14 Best Sales Strategies, Examples & Templates to Close More Deals

Well, well, well. Is this yet another blog post serving up lukewarm sales strategies like “All ways be closing!” and all that jazz?

Nope.

Maybe we’re trying to convince you of the one, perfect, top-secret sales strategy that’ll take your business from $1,000 in monthly sales to $1 billion in just three easy steps! 

Nah, we’re not doing that one either. 

Wanna know what I’ve learned in more than a decade of both selling and leading sales teams? Neither of those two BS approaches make any sense in the real world.

The truth is, an effective sales strategy is much more than just a single activity. It's a combination of understanding your audience, using tactics that appeal to them, and testing to see how those strategies help you reach your sales goals.  

It’s not sexy and it doesn’t lend itself to flashy headlines, but it works.

Whether you’re perfecting your cold email outreach, aligning with your marketing team, or learning how to follow up and increase your close rate—all of these strategies need to feed into your larger plan to actually close more deals.

Stick around. We’re about to break down how the best companies create winning sales strategies with real examples and free templates you can actually use. 

What is a Sales Strategy?

A sales strategy includes things like:

• Having clear buyer personas
• Knowing which sales pitch and value proposition to use
• Developing a plan to identify qualified leads
• Planning out the steps in your sales pipeline
• Setting realistic sales goals

In short, sales managers can create an effective strategy by testing and implementing different sales tactics and showing their team how to use them to get the best results. It’s not groundbreaking, but it does require you to know what the hell you’re doing. 

What are the Benefits of Using a Clearly Defined Sales Strategy? 

If this still feels a little hard to put into practice, stick around. We’ll talk specific strategies in a bit. But first, let’s talk about the benefits. A well-defined sales strategy results in: 

• Higher conversion rates ✅
• A clearer understanding of your target customers ✅
• Actionable tasks for each team member ✅
• Easier reporting on team performance within the sales strategy ✅
• Improved sales training and hiring initiatives ✅

Types of Sales Strategies: Inbound vs Outbound

Ah, yes. The inbound vs outbound dilemma. Do you go out and grab prospects—or wait for them to come to you? 

Whether you’re a small business serving local customers or a SaaS company looking to drive B2B sales, you’ll want to consider both an inbound and outbound sales plan. These are the two main ways to sell, so getting this right is the first step. 

An inbound sales strategy should be used when new leads come organically into your pipeline via a form on your website, email, or free trial signup. Align your sales tactics with your marketing strategy, and new potential customers will flow easily through the sales funnel to become qualified leads (and eventually, customers!)

Moreover, several recent data privacy statistics suggest that consumers are more likely to support companies that prioritize data privacy. Thus, make sure the way you collect data from inbound sales follows all applicable data privacy laws. Also, you should post a privacy policy on your site so users know what data you collect and how and why it’s being used.

An outbound sales strategy is best when you don’t have a bunch of leads coming in already. It involves actively contacting potential customers through cold emails, cold calls, social selling, and more.

The trick? It’s not an either-or situation. A great sales strategy includes a bit of both, but the best option will depend on the demographic you sell to and your team’s capabilities.

Create professional and effective cold emails with our cold email generator. Try it to get real-world-ready emails you can use today!

Free Download: Sales Strategy Template 

Want to create your own sales strategy or simply revamp the one you’ve got? You’re in luck—we’ve made a free sales strategy template just for you. With this, you can:

• Develop an ideal customer profile
• Create a clear value proposition
• Establish sales benchmarks with clear KPIs
• Set up a process for qualification and closing

Go ahead and download it now, and throughout the rest of this article, we’ll show you exactly how to take these strategies across the finish line.

14 Best Sales Strategies From Top Sales Leaders & Entrepreneurs

Some sales strategies come and go with the bestselling book of the week or the rise of new tech. Others are here to stay—rooted in hard psychological principles that explain what really motivates people to buy.

My advice? Don’t fall into the shiny objects trap. While testing new sales strategies is a good thing, getting distracted by every new strategy is a death sentence for your company. Instead, use a mix of new strategies and the old faithful ones (like lead scoring or value-based selling.) 

Today, we’ll share 14 proven sales strategies that real entrepreneurs and successful startups use to grow their brands, plus sales strategy examples so you can see these strategies in action. 

Moreover, understanding how to effectively sell products internationally online emerges as a pivotal factor in augmenting sales in today's global marketplace.

1. Target Small, Niche Markets

When starting out, it’s tempting to think, “Our offering is for everyone!” After all, any customers are good customers, right? 

Gonna have to drop a hard truth on you—more isn’t better. (At least not always. I’ll take more revenue, please.) 

Instead of attacking prospects of all different shapes and sizes, find customers who share a common pain point—one that you can uniquely address. Then, target those specific niche markets. Your sales team can develop a niche-specific pitch and dramatically increase the effectiveness of their cold outreach.

Worried that niching down too early could limit your options? Entrepreneur and marketer, Pat Flynn shares, “It’s great to think big and shoot for the stars, but when it comes to niche selection, you can get more results, faster, by thinking specialized.”

Here’s an example of a company that made this sales strategy work in the real world:

2. Use Lead Scoring to Prioritize Prospects

Think about the last time you looked at your sales pipeline. Did you get overwhelmed by all the emails you need to send, calls to return, and meetings to set up? 

If that sounds familiar, you might need to focus on lead scoring to prioritize your sales activities. 

While qualifying your sales prospects, lead scoring helps prioritize your prospects based on the strongest possibility for closing the sale quickly—before beginning your outreach efforts. This lets you spend more time focused on leads that are likely to close. 

Lead scoring is a process of ranking inbound leads on a scale of 1 to 100 based on their characteristics and behavior. Ranking factors might include:

• Job title or role
• Specific actions that indicate intent
• Industry
• Company size

After you’ve scored your leads, prioritize the highest-scoring leads. These people should be in your target audience and have given some indication they'll make a purchase.

We recommend contacting new sales-qualified leads (SQLs) within 24 hours. That way, you can answer their questions, overcome their objections, and walk them through how your offering can help them reach their goals.

Pro tip: Automate a “hot list” for fresh leads that are shared with your team. Our team uses Smart Views in Close to make sure that inbound leads get contacted quickly. Try it yourself with a free 14-day trial.

Here’s an example of one sales team using lead scoring to prioritize outreach:

3. Develop Effective Sales Sequences for Follow-Ups

The best follow-up strategy: keep reaching out until you get a response. 

I’m going to say that again, just for good measure: follow up until you get a response. 

Following up is the backbone of any good sales strategy. Having a couple of good sales calls with your prospect only to let them silently drop off the face of the planet is a death spiral for your sales strategy.

To build a follow-up strategy that’s measurable and effective, you can create template sales sequences. Inside your CRM, like Close, you can build out a series of emails and SMS messages that are sent to your prospect at a regular frequency. You can even include phone calls in your sequences, and the assigned rep will be prompted to make the call when the time comes.

TRY WORKFLOWS IN CLOSE WITH A FREE 14-DAY TRIAL→

Here’s an example of this sales strategy put into practice:

4. Build a Consultative Selling Strategy

You’re not just a salesperson—you’re a problem solver for your prospects. When you take this approach, you shift from being “just a salesperson” to becoming a consultant, a friend, a trusted source of information. 

Your primary objective—be helpful.

Focus on customer experience. How do customers feel when they’re using your product or service? How do they feel when you’re talking to them? Hell, offer them value even if you don’t think it will help you close the deal. 

SaaS founder and co-host of The Startup Chat podcast Hiten Shah says, 

“The best salespeople have always been helpful. When you're selling a product or service, it's hard to go wrong if you're genuinely looking to help the other person. That's really when selling becomes more than just sales. It becomes all about building a genuine, meaningful relationship instead of just selling what you have to someone.”

A good sales strategy is long-term; there’s no substitute for making a positive lasting impression. Don’t miss out on a future potential sale because you weren’t helpful.

Sometimes, being a consultative salesperson means saying no to a deal. Here’s one real-world example:

Check out this video for two more examples of consultative selling in the real world:

5. Use the PAS Framework for Outreach 

I like frameworks—they’re kind of like bumpers in a bowling alley that help you hit the mark every time. One of my favorites is PAS. 

P-A-S stands for Problem-Agitate-Solution. In this sales strategy, your goal is to identify the prospect’s biggest problems and position your product as the best possible solution to them—if indeed that’s true. The three stages of the PAS framework are: 

• Problem: Identify and clearly state the #1 problem your product solves for prospects.
• Agitate: Highlight how dangerous the problem is and remind prospects about all the negative implications it can have.
• Solution: Position your product as the solution to their specific problem.

Remember: the PAS framework isn’t about generating false problems or convincing people to buy into your business idea out of misplaced fear. Instead, the goal is to identify business problems, show what could happen if those problems aren’t solved, and explain how your product can genuinely help them.

Here’s an example of a company using this formula to state its business mission in a short, clear way that resonates with its target audience:

6. Develop a Value-Based Selling Strategy

A value-based sales strategy puts the needs of your customer base ahead of everything else. Which, honestly? This is how it should always be. Sellers using this method focus on education, not sales, and put in extra time to listen to their prospects' needs and wants.

The point is to add value in one of these four ways:

• Money made
• Money saved
• Risk reduced
• Qualitative value

Of course, value-based selling isn’t for everyone—to do it right, you’ll need to invest some serious time getting to know your prospects and customers. That said, it works really well for sales organizations selling to large accounts, and research shows that 87 percent of high-growth companies use this strategy. 

Here’s an example of a value-based selling strategy in action:

7. Create Real Urgency

“But wait! If you buy now, we’ll include TWO super plush, self-healing, self-washing bathrobes for just $19.99!” 

Sounds lame, right? That’s not what creating a sense of urgency should look like. 

Creating a real sense of urgency means helping your prospect realize why they need your solution right now, and helping them take action by making the next step easy. 

Most people don’t buy until the last possible moment—until they absolutely need your product. After all, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Fair enough—but not great for your bottom line. 

Here are some foundational strategies for creating (real) urgency:

• Limited enrollment: Offer to get them into your limited program of 10 clients testing a new product.
• Upcoming price increases: An improved product brings higher value to customers, and you should increase the price. Announce price increases in advance to encourage quick buying decisions.
• Custom offers: Consider offering a special service, consultation, training sessions, or plan upgrades in exchange for making a decision today.
• Target decision-makers close to a purchase point: For example, if you sell recruitment services, look for companies who are actively hiring, as they have a more urgent need for what you’re selling.

Here’s a real-life example of using urgency effectively:

8. Upsell Existing Customers

If you could spend $5 to get a new customer, or $1 to keep an existing customer, which would you choose? Unless you’re bad at math, you’ll likely choose the latter. 

Studies show that keeping your customers is five times cheaper than getting new ones, but too many companies are still hustling for new customers while leaving their existing ones in the dark. That math ain’t mathin’. 

Your customers already gave you money. You already have a relationship with them. So, part of any effective sales strategy would include trying to upsell or cross-sell those customers.

For example, if you’re a SaaS company, do you have customers who would benefit from purchasing a higher subscription tier? If you’re running a hair salon, would your regulars want to purchase some of the products you use on their hair? Would your consulting clients benefit from additional training on a new tool in the market?

The goal is to help your customers and clients purchase something that provides real value, or even something that helps them get more value from what they’ve already purchased.

Here’s an example of a business using upselling as a basic sales strategy:

9. Use Free Trials Intelligently 

Incorporating a free trial into your company’s sales strategy can lead to massive gains in paid signups—if you do it right. The goal here isn’t to give your awesome solution for free—rather, you want to give prospects a taste that gets them excited to try the real deal. 

Here are two keys to using a free trial the right way: 

• Keep it short: The goal of a free trial is to help the right customers commit quickly to a paid plan. Keep your plan short—no more than 14 days—and you’ll increase the likelihood of prospects taking it seriously and truly evaluating your product. Plus, you’ll help tighten that sales cycle.
• Invest in onboarding: Don’t just leave your customers to poke around alone. Create an onboarding flow with a clear, simple goal to help your prospects get their first small win with your product.

When you limit the timeframe and help prospects experience real results with your product, your conversions will go up, and you can earn more from your free trial. After that—follow up. Reach out to your expired trials to answer any questions, talk through their objections, and help them convert. 

Here’s an example of a company making sure their customers get the most out of their free trial:

10. Develop Consumable Product Demos  

Consider this scenario—you’ve been talking to a sales rep for a few days and they send you an email. “Hey, do you have time this week to schedule a 60 to 90 meeting to do a demo?” 

Sounds exciting, right? Not even a little bit. 

In today’s age, folks don’t want to spend an hour on a meeting to watch a long demo. That’s because today’s sales conversations happen much later in the buyer journey. As your B2B sales force focuses more on selling to Millennials, they’ll see that these buyers are extremely informed and less likely to sit through a drawn-out product demo.

“B2C understands that Millennials just don’t have the attention span for marketing and sales. B2B is trailing behind here,” says Noam Horenczyk of Walnut.io.

The solution? Create short, actionable product demos that meet customers where they are in the buyer’s journey. Weave your discovery questions into your demo, and ramp up your sales process to the speed your customers want to travel.

Here’s an example of a company that took this sales strategy one step further:

Oh, it’s us! Here at Close, we created a 12-minute, on-demand product demo that prospects can consume at their own pace. Obviously, this was a time-intensive project, but it very quickly became the highest-converting page on our website, leading to more trial signups and ultimately, more closed deals. Score!

11. Build Relationships With Key Partners

A partner program can be pretty easy to set up—all you need is people who love your product, and a reasonable incentive to motivate them to promote it. 

Sounds easy enough, right? The right partnership program isn’t just an easy way to expand your business—it can have a huge impact on your bottom line and overall brand awareness. 

Here are two types of partners to look for: 

• Brand evangelists inside your current customer base: Do you already have raving fans who love your product and regularly recommend it to their network? Take the time to hop on a call with these people and develop a more structured relationship with them.
• Complementary businesses who would benefit from recommending your product to their customers: Here at Close, these include sales consultants and business coaches who recommend Close as a CRM for their clients. They benefit by getting compensation for every new customer they refer, but also because they can help their clients succeed with a CRM that fits their needs.

Just remember, partnerships are long-term relationships that evolve over time. Be a resource to these partners, and give them extra support on a product level. When you help resolve their issues time and again, you’ll solidify that relationship and help them do their job better while building more revenue for your business.

Here’s another example of a fantastically executed partnership program:

12. Invest Time to Get Social Selling Right

Most prospects all but live on social media. They use it to decompress, research, or just stay entertained during that boring weekly staff meeting. 

Helping your team develop an intelligent social selling strategy can help them reach folks when their guard is down. That might include:

• Setting up social listening tools so sales reps can join relevant conversations at the right moment
• Enabling your reps to become thought leaders in the industry
• Helping your team plan specific time and strategies to do cold outreach on social media networks like LinkedIn

This sales strategy really works—here’s an example:

13. Segment Customers for Personalized Outreach

Segmentation involves creating separate groups of customers or prospects based on specific criteria. For example, if you serve different industries or different use cases, it might make sense to segment those different types of customers so you can personalize the way you reach out to them via email or phone calls.

Think of it kinda like sorting laundry—all your whites go in one load, delicates in another, and darks get their very own load. (Unless you like to live on the wild side and throw them all in at the same time, you monster.) 

While segmentation is always a good idea, there must be a clear strategy and goal for this. Using clear segments to create personalized outreach is a strategy many startups use today to close higher-quality deals.

Start by asking yourself “What common ground do my customers share?” Take the time to understand your best customers and what ties them together. Doing this exercise might naturally surface the groups you need to segment. 

When your segmentation has a clear, actionable goal, you’ll see better results.

Here’s an example of segmentation in the real world: 

14. Blend Inbound and Outbound Strategies

I’m going to share a (possibly) unpopular opinion—inbound and outbound sales strategies shouldn’t live in separate silos. In fact, mixing them together creates an incredibly powerful sales strategy. 

Inbound strategies involve attracting customers to your business, while outbound strategies involve reaching out to them directly. You can blend that by doing a bit of both—build up a library of valuable content on your website, track how your audience reacts to your posts on social media, while you also spend time building a list of leads based on your target audience.

Overall, working these strategies side-by-side helps maximize the effectiveness of each strategy since different channels complement each other better.

Here’s an example of a business using both an inbound and outbound sales strategy:

How to Build Your Own Successful Sales Strategy in 6 Steps (Framework)

Ready to build your sales strategy? It’s not complicated. In fact, you can do it in just six simple steps. (P.S.: Don’t forget to grab the free sales strategy template!)

1. Develop S.M.A.R.T. Sales Goals

You know you need sales goals. But developing solid sales goals (and sticking to them) is easier said than done. 

I am going to make it a little easier—your sales strategy should include: 

• Long-term goals that are aligned with the company’s mission
• Short-term goals that focus on getting enough deals closed this month or quarter

Just two types of goals. Now, you will need different goals for each strategy, but realizing there are just two types of goals tends to make this process a little more manageable. 

Your sales goals should also be SMART:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Realistic
• Timely

Here’s what I want you to do—sit down with your sales team to discuss goals. Set business goals, not only for the sales organization in general. but also for each step in your strategy. As you plan new initiatives, create goals to tell you whether they succeed. For example, if you implement lead scoring, you might track whether time to close is shorter. 

Then, plan time to review your results and compare them with the original goals that you set. Usually, you’ll want to review and reset goals either monthly or quarterly and then annually. 

2. Create (or Reevaluate) Your Ideal Customer Profile

I know this feels basic, maybe even too basic. This step is so important it’s worth mentioning. Having a clear view of who you’re selling is essential to implementing the right sales strategies. It will help you understand which strategies might be effective and how to adjust them to fit your audience. 

Say you want to try social selling. The same strategies won’t work for both SMB SaaS companies and small mom-and-pop restaurants. 

Take time to understand which customers are most successful with your product, and which traits they have in common. If you have an ideal customer profile but haven’t looked at it in a while, it's time to take a second look. 

3. Evaluate the Different Types of Sales Strategies

The type of sales strategy you choose to pursue will depend on how your team is built, how customers typically find out about you, and where you can best engage new customers in the buying process.

For example, if you get a high number of new leads that find you organically through word-of-mouth or your website, you might spend more time on inbound sales strategies. On the other hand, if your business is new and has a limited web presence, you may want to focus on both developing new business through outbound sales and a proper SEO checklist.

4. Develop a Clear Sales Process to Follow (and Execute on Your Sales Strategy)

Your sales process serves as a guideline that leads your team through the steps of a sale from first contact to signed contract. Think of it like a rope line in a dark cave—your team can hold on and move step by step through to the close. 

Normally, a B2B sales process includes:

• Initial outreach
• Qualification and discovery
• Sales meeting or product demo
• Proposal
• Negotiation
• Close

If you really wanna increase revenue, include upsell opportunities or new customer onboarding as part of your sales process.

Through each stage, choose the specific sales strategies sales reps should use. For example, is their initial outreach through cold emails, or calls? Will they invite new leads to jump on a Zoom call, or will they try to schedule a product demo right away? Where do referrals happen?

Can you close deals without a sales process? Sure. You can also shovel your driveway with a spoon if you want. It's just going to take you a hell of a lot longer. 

5. Build Your Sales Stack and Documentation

My best tip for implementing sales strategies is really simple—write shit down. 

You can only execute the right strategies if they are clearly documented, and your team has the right resources to complete them.

First, create your minimum viable sales documentation, including a clear value proposition, your sales pitch, and anything else you consider absolutely essential to your sales team.

Next, plan out your sales stack. Which tools will your team use for prospecting? How will they communicate with prospects and with each other? Link each strategy to the right tool, and you’ll have a great plan in place.

6. Track and Analyze Sales Data to Adjust Your Sales Strategy

Whether you love data or hate it, keeping track of key sales metrics like conversion rates, team activity, customer lifetime value, profit margin, and sales velocity is critical to seeing what works and what doesn’t. Ongoing sales analysis is how you'll monitor your team's overall performance and the effectiveness of the strategies you're implementing.

Pro tip: Use the Opportunity Funnel Report in Close to get all your essential sales KPIs at a glance. Quickly identify low conversion points in your sales funnel, and adjust your strategy to get better results.

What’s the Most Effective Sales Strategy?

The most effective sales strategy is the one that works for you. Whether you’re running a startup of your own or trying to increase your organization’s sales effectiveness, the right sales strategy can be the difference between closing more deals (and popping more bottles of champagne) or a slow steady crawl toward closing your doors. 

The good news? There is no shortage of new sales strategies to test. Think about which sales strategies in the list above will work best for your business, and use our free template to start setting up your first sales strategy.

Ready to scale your sales? Our free Sales Success Kit features templates, checklists, worksheets, and step-by-step guides to make your life easier.