Jul 16, 2015 | Sales
Six Steps to Boost Sales
Without exception, every business owner I talk to says they want to boost sales. How well, how often and how profitably – your business makes a sale, determines its success. It follows then, that motivation and performance of the sales team and your sales process are critical.
Having worked with many companies over the past few years on sales, I have found that there are a number of key success factors that business owners overlook that inhibit sales growth and long-term success.
1. Set Sales Targets
While many business owners do set yearly targets, or have something “in mind”, the number of companies that do not have clear written sales targets in place constantly surprises me. It comes down to simply planning for success. Develop sales targets for the following:
• The overall financial sales target for the company for the year
• Quarterly, monthly, weekly as well as daily sales targets
• Sales volumes: Break the sales target down into the number of units and by product category as well. Prioritize those higher margin items.
• Set Sales targets by region as well as by sales representative. Then track actual versus plan on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
2. Sales Implementation Plan
Once you’ve clarified the sales targets, the next step in the process is to develop a very clear but simple implementation plan. This should include the sales call cycle, new business opportunities and every step of how you plan to convert those opportunities into sales – as well as reviewing the progress being made in this regard. Develop a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that would include lead as well as lag indicators to success.
3. Clear Sales Process & Scripts
Many companies do not have a clearly defined sales process. Having a clear process in place means tracking results consistently and creating the ability to optimize results. When a process is no longer delivering results, you’ll know it immediately and can revise. Nothing stays the same forever. A written process will enable you to adjust quickly and easily to changing market conditions.
The company will also be able to track sales conversion rates across various stages (e.g. Lead, Suspect, Prospect, Buyer) of the sales process – and is then able to take corrective action in order to increase conversion rates.
4. Sales Pipeline Tracking
Ensure that you are using one of the many robust CRM systems available to be able to track the progress of each lead in the system. This will ensure that you are keeping track of the very important next steps in the sales process, while also giving you the opportunity to build a trusting relationship with each of your prospects.
5. Identify Your Leads Personality style
It is very important to identify your lead/prospects personality style as early on in the process as possible. This enables you to adapt your sales style to meet their personality style: e.g. highly driven people are bored with all the details, and once they see the value will quickly ask what the next steps are. Alternatively, people who have a high attention to detail will naturally ask for more information, facts and testimonials before making a purchase decision. Use DISC assessment training with your sales staff to enable them to identify their prospects style.
6. Selling is about empowering prospects to make a purchase decision
There are three main parts to any sales process:
1. Build the relationship
2. Develop trust
3. Allow your prospect to make a purchase decision.
This process applies to any type of product, and one needs to ensure that your marketing message and sales process takes a prospect through each of these steps if you want to ensure a good conversion rate.
For more on how to do all of this, come to a complimentary Business Building workshop.
Jul 7, 2015 | Marketing, Uncategorized
Advertise Online For Free
According to marketing experts, businesses spend somewhere between 2-5% of their gross sales just on advertising. Unfortunately, many small businesses which are still relatively new do not have that kind of revenue to invest in marketing in order to get the sales they want. However, they can benefit from free advertising for small businesses through online marketing.
Start By Creating a Web Presence With Email
The internet can be a lethal tool, especially when it comes to marketing and letting the world know that your business is there to fulfill your customers needs. There are many free outlets which are available online to reach leads for your business that you can convert to customers.
Assuming you have already set up a website available through free domains, and have created a logo for your business. If you don’t have a logo, you can have a basic one made for very low cost. Here is where most small businesses fall short – and I’m surprised nearly daily to see that they don’t have an email address set up for their domain name, but are using gmail or yahoo addresses etc.. By using a generic email domain, you are missing a chance to advertise every single time you send an email message. Not to mention that it just looks unprofessional. If you want customers to take you seriously, get email set up for your business domain.
Using Social Media As A Platform
Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are free online advertising for small businesses. Facebook lets you create a page for your business, manage it, and lets you share it on different platforms to catch the attention from people worldwide.
In order to gain more publicity, you should continuously post updates, host giveaways, and offer special deals which are available only for those Facebook users who visit your website.
Twitter is another free social platform which allows you to advertise online as a small businesses. Twitter allows you to have a direct one-on-one conversation with your customer. You can even customize your profile page according to the nature or theme of your business. Hosting giveaways can be done on this platform as well. You can even give shout-outs to regular customers and offer them giveaways.
Have A Signature
Every email you send, have a small 3-4 line signature which includes the link to your website, your contact number, address, and links to your social media pages. This helps build an online presence for your business. It is another great and effective way to advertise online for free for small businesses.
Not sure how you’re doing with your Social Media efforts? Grab my free ebook titled “6 Mistakes To Avoid Using Social Media”. Just go to 6 Mistakes Social Media ebook to grab it. I know it will help you save time by avoiding some of the common mistakes I’ve seen my clients make in the past.
Jun 23, 2015 | Finance, Systems
Most business owners hope that they have Financial Mastery of their business, but let’s not just “hope”, let’s make certain that you do!
In the ActionCOACH system, the first stage in the foundation level is FINANCIAL MASTERY. Financial mastery is one of the skills, capabilities and tool sets you must have in your business to be successful and ensure that you the fundamental financial insights into your business to help you make great decisions.
Financial Mastery begins with reviewing your business financial reports on a regular and timely basis. You should be reviewing three critical financial reports on at least a monthly basis – your Profit & Loss Statement (P&L), your Balance Sheet and your Cash Flow Statement. These three financial documents will tell the story about your business. Together they paint a powerful picture of how well your business is performing, where your opportunities for improvement are hiding and what the near term future outlook is from a financial perspective. It is critical that you are having these prepared on a timely basis and are reviewing them monthly. In some businesses with high frequency and volume of transactions, it should be weekly. How often do you review your statements?
Once you have your monthly financial reports available, you are in a position to track some Key Performance Indicators. These are important ratios and measures that you can lift from your financial statements and track on a regular basis. You not only want to know where your business is at a particular snapshot in time, but you want to know how your business is doing relative to the past months – perhaps even to the same month the prior years. Have you identified your Key Performance Indicators?
These Key Performance Indicators are best viewed on a Dashboard – a visible set of graphs that tell a story of the health and trends in your business. Your dashboard should be updated at least monthly and should be much like the dashboard of a car – allowing you to look forward rather than in the rear-view mirror. Included in your dashboard should be activities that are not found in your financial statements, but rather reflect your lead generation and lead conversion success rates as well as other delivery and customer satisfaction measures. Is your Dashboard up and visible? Are you aware of the trends in your business? What are the key drivers of your business?
Being successful in Financial Mastery is a partly about your mindset. You must have the disciplined mindset to consistently review the financial data you need to run your business, and the stomach to look even when the news is not good. How can you know who is winning if you do not know the score? As you gain familiarity and the process becomes fast and easy, you can expand your awareness. You can begin looking at the individual profit margins by product or service type, see which of your marketing efforts are paying off most profitably, or you can anticipate cash flow crunches on the horizon – and many more critical metrics.
Nothing should be a surprise in your business. Would you fly an airplane into weather without a solid instrument dashboard and the expertise on how to use it properly? Would you do that if your mindset was not 100%? Of course not! Yet I talk to business owners every single day whose lives ultimately depend on how well their business runs, yet they don’t have the dashboard, systems or KPIs in place to ensure that they and the business are running at peak performance.
The faster you want to go in your business, the better set of financial indicators you must have. Going fast is good only if you have the financial awareness and can read the financial dashboard During this stage of the race, take the time to nail down your Financial Mastery. Expect and demand the regular reports, graphs, metrics and indicators that will let you race even faster – without the fear of not knowing where you are headed or whether you have enough gas!
Get a free business health check to find out where you stand.
May 14, 2015 | Finance, Marketing, Sales
In more than 25 years of making pricing decisions and of observing others making pricing decisions, I have come to the conclusion that there is no single business decision that you can make more quickly, but which deserves more thoughtful consideration than the decision of what to charge for one’s goods and services. As a business coach, it still surprises me that business owners and managers don’t do the right analysis before making this critical decision.
If you set your prices too low, you’ll lose money! Set your prices too high and you’ll also lose money! Lets look at an example: if your Gross Profit Margin = 40%, then a 10% decrease (or increase) in prices will decrease (or increase) Gross Profit by 25% (assuming no change in volume). Net profit (what is left after you’ve paid everything) will change even more dramatically.
But wait a minute; if you decrease prices won’t you make it up in volume? Maybe. Using the same assumptions – 40% Gross Margin and a 10% price decrease, since you are selling the units at a lower price and therefore a 25% lower margin, you’d have to sell 35% more volume just to break even on your price discount! You will need a great marketing plan & sales process to ensure more than a 35% increase in volume. And that’s just to break even. Plus you’ll be working a lot harder to produce a 35% increase in volume, to get the same net profit.
Instead of considering discounting to increase your bottom line, think about how you can add value and charge even more. The best way to remove price as an objection by your buyers, is to have a strong and sustainable Unique Selling Proposition. A strong USP will distinguish your business from all the competitors. It will make you the obvious choice in a sea of competition and lead prospects to the conclusion, “I would have to be a fool to do business with anyone but you…regardless of price.” Your USP is something that your competitors can’t or won’t say, that you can uniquely deliver. And it will change the conversation with your prospects from cost based, to value.
USP is a simple concept, but not easy to do. It takes a focused, dedicated process to discover your own USP. It isn’t going to just appear magically. In his book, Purple Cow, Seth Godin explains that the USP must be as remarkable as seeing a Purple Cow. And just like a purple cow, sometimes you have to sit down at the drawing board and create one yourself.
Lisa Walker, ActionCOACH, is a Certified Business Coach who provides services for small and medium sized businesses, helping them to grow and become profitable through the use of proven tools, methodologies, and systems. Lisa targets her clients’ individual needs so they can achieve their goals and realize their dreams.
May 5, 2015 | Leadership, Self, Team
5 Ways to Improve Your Communication Skills
Effective communication is key to your development and progress, not to mention that of your team! Without effective communication, you will lag behind in many aspects of your personal and professional life. And your team, therefore your business, will not reach its full potential without the tools to communicate effectively.
If you want to improve your communication skills for clarity and effectiveness, here are some vital tips for you to follow:
1. Listen Carefully
Let’s admit it, we all struggle with this. First seek to understand what the other person is saying and feeling. If you find that you are formulating a response while the other person is talking, you are NOT listening. You have to shut off that voice in order to listen. Pay attention, be patient with them and do not interrupt. Not only is it rude to cut someone off, but it makes it hard to understand what they are saying. Wait for them to finish before you even think about your feedback.
2. Body Language
Often, we don’t realize the significance of our body language, but it can account for 70% of what we communicate. After all, actions speak louder than words. Your facial expressions, eye contact and gestures reveal everything, even though you do not utter a single word.
Exercise to improve your posture. Stand straight and smile to stimulate positive feelings. Always maintain eye contact when talking to someone. Use open body gestures. Watch your facial expressions and the tone of your voice. At the same time, educate yourself about different non-verbal communication signals in different countries, cultures and societies. For example, the handshake is considered rude in some countries, whereas is it a common practice in the US.
3. Read and Write
In order to improve your verbal communication, read and write as much as you can. Read books, newspaper articles, blogs or anything of interest to boost your vocabulary and write a blog to improve your writing skills. Similarly, watching some programs related to your areas of interest and movies can also help improve one’s communication skills.
4. Ask Questions
Asking questions helps clarifying things. It shows that you are truly interested in having a conversation and understanding the other person. Moreover, it also helps overcome the fear of small talk. Learn to ask good questions, it will improve your ability to engage your audience.
5. Manage Stress
Stress can be a major impediment to effective communication. Learn to manage it. Don’t communicate with someone if your stress level will make you sound irritated or angry with them. Use humor in your conversations, keep calm, exercise and drink lots of water.
The ability to communicate clearly, concisely and coherently takes years of practice. Hence, incorporate the above mentioned steps to not just improve your communication skills, but also improve the quality of your life.
To learn more, get in touch or come to ActionClub!
Apr 21, 2015 | Leadership, Self, Team
Are You Leading Or Managing Your Company?
As the owner or chief executive in your company, how much time do you spend on leading and not just managing? If your goal is to create a growing, profitable business that can work without you, strong leadership is a must.
Author William Arthur Ward once wrote, “Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I many not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I may not forget you.” Leaders come in all shapes, sizes and from all ways of life, but they do have common characteristics.
- They create a vision and understand that true change is driven by emotion, not logic. In other words, they transform the mundane into a passion that their team can rally around. What benefit do you create for your customers? Don’t think you have one? Here are some examples: bankers and financial planners make dreams come true, communications companies educate and inspire, consultants and recruiters create a livelihood for workers, photographers preserve memories. What noble cause does your company provide?
- Leaders know how to link vision and action. It’s not just about a vision; it’s about making that vision come alive. They have a unique way of separating the important from the interesting and then focusing on one of those things.
- Leaders create an environment of accountability. Not only do great leaders demand accountability of themselves, they demand it of their team. Excuses are not allowed.
- Leaders have a strong character and aren’t swayed by what’s easy or popular. When faced with a challenge, they do what is right, not what is easy.
- You are not a leader unless you are willing to make the tough decision.Sure it is easier to say “yes”, than “no”. Charles Nielsen once said, “When, against one’s will, one is pressured into making a hurried decision, the best answer is always ‘No,’ because ‘No’ is more easily changed to ‘Yes’ than ‘Yes’ is changed to ‘No’.” As a leader, it is more important to make the right decision than the easy decision.
- Leaders inspire through their everyday actions and words.You don’t need long speeches or memos to inspire. Lincoln’s, “Gettysburg Address” was less than three minutes long and Churchill’s famous, “Blood, Sweat and Tears” speech was two and a half minutes long. Words are important, but actions inspire even more. Mother Teresa’s credo was, “Let no one come to you without leaving better and happier.”
- Leaders realize that no one, including himself or herself, is indispensable. Once you become bigger than the cause, you cease to lead. Translated into business, teach your team to do things better than you ever could and you will both benefit.
Leadership doesn’t happen overnight, but a mentor, like me, can help you understand how to take the first steps and then work with you as you transform your management skills into leadership skills.
Practice your leadership skills! This will benefit you, your family, your team and your customers.
To learn more, come to the next GrowthClub!
