be landing bigger fish, upselling successfully, or facing lesser price erosion. Declines often indicate increased discounting.
Higher volume is not helpful if it comes exclusively from unprofitable small-dollar deals. Tracking ASP guards against this by ensuring the deals you win drive adequate margin.
Sales Volume Breakdown
| Products Sold | Average Deal Size | Revenue |
|---|---|---|
| 10,000 | $50 | $500,000 |
| 5,000 | $100 | $500,000 |
Monitor average deal size fluctuations monthly, quarterly, and annually. Refine this further by geography, sales rep, product line, industry, or deal size band. This granularity reveals where you win bigger deals and where there’s room for improvement.
In summary, tracking total volume, new customers, volume per rep, and ASP provides a 360-degree view of sales volume productivity. As the adage goes: what gets measured gets managed. Master these metrics and executing high-velocity sales growth gets much simpler.
Strategies to Boost Sales Volume Quickly
Growing sales volume rapidly when needed requires creative strategies and full team execution. Here are 12 proven tactics to immediately increase units sold:
Offer Discounts or Limited-Time Promotions
Price promotions incentivize customers to buy now rather than delaying. Flash sales, seasonal markdowns, and holiday discounts are tried and true ways to spike short-term volume.
But don’t make the discounts so deep that it destroys margin. Find the sweet spot where you move extra volume profitably. Limited-time scarcity heightens the urgency to buy.
Email campaigns, social media posts, and retargeting ads are great vehicles for promoting promotions. Emphasize the expiring deadline and savings amount in your copy and creative.
Consider offering tiered discounts – $10 off $100, $25 off $250, $50 off $500+ and so on. This encourages larger average order sizes.
Upsell and Cross-Sell to Existing Customers
Upselling means persuading customers to upgrade or enhance their purchase. For example, upsizing their meal or adding extra product features.
Cross-selling means selling complementary products. Like adding fries and a drink to someone’s burger order.
Both tactics increase volume from your current customer base. Set up post-purchase emails and in-app messaging to present related products.
Use scarcity and social proof in your copy. “Almost sold out!” or “Frequently bought together.” Test various upsell and cross-sell offers to see which resonate best.
Empower reps to actively upsell and cross-sell on sales calls. Provide suggested add-ons to highlight based on data-driven affinity patterns.
Small tweaks like adding ‘impulse purchase’ items near checkout zones boost on-site cross-sell conversion too.
Optimize Territories and Align Top Reps
Misaligned sales territories frustrate reps and leave potential deals on the table. Rebalancing your territory mapping and alignment ensures higher-potential accounts get proper coverage.
First, realign territories on an account-level basis vs. purely geographic. Group together high-value, clustered accounts regardless of physical proximity.
Next, shift your top reps to higher-density territories. Incentivize them to ramp up activity levels. When your A-players cover prime accounts, you win more deals.
Continuously optimize territories based on actual sales and revenue data vs. strict equality of location or accounts. Match resources to opportunity.
Ramp Up Lead Generation Efforts
More conversations with more prospects equals more sales. Expand your lead pipeline through:
Referral Programs
Nothing produces higher lead quality than first-hand referrals. Offer existing customers incentives for making introductions and sending referrals.
Account-Based Prospecting
Target key accounts you want as anchors. Research and reach multiple contacts through coordinated nurture streams.
Content Syndication
Repurpose top content across new channels by sharing, guest posting, and distribution partnerships.
Paid Ads
Scale competent cold traffic sources like LinkedIn ads, Google Ads, and Facebook Ads. They’re affordable on a cost-per-lead basis.
Inbound Offers
Lead magnets like free trials, discounts, and educational assets entice visitors to convert on your site.
More at-bats means more hits. Widen the top of your funnel continuously.
Identify and Double Down on Fastest-Selling Products
Volume tends to concentrate in a subset of top products. Analyze which offerings consistently sell best then double down on them.
For example, 20% of products may drive 80% of sales. Or 10% of customers generate 50% of volume. Identify your winners then optimize every facet of their positioning – pricing, marketing, competitive advantages etc.
Look at:
- Revenue by product line
- Sales velocity
- Customer demographics
- Marketing response rates
- Campaign success
Leverage this intel to fine-tune targeting and personalize cross-sell recommendations. Feature hot sellers prominently in advertising and promotions.
Lean into segments delivering results and pause underperformers until improvements are made.
Invest in Sales Technology and Automation
Sales technology and automation boost productivity so reps achieve more per day and week. They free up time spent on manual tasks for higher value selling activities.
For example, CRMs centralize prospect data and automate workflows for inbound and outbound processes. Tools like email tracking enable rapid follow-up while removing guesswork.
And sales engagement platforms use AI to analyze interactions and surface relevant prospects to act on urgently. Automation also scales top performers’ best practices across the team.
Evaluate your tech stack for opportunities to eliminate repetition and busy work. Any rote task a computer can handle (and optimize) over time frees up human selling capacity.
This increased bandwidth translates directly into more conversations and closed deals. Don’t leave efficiency gains on the table.
Fine-Tune Your Hiring and Onboarding
Hire the right sales DNA and set them up for success from day one via diligent onboarding.
Modern hiring practices like skills assessments, role playing, and competency interviews help assess candidates’ true abilities beyond just experience.
Onboarding processes should ingrain your expectations, systems, and methodologies deeply. Make ramp-up time to full productivity as short as possible. This increases volume faster.
Strategically backfill roles by hiring profiles that address your current team’s shortcomings. For example, new geographies, missing product expertise, or training gaps.
Nurture top talent before exhausting leads in current territories. And continually source fresh prospective sellers in the pipeline through proactive recruiting.
Prioritize Sales Training and Coaching
The fastest way to amplify each rep’s output is sales training and coaching. Skills compound over time so make it an ongoing priority.
Training should level up hard selling competencies like listening, objection handling, strategizing, and presenting. These translate directly into winning more deals.
One-on-one coaching helps diagnose weaknesses and develop strengths tailored to the individual. Letting reps plateau is leaving money on the table.
Technology makes personalized training content available on-demand. Module completion and Knowledge tests provide accountability.
Role playing with managers, mentoring programs, and workshops keep tactics fresh and groups sharp. Never stop striving for new skills.
Revamp Commission Structures to Incentivize Volume
Commissions, bonuses, and incentive structures directly impact activity levels. Reassess your compensation plans for opportunities to reward sales volume explicitly.
For example, a base salary plus incremental bonuses at key volume tiers/quotas. Or per-unit commissions. SPIFS and contests for big volume pushes.
The specifics depend on your business model and constraints. But the concept remains – structure pay to incent the desired behaviors and results.
When revamping comp, collaborate with your sales team. They’ll know what truly motivates them financially and what they’d change about current plans.
Increase visibility into bonus attainment and leaderboards so reps know where they stand at all times. A little bit of positive peer pressure doesn’t hurt either.
Gather Customer Feedback to Improve Offerings
Learn from your customers and prospects. Probe for pain points with current solutions. Identify appealing features competitors offer that you could develop.
This intel becomes fodder for engineering and product teams. Deliver what customers ask for and your offerings will sell themselves.
Quick and consistent feedback loops also allow you to gauge reactions to new products and pricing in near real-time vs. once a year surveys.
Usability tests, focus groups, beta user groups, and Net Promoter Scores offer just a few ways to listen regularly. Remove guesswork by asking.
round customer sentiments, preferences, and suggestions shape future releases. You’ll sell more of what buyers want and less of what they don’t.
Track Campaign Response Rates to Find Hot Leads
Pay attention to the backend data from your marketing campaigns and sales motions. Which segments, offers, and messages produce the warmest leads?
For example, email open and click-through-rates signal engagement. Content downloads or form fills indicate interest level too.
Are certain industries or customer profiles more likely to respond? Adapt your messaging and outreach accordingly.
Look at multi-touch attribution to see which channels influence prospects initially then eventually convert. Does a webinar combined with a demo do best?
Double down on what works. Cut ineffective tactics. Follow the momentum and optimize towards higher response rates overall. Warm leads convert dramatically better than cold outreach.
Analyze Competitors’ Pricing and Product Strategies
Keep a close eye on competitors’ offerings, features, and pricing. What are prospects gravitating towards in your space? What challenges are you hearing?
If you notice competitors gaining share, examine why. Evaluate the appeal of their proposition and if you should match key elements.
Monitoring the market prevents you from operating in a silo. Client conversations provide on-the-ground intel as well. Synthesize findings company-wide.
Avoid reactive knee-jerk changes. But staying attuned to what competitors are doing – and just as importantly, what they’re NOT doing – keeps you strategically agile.
Capitalize on their weaknesses. For example, undercut on pricing or differentiate on superior support. Leverage their blind spots to sell against.
In summary, increasing sales volume requires prompt action on multiple fronts. Move urgently by executing several ideas simultaneously to create quick momentum. Test unproven but promising tactics on a limited scale first. Spread buys-in and participation across the team to ensure proper execution. With full alignment under leadership’s vision, sales velocity improves.
Long-Term Strategies for Increasing Sales Volume
The tactics covered so far produce immediate sales volume gains. But sustainable growth over years requires long-term strategies that become ingrained in your company’s DNA. Here are 4 approaches to drive perpetual increases in units sold:
Foster a Customer-Focused Sales Culture
Leading organizations obsess over customer needs, problems, and outcomes. This mindset must permeate the entire company – especially sales teams interfacing directly with buyers.
Shift perspectives from product-focused to customer-focused. Train reps to lead with value and insights before ever pitching offerings. Teach patience and listening skills.
Celebrate behaviors that build trust and loyalty beyond just the transaction. Call out reps who went above and beyond addressing a customer’s challenge.
Customer advisory panels, user conferences, and rigorous CSAT surveys reinforce customer centricity at scale. Upskill through commercial empathy and emotional intelligence training too.
With customer welfare genuinely placed first, you earn permission to engage more meaningfully. And serve as a trusted advisor vs. vendor barking demands. Sales volume grows naturally in such relationships.
Tightly Align Sales and Marketing Teams
Siloed sales and marketing operations kill volume growth. But aligned teams that collaborate seamlessly multiply results.
Marketing generates and nurtures prospects for sales to close. Content should attract ideal buyer profiles. Messaging should resonate with motivated audiences.
And sales provides constant intel from the field to refine strategies. Which segments respond best? What objections arose? How can campaigns improve?
Platforms like CRMs and marketing automation systems should integrate and pass data freely between functions. Create unified metrics and reporting with revenue as the North Star.
When sales and marketing dance in unison, conversion rates and deal sizes rise across the board. Brand awareness expands into new markets as well. More cohesion means more volume.
Maintain a Future-Focused Mindset
The world moves fast. What works today becomes obsolete tomorrow. Adopting a future-focused mindset ensures you don’t get left behind.
Make innovation part of everyone’s role, not just R&D’s. Pilot test transformational ideas constantly. And acquire startups blazing new trails.
Monitor demographic and psychographic shifts affecting your industry. Stay on top of technology disrupting business models. Anticipate changes before competitors.
Today’s market leaders dominate because of bold bets made 5-10 years ago that the majority dismissed as too risky or far-fetched. Take smart risks on the future now to sustain dominance 5-10 years from now.
Evolving ahead of consumer expectations also lets you charge premium pricing and sell disproportionate volume compared to laggards. Don’t just react – shape your future.
Develop Data-Driven Insights Into Customers and Market Trends
Business moves at warp speed now. Real-time data replaces intuition and gut feel.
Capture every customer interaction and asset it creates. Personalize engagement based on past behaviors and affinities using analytics. Optimize each next step.
Platforms like CRMs centralize disparate data sources to uncover insights. Graph databases reveal connections between entities. Query tools answer strategic questions on-demand.
But technology only gets you halfway. Building a insights-driven organizational culture maximizes your asset. Hypothesize, test, measure, learn, and repeat.
With solid data foundations, you spot niche growth opportunities. Churn risk predictors retain customers longer. And predictive analytics forecast volume more precisely.
Information is power in the modern economy. Wield it and sales volumes reach new heights.
In summary, increasing sales volume long-term requires ingraining the mindsets, systems, and practices that enable high performance. With customer-centricity, future orientation, team alignment, and data mastery baked into the formula, sales volume growth travels from a one-time initiative to an everyday priority.
Quick Wins to Test When Sales Volume Is Stagnant
Despite your best efforts, sales volume can plateau or decline at times. Before making wholesale changes, try a few countermeasures to regain momentum quickly:
Reengage With Former Customers
Lapsed customers offer low-hanging fruit to recapture. Tap this dormant goldmine with:
Winback Offers
Provide special discounts or perks to incentivize reactivation. For example, Spotify offers 3 months for $10 to resubscribe.
Loyalty Programs
Rolling out a formal loyalty/VIP program rewards return business. Include exclusives like early access, upgrades, and special content.
Surveys
Ask defectors for feedback on why they left. Implement improvements to address common pain points.
Feature Releases
If customers cited missing features, proactively announce newly launched capabilities you now offer. Give them a reason to come back.
Account-Based Outreach
Have sales reps personally engage with high-value former accounts one-on-one. The personal touch reconnects lost relationships.
With minimal friction to convert past buyers, you tap into qualified customers with known purchase propensity. Welcome them back!
Renegotiate Supplier and Vendor Contracts
Every dollar saved is an extra dollar earned. Revisiting supplier and vendor contracts presents cost optimization opportunities.
Scrutinize current agreements for savings on:
- Raw materials
- Inventory
- Software subscriptions
- Facility expenses
- Benefits
- Marketing and advertising
Improve payment terms to boost working capital too. Consider requiring deposits and shorter payment windows.
Switching vendors forces them to re-bid more competitively. But stay objective if incumbent providers offer the best overall value.
Wringing out a few percentage points on COGS and opex items pads margins on every sale. And cutting fixed costs magnifies profit upside from higher volumes without extra effort.
Liquidate Slow-Moving Inventory
Cash is king. One of the quickest short-term cash boosters is converting stagnant inventory and materials into working capital.
Evaluate your current product mix for:
- Slow sellers to discount
- Excess/obsolete items to liquidate
- Scraps/spare parts to sell as scrap
- Returns and damages to salvage value from
Sell off surplus merchandise through channels like:
- Employee stores
- Flash sales
- Bulk buyers
- Auctions
- Donations
For commodity materials, recyclers will pay spot prices. You’d be surprised how quickly spare assets add up. This newly freed up liquidity finances other initiatives.
Slash Prices on Poor Selling Products
Sometimes you have lackluster products that simply need a price correction. Don’t hesitate to mark down poor sellers to stimulate volume.
A 25% price cut could realistically triple unit sales and revenue of a stagnant product. The upside far outweighs the markdown. You now convert latent demand at a lower – but still profitable – price point.
Test aggressive discounts through:
- Promo codes
- Sales and bundles
- Loyalty program perks
- Subscriptions
- Sample packs
For outbound teams, provide special pricing authority and scripts to highlight the deals. Arm reps to convey the value efficiently.
Moving distressed products frees up shelf space or media real estate to promote better sellers. It also tightens SKU focus around true winners.
In summary, a short period of sales volume malaise doesn’t necessitate an overhaul. Try these quick fixes first to regain momentum cheaply and quickly. Sometimes minor tweaks and operational improvements get you back on track.
Key Takeaways
- Sales volume is a pivotal growth metric that powers expanded revenue, market share, and profits. Obsess over increasing units sold.
- Total sales volume, new customers acquired, deal size trends, and sales per rep reveal how effectively you’re expanding market penetration.
- Move urgently to implement volume-boosting tactics like promotions, referrals, technology adoption, and compensation incentives. Quickly build momentum.
- But also cultivate long-term volume drivers like customer focus, sales and marketing alignment, future-orientation, and insights capabilities.
- When volume stalls, reignite growth through winbacks, vendor negotiations, inventory liquidations, and strategic markdowns. Punch through plateaus.
- With a maniacal focus on selling more units across all fronts, your sales machine will run smoothly and drive sustainable scalable success.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How do you calculate sales volume?
A: Sales volume is calculated by multiplying the number of units sold by the time period. For example, if you sold 500 units in a month, your sales volume for that month is 500.
Q: What are some key sales volume metrics to track?
A: Key volume metrics include total units sold, number of new customers, sales per rep, and average deal size. Segment each metric by product, region, customer type, and other categories.
Q: How can you increase sales volume quickly?
A: Tactics to boost volume rapidly include promotions, upselling, optimizing territories, generating more leads, emphasizing top products, adopting sales technology, revamping hiring and onboarding, training reps, and incentivizing volume directly.
Q: What are some long-term strategies for improving sales volume?
A: Long-term strategies include building a customer-centric sales culture, tightly aligning sales and marketing, maintaining a future focus, and developing data-driven customer insights.
Q: What if our current sales volume is stagnant?
A: Try quick wins like re-engaging past customers, renegotiating supplier contracts, liquidating old inventory, and strategic markdowns. Test new approaches to regain momentum.
Q: How can we incentivize our sales team to sell more volume?
A: Rethink your compensation structures and commissions to reward volume directly. Implement bonuses, SPIFFs, and contests for big volume goals. Increase visibility into performance dashboards.
Q: How do you optimize sales territories to increase volume?
A: Realign territories based on opportunity size, industry, customer density, and sales rep strengths. Ensure A-players cover high-potential accounts and get continually reassigned based on performance.
Q: How does improving sales velocity help volume?
A: Higher sales velocity means moving deals through your funnel faster. Reducing delays and friction in the sales process leads to higher close rates, conversion of more prospects, and ultimately increased sales volume.