If you are looking for improved sales results in your business during the next quarter now is the time to put in place some improvement strategies to help achieve the results you want.
Here are five things that you can do over the next five days to get some ideas.
Review your sales data from the last few quarters
Where did your sales come from? Where did your sales not come from? What products made the largest contribution to profit? What products were disappointments? How many sales leads did your business generate? What were the sources of these leads? How many of these leads turned into customers? What ‘conversion rate’ does this represent? As far as you know, why did the buyers buy? Why did the non-buyers not buy? Are you overly-dependent on one or two major customers (or suppliers) for your sales?
As you answer these questions (and others that come to mind as you go through the process) you will find information that confirms what you already ‘knew’ – you may also discover information that surprises you. Some of this information will please you; other information will disturb you.
Nevertheless, the question then becomes ‘What ideas does this information give me that I can use to try to get a better result in the up-coming quarter?’
Look at your Lead Generation systems
If a business is not generating enough of the right sort of sales leads it has a serious problem that, unless fixed, will lead to the death of the business.
Are you getting enough leads? Are the leads you are getting also the sorts of leads that you want? What Lead Generation strategies are working satisfactorily? What strategies are not working? What strategies have you wanted to try but not yet got around to?
The key to successful Lead Generation in any business is to find those elusive mixtures of Offer, presentation and media that work for that particular business. Diversification is important; it’s dangerous to rely on one strategy (or one market) because of the vulnerability that it creates.
Check on how your salespeople are structuring their sales discussions
Does your business have a preferred, or required, structure to be followed during sales discussions with prospective customers? Do your salespeople use it? Or are your salespeople allowed to ‘wing it’ and handle things any way they like?
What questions are your salespeople in the habit of asking to help them identify prospective customers’ needs, wants, interests and prejudices?
What questions are your salespeople in the habit of using to qualify prospective customers as to budget and time-frame?
If there is no preferred, or required, structure to the qualifying and discussion process maybe you should institute one – it will surely improve your conversion ratio.
Review your Customer Relations strategies
Maintaining an appropriate level of contact with your customers is a balancing act. It requires matching the importance of each customer, and their requirements, with the resources that you have available in your business. It stands to reason that your best, most profitable, customers should get most of your attention.
With this thought in mind, have you categorised your business’s customers into A’s, B’s or C’s (or something similar)? If so, how long is it since you reviewed each customer’s categorisation? Have you set a customer service and contact routine that reflects the importance of each customer category? Does your staff know who your VIP customers are and treat then accordingly?
Review the Time Management practices used in your business
The more time that is devoted to A-class sales and marketing activities, the better the sales result
you can expect. If you allow A-class sales time to be frittered away on B-class activities you can expect to under-perform in your sales results.
Good time management is not a skill that comes naturally to most people. However, there are four strategies that can lead to a marked improvement. They are; the adherence to an Ideal Week time-allocation format by each staff member, the effective use of Diaries, the use of To Do Lists, and the use of To Do Books.
The Ideal Week concept supports the allocation of A-class activities to the most appropriate time-slots in the working week. This allocation improves the chances that the A-class activities will be carried out with adequate time for their successful completion. B-class and C-class activities are allocated to non-prime-time slots. This means that they still get done (or at least most of them do) but that they aren’t allowed to interfere with the achievement of the A-class activities.
How long is it since you discussed Diary use with your sales staff? Do they all use the same system? Or do you allow them to do their own thing? How long is it since you discussed the use of To Do Lists and To Do Books with your sales staff? Should you set a minimum standard for the use of these time management tools so your people understand your expectations?
A final comment
Improved sales results over the next quarter are unlikely to come from a single stroke of luck or brilliance. It’s more likely that they will emerge from the synergy of a number of marginal improvements in key areas; one way to achieve these marginal improvements is by the systematic application of ideas developed through careful review.
(The up-coming post for Monday 12/1 is Let your people shine. It's a short reminder about how your people can make the difference.)
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