Many organisations role out marketing, CRM, and loyalty programmes without establishing what is important to the customers they are about to inflict their ideals and offers upon with reckless abandon with little thought as to why
You can encourage your staff to deliver excellent customer service until the cows come home, and you can buy a top-of-the-line CRM system. But if your organisation isn't clear on its values – on what it stands for - you’ll very likely undermine your efforts.
For employees to be fully empowered to consistently create customer experiences that foster loyalty, they must understand and live the organisation’s values – what they are, and how they show up in employee behaviours. Values provide a valuable framework for the day-to-day choices employees make and actions they take toward organisational goals.
Unifying values are the blueprints that drive an organisation's culture. If employees know that ‘excellence’ is an organisational value, they will make more choices toward that end. If 'teamwork’ is a corporate value, they’re more likely to make choices and take actions with the team’s best interests in mind. In addition, values:
* Make it easier for employees to figure out how to ‘do the right thing’
* Foster strong feelings of personal effectiveness and pride
* Facilitate consensus about goals and understanding about job expectations
* Reduce levels of job stress and tension
* Provide a sense of order without imposing ‘rules’
* Promote high levels of company loyalty
One of the biggest mistakes companies make is believing that they're already living the values they feature in public relations and marketing materials. There’s often a huge gap between the values organisations say they have, and the values they’d like to have or are actually living.To close that gap, the following steps are for defining, refining and reinforcing organisational values:
1) Brainstorm, explore and clarify organisational values. Give everyone a clear, common everyday understanding of how you define your values and what they look like in daily behaviour. Just using words like ‘integrity’ or ‘balance’ is not enough since everyone has their own definition of what words mean. The time it takes to zero in on what your organisation is really about is well worth it.
2) To achieve or maintain your competitive edge, make sure your values are ‘customer-focused.’ This means you’ve taken the time to look at what your customer’s value, and usually requires an ‘outside-in’ view of your organisation. Spend some time truly understanding what the customer expects from you, what their goals and dreams are and how they feel about doing business with you.
3) Give each and every employee the opportunity to uncover his or her personal values. Why? Research shows that even if personal values are not in sync with corporate values, employees who are clear on what their own personal values are tend to be more engaged in and committed to their work.
4) Reinforce values. Make sure they’re an integral part of your hiring, orientation and ongoing training programs. Management should consciously model organisational values, and encourage and praise staff members when they exhibit behaviours that support them.
5) Revisit values regularly to determine if they still make sense, or if changes may be necessary.The bottom line companies that live by their values and keep customers more easily create profits. Today’s more cynical, demanding customers are looking for companies that are driven by their values - not just their profit motives. Organisations that know and live their values tend to create great places to work for and to do business with. They enjoy healthy profits as a result of their customers returning to buy more, with their like minded associates in tow.
John Logar
Professional Speaker and Consultant
Showing posts with label consultant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label consultant. Show all posts
Your Ego Could be Hurting Your Career
Sometimes our own self importance gets in the way of what we’re trying to achieve, whether that be meeting our objectives, providing the best support service for our members, or simply putting off dealing with those little problems that can turn into major issues. Our ego pops up everywhere to protect ourselves and yet, it may be the very thing that inhibits the growth of our organisations.
How often do you find yourself defending your point of view, even to the point where you’ve realised that what you’re saying is off the mark yet you don’t want to be seen to be wrong? When someone poses a new idea, do you bring up all the reasons why it won’t work? Have you heard people in your organisation justify following a procedure by saying “because that’s the way we do it around here”?
These are just some of the ways we allow our egos, or ourselves, to get in the way of getting the results we talk about. Why do we do this? The ego is our self image, based on how we would like to be seen by others. By living through our ego, we seek the approval of others, we are always searching for a response, we feel a need to control things and to have or gain power. Based on what we believe, if we feel that any of these things are being changed, altered, challenged or threatened then we will take action to protect our image. Your ego wants to control and it is sustained by power because it lives in fear. However, your ego is not who you really are. It is only how you want to be seen by others.
When your ego kicks in, this stops or diminishes:
*Communication – you stop listening and considering new information
*Collaboration – you become autocratic “Do as I say don’t do as I do”
*Objective outcomes – you take everything as a personal attack and become defensive and confrontational which makes the other person agitated and accelerates an argument
*Efficiency – you waste time and energy on non-productive discussions and activities
*Trust – you separate and distance yourself from others
What do you think you gain from being in your ego? What results are you getting from being in your ego? What results do you actually want?
I worked with an organisation that outwardly promoted itself as an employer of choice by supporting its staff through flexible working hours, great career opportunities and having a great culture. Within the organisation, the CEO was focused on creating a great culture –
organisational values had been established and were incorporated into the performance measurement framework. Staff enjoyed the approach that was being taken to create a fun and lively culture yet where it failed was with the senior managers of the organisation. They were so focused on building their own “empires” that they would not share information with other departments or undertake activities that would make them look good to the detriment of the organisation as a whole. While some made attempts to encourage a culture of growth, the end result of the growth was so they could meet budget and achieve their financial remuneration through bonuses. Therefore the culture of openness, sharing and growth that was trying to be developed at the highest levels in the organisation was undermined by the senior managers’ desires to fulfil their own needs.
So what can you do to stop your ego getting in the way of creating a great career for yourself and help build a successful organisation?
*When you notice you’ve become agitated or irritated by a comment or action, stop and listen.
*Step outside of your importance or opinion and become aware and open to what’s going on around you.
*Before you make any judgements or decisions, take into consideration the entire situation i.e. look at it from an outside-in perspective.
*Relate what is being discussed or decided to your outcomes – how will this help to achieve the organisation’s objectives as opposed to your objectives?
If you find this hard to do for yourself, recognise what bothers you through the actions of other people. Your response to someone else’s behaviour is a direct reflection of what you like or don’t like about yourself. If they irritate or annoy you, ask yourself “What about that behaviour aggravates me and do I do or say this to others?” You’ll very quickly identify behaviours that are based in your ego and inhibit your performance.
Your ego blocks you from the truth. It stops you from looking at things clearly and objectively and taking the most appropriate course of action. By removing your ego, your decision making process becomes easier and faster, a culture of trust and integrity is fostered and a clarity of direction and purpose is achieved, leading to personal and organisational success.
How often do you find yourself defending your point of view, even to the point where you’ve realised that what you’re saying is off the mark yet you don’t want to be seen to be wrong? When someone poses a new idea, do you bring up all the reasons why it won’t work? Have you heard people in your organisation justify following a procedure by saying “because that’s the way we do it around here”?
These are just some of the ways we allow our egos, or ourselves, to get in the way of getting the results we talk about. Why do we do this? The ego is our self image, based on how we would like to be seen by others. By living through our ego, we seek the approval of others, we are always searching for a response, we feel a need to control things and to have or gain power. Based on what we believe, if we feel that any of these things are being changed, altered, challenged or threatened then we will take action to protect our image. Your ego wants to control and it is sustained by power because it lives in fear. However, your ego is not who you really are. It is only how you want to be seen by others.
When your ego kicks in, this stops or diminishes:
*Communication – you stop listening and considering new information
*Collaboration – you become autocratic “Do as I say don’t do as I do”
*Objective outcomes – you take everything as a personal attack and become defensive and confrontational which makes the other person agitated and accelerates an argument
*Efficiency – you waste time and energy on non-productive discussions and activities
*Trust – you separate and distance yourself from others
What do you think you gain from being in your ego? What results are you getting from being in your ego? What results do you actually want?
I worked with an organisation that outwardly promoted itself as an employer of choice by supporting its staff through flexible working hours, great career opportunities and having a great culture. Within the organisation, the CEO was focused on creating a great culture –
organisational values had been established and were incorporated into the performance measurement framework. Staff enjoyed the approach that was being taken to create a fun and lively culture yet where it failed was with the senior managers of the organisation. They were so focused on building their own “empires” that they would not share information with other departments or undertake activities that would make them look good to the detriment of the organisation as a whole. While some made attempts to encourage a culture of growth, the end result of the growth was so they could meet budget and achieve their financial remuneration through bonuses. Therefore the culture of openness, sharing and growth that was trying to be developed at the highest levels in the organisation was undermined by the senior managers’ desires to fulfil their own needs.
So what can you do to stop your ego getting in the way of creating a great career for yourself and help build a successful organisation?
*When you notice you’ve become agitated or irritated by a comment or action, stop and listen.
*Step outside of your importance or opinion and become aware and open to what’s going on around you.
*Before you make any judgements or decisions, take into consideration the entire situation i.e. look at it from an outside-in perspective.
*Relate what is being discussed or decided to your outcomes – how will this help to achieve the organisation’s objectives as opposed to your objectives?
If you find this hard to do for yourself, recognise what bothers you through the actions of other people. Your response to someone else’s behaviour is a direct reflection of what you like or don’t like about yourself. If they irritate or annoy you, ask yourself “What about that behaviour aggravates me and do I do or say this to others?” You’ll very quickly identify behaviours that are based in your ego and inhibit your performance.
Your ego blocks you from the truth. It stops you from looking at things clearly and objectively and taking the most appropriate course of action. By removing your ego, your decision making process becomes easier and faster, a culture of trust and integrity is fostered and a clarity of direction and purpose is achieved, leading to personal and organisational success.
How To Win Quotes At Higher Prices
Many business owners think that the answer to increasing their profitability is generating more work. Sometimes that is true. In many cases though there are better ways. For example, I sat down with a gentleman whose sole purpose was to find out how to get more inquiries. After a series of questions, it became apparent that his problem wasn’t the number of enquiries; it was that his conversion ratio was only 7%.
When looking at any business to increase profitability, it’s usually best to start with what is already happening in the business i.e. enquiries as a result of previous marketing. Considering that you’ve already spent a good deal of time, effort and money to get the phones ringing, it makes a whole lot more sense to turn those leads into sales instead of focusing on generating more leads.
A commercial painter in Melbourne was quoting twenty jobs per week. Out of that, he might win one or two jobs. The trouble was the jobs he won were won on price so they had very little profit in them. He was up until all hours of the night developing the quotes and then up early to get to the jobs that paid almost nothing. He commented that kids working at McDonalds were making more money than he was.
What a situation to be in. You might as well go broke playing golf rather than working for nothing.
If you’re in a situation where you quote regularly and only win around 10-20% of those, you’ll know how frustrating it can be spending all that time running around for nothing, particularly if the quotes you are winning are won on price along. This means of course, that there’s usually little profit in the job.
Here’s a simple way to win more quotes at higher prices…
Many people look upon quotes as simply writing down the specifications of the product or job and submitting that together with a price to the client. This is suicide. Quoting is much more – it’s an entire process. It starts with attracting the right type of customers, moves on to how you deal with those enquiries at the first point of contact, preparing and delivering your proposal and lastly, the follow up.
Let’s assume through your advertising and marketing that you’re targeting the right customers and you’re receiving a steady flow of enquiries. The key ingredient is the preparation and delivery of your proposal.
Ban the word ‘quote’
Here’s a scenario – you need to get some repair work done on your car so you call three panel beaters and get three quotes for the work. Now, what’s the first thing you do when you look at all three quotes together? That’s right, you look at the bottom line…at the price. The way most quotes are written make us focus on the price and therefore, in the majority of cases, the lowest price usually gets the job. If your customers are only buying you because you’ve got the cheapest price, then you’re painting yourself into a small corner because there is always someone out there who will be cheaper.
The word ‘quote’ has psychologically conditioned us to compare the price. Avoid use of the word ‘quote’. Instead, change it to ‘action plan’, ‘proposal’ or a ‘statement’. For example, a kitchen renovator might start his quote with ‘Recommendations for building your new kitchen’.
Warning: I’ve watched people change the name of their ‘quotes’ to ‘proposal’ and think that’s where it ends. Nothing could be further from the truth. A rose by any other name is still a rose. Using the same old quotes you’ve always done and changing only the title to ‘proposal’ will do nothing for your conversion.
Changing the name does nothing unless you change the entire presentation of your proposal. This means the opening statement, the selling copy, the supporting evidence in testimonials, reversing the risk through the use of a guarantee and perhaps an offer – all things that will make your proposal stand out from your competitors. Make your quote as professional as possible.
The elements of a winning proposal:
Your opening statement should cover the major objectives of the proposal – what the people you are writing to will achieve (in broad terms) when they accept your proposal.
*Provide some background information. Remember that people other than those you’ve spoken to may be reading your proposal too. Talk briefly about who you’ve had meetings with as well as highlight key points that came from your discussions.
*Meeting their needs. This is one of the more critical areas of your proposal. Use it to tell them what they told you. This section is really where the selling is done. It shows you’ve listened and that you’re on track with what the organization wants to achieve. Ideally you should bring out here emotional as well as factual areas.
*The investment in your services comes next. Many businesses submit proposals with pages and pages of how good their product or service is and then they have a section at the end of the proposal called ‘cost justification’. Please don’t do that. Instead, deal with pricing or investment right after the fulfilling their needs. When you get it out early, give the total figure first and then break it down as appropriate.
*Describe your product or service and how it meets their needs. The language that you will use is WIIFM – what’s in it for me. Make sure you focus on the client’s outcomes using your product or service.
*The implementation schedule is the last thing your reader will see. This is where you leave him or her with actions that should be taken so that all the benefits you’ve mentioned can start to flow.
*Follow up, follow up, follow up. Over 60% of quotes and proposals are never followed up. If you do this one thing consistently and persistently, you’ll dramatically improve your conversion rate.
The word here is action. That’s the purpose of your proposal – to get the reader to take action and give you the job.
There’s your formula. Follow it, adapt it and you’ll win more quotes.
Know What You Don’t Know…5 Tips to Improve Your Sales Tracking and Measuring
I met a business owner last year who was spending $12,000 a year on local radio advertising. This was a small local function centre trying to book weddings and corporate seminars. $12,000 is a big investment! I asked the business owner what sort of response he was getting from the ads. He didn’t know! He’d never bothered to ask his customers how they had heard about him and didn’t know if even one cent of his investment was effective. Before you laugh and say, ‘What a goose!’ ask yourself this… Can you account for the effectiveness of every dollar you’ve spent on advertising in your business?
There’s an old saying you’ve no doubt heard: You can manage what you can measure. Marketing strategies can be expensive, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to be spending the money unless you track and measure how well it’s working for you.
Here are five things you can do to ensure you are getting the information you need to make the most from your marketing dollar:
1. Set goals Remember those science experiments in school where the teacher would make you write a hypothesis beforehand? I hated them. I just wanted to throw the chemicals together and create a big bang. Unsurprisingly, I was never able to say how well my experiments worked because I couldn’t compare the results to the original objective. It’s the same with your marketing strategies. Decide on a clear goal for your campaigns, such as “To acquire 3 new A Class customers” or “To get a direct mail response rate of 15%.”
2. Select a good response device If you’re testing a newspaper advertisement, then simply tracking whether your sales increased won’t give you enough information. You’ll need to be asking every new person who enquires, “How did you hear about us?” The increase may not be coming from the ad at all. You need to make sure that you have designed a method to measure the very thing you want to test.An easy way to do this is to include a response device in your campaign. For example, a print advertisement could have a coupon that customers cut out and bring in to your store. A radio ad could have a special phone number. Emails can be coded with keywords that are unique to that message. At the very least you should be consistently asking your customers, “By the way, do you mind if I ask how you heard about us?
3. Focus on ROI You may be thrilled that you got a 25% response rate to your email offer, but what revenue did this generate? If your marketing strategies aren’t paying for themselves in return on investment, then you need to look again. “What about awareness?” Yeah, I hear people ask that all the time. Advertising to raise awareness is fine if you have the marketing budget of Coca Cola, but most business owners can’t afford to invest huge sums of money on marketing that isn’t resulting directly in sales. And the only way you’ll know is to measure!
4. Measure everything, big and small A business owner I talked to last year kept saying, “I need more business, I gotta do more advertising!” But when we measured what was going on in his entire sales process, we discovered he was getting enough leads but was only converting 5% of them to sales! By improving his selling skills and quotes he was able to increase his conversion rate, and therefore his turnover. Measuring is about more than the results of a single campaign. You need to look at the ‘big picture’ …and regularly! Not just the source of your leads, but how many you are converting to customers, what they are spending with you and how frequently. If you know the ‘big picture’ by tracking your sales process, you’ll always know what specific area to work on with your marketing instead of blindly spending money.
5. Repeat, repeat, repeat! The whole point of testing and measuring your marketing is to find out what works for your business. When you find something that works, keep doing it. There’s nothing wrong with testing a few changes to see if you can get an even better response, but don’t abandon the things that make your marketing successful. The flip side is just as crucial. If it’s not working, stop wasting your money!
Tracking and measuring your marketing will put you in control of growing your business, instead of forcing you to fly blind.
John Logar helps organisations achieve more than they thought possible through consulting, coaching, keynote presentations, seminars and training in the areas of leadership, values, team performance, marketing and risk management. John has addressed and consulted to over 1,000 organisations in commerce, government and not-for-profit.
There’s an old saying you’ve no doubt heard: You can manage what you can measure. Marketing strategies can be expensive, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to be spending the money unless you track and measure how well it’s working for you.
Here are five things you can do to ensure you are getting the information you need to make the most from your marketing dollar:
1. Set goals Remember those science experiments in school where the teacher would make you write a hypothesis beforehand? I hated them. I just wanted to throw the chemicals together and create a big bang. Unsurprisingly, I was never able to say how well my experiments worked because I couldn’t compare the results to the original objective. It’s the same with your marketing strategies. Decide on a clear goal for your campaigns, such as “To acquire 3 new A Class customers” or “To get a direct mail response rate of 15%.”
2. Select a good response device If you’re testing a newspaper advertisement, then simply tracking whether your sales increased won’t give you enough information. You’ll need to be asking every new person who enquires, “How did you hear about us?” The increase may not be coming from the ad at all. You need to make sure that you have designed a method to measure the very thing you want to test.An easy way to do this is to include a response device in your campaign. For example, a print advertisement could have a coupon that customers cut out and bring in to your store. A radio ad could have a special phone number. Emails can be coded with keywords that are unique to that message. At the very least you should be consistently asking your customers, “By the way, do you mind if I ask how you heard about us?
3. Focus on ROI You may be thrilled that you got a 25% response rate to your email offer, but what revenue did this generate? If your marketing strategies aren’t paying for themselves in return on investment, then you need to look again. “What about awareness?” Yeah, I hear people ask that all the time. Advertising to raise awareness is fine if you have the marketing budget of Coca Cola, but most business owners can’t afford to invest huge sums of money on marketing that isn’t resulting directly in sales. And the only way you’ll know is to measure!
4. Measure everything, big and small A business owner I talked to last year kept saying, “I need more business, I gotta do more advertising!” But when we measured what was going on in his entire sales process, we discovered he was getting enough leads but was only converting 5% of them to sales! By improving his selling skills and quotes he was able to increase his conversion rate, and therefore his turnover. Measuring is about more than the results of a single campaign. You need to look at the ‘big picture’ …and regularly! Not just the source of your leads, but how many you are converting to customers, what they are spending with you and how frequently. If you know the ‘big picture’ by tracking your sales process, you’ll always know what specific area to work on with your marketing instead of blindly spending money.
5. Repeat, repeat, repeat! The whole point of testing and measuring your marketing is to find out what works for your business. When you find something that works, keep doing it. There’s nothing wrong with testing a few changes to see if you can get an even better response, but don’t abandon the things that make your marketing successful. The flip side is just as crucial. If it’s not working, stop wasting your money!
Tracking and measuring your marketing will put you in control of growing your business, instead of forcing you to fly blind.
John Logar helps organisations achieve more than they thought possible through consulting, coaching, keynote presentations, seminars and training in the areas of leadership, values, team performance, marketing and risk management. John has addressed and consulted to over 1,000 organisations in commerce, government and not-for-profit.
How To Develop A Powerful Sales Process
Over the last ten years I have literally spoken to and worked with thousands of business owners in almost every imaginable industry. One of the common themes that keep coming up is what businesses seem to lack – let me explain. Here are some of the frustrations – “We are not generating enough revenue from our sales and customers”; “We’ve got a great product and service, we just can’t seem to get enough customers”; “Our sales team is not producing enough sales”; “We seem to be working really hard and not getting the results”; “We don’t know what our sales people are doing out there”. These are just some of the examples that highlight the lack of systems and tools to help a business grow effectively.
Over 90% of Australian businesses do not have a clearly defined sales process that is designed to consistently generate great customers that will invest as much as possible in their products and services and then nurture those clients into coming back again and again. These are three fundamental areas that impact directly on the growth of any business in any industry.
Let me walk you through a six step process that can dramatically improve your chances of generating great business from great customers.
Step 1 – To define and set the purpose of your business
With any objective there needs to be an understanding of the outcome. Like with any successful plan, we must begin with the end in mind. So for your business, what are you trying to achieve and why are you trying to achieve it? What is the real reason you are doing what you are doing? What is the purpose of your business? Once you have defined these, it is important to share your vision and ideals with the very people who will help you along the road to achieve those results. “So many people fail to plan and in doing so plan to fail”. If you look at the most successful businesses in Australia today, both small and large, a big reason for that growth is that they have clearly defined their purpose, they share their vision with their team and their customers, and they look to innovate constantly so that they grow and prosper profitably. So a key fundamental is to create a plan of what you want to achieve and how you are going to achieve it. Be specific.
Step 2 – Identify and target profitable customers
It makes sense that if you want to make more money in your business you need to identify what you perceive to be a profitable customer. The best place to look is your existing customers. Now, your biggest customer may not necessarily be your most profitable customer. In fact, they may be costing you money. So you need to clearly look at who your profitable customers really are and ask questions. Who are they? Where do they come from? How much do they invest in your products and services? How often do they buy from you? What’s their demographic? Are they from an industry specific group? Are their suppliers potential clients for you? Are their customers potential clients as well? The idea is to do a survey that gives you a strong indication of where you can start looking for profitable customers. Common sense tells us that if you focus on generating profitable customers your profits would have to increase.
Step 3 – Designing a proactive contact strategy
Once you know who your customers are and why they should buy from you, you have to look at how you’re going to communicate with them. Most businesses rely on advertising or word of mouth to generate enquiries and sales. Without measuring and monitoring the success of these strategies, they have little control in growing their business. The idea is that if you have multiple strategies focused on generating more clients you dramatically improve your chances of getting more business. So rather than have two strategies imagine implementing four or five strategies.
For example I had a client in the travel industry who was targeting corporate clients for their travel bookings. So rather than just advertising in magazines, letting people know that they provide corporate travel services as many of their competitors do, we devised four strategies that would target specific industries that consistently booked corporate travel.
The first strategy was a fax out campaign with a response devise attached that articulated great savings in corporate travel. The second strategy was to send out an email newsletter that educated prospective corporate clients on how they could manage their travel more effectively. The third strategy was to survey specific corporate companies on what they thought would help them achieve better results in handling their travel arrangements. The fourth strategy was to run seminars to educate corporate travelers in efficient travel management. These strategies were only targeted to one hundred businesses and in the space of two months had yielded nine clients that generated over $4.3 million in travel bookings.
By only running an ad this travel company would have limited their opportunity in generating a corporate client because they never would have come close to articulating the value in one advertisement and by taking a targeted and strategic approach they achieved an extraordinary result. How many strategies do you have in place that are consistently targeting your customers and are you measuring and managing the results of those strategies?
Step 4 – Train and manage your sales people
For many business owners one of the frustrating challenges can be the lack of performance of their sales management or of sales people. Most of the challenges are due to the lack of training, structure, systems to manage and assess sales people and support to assist them.
The key here is train them, don’t blame them. To improve the performance of your sales people there needs to be consistent training in specific skills sets, here are some to consider:
*Have regular product training and educate the sales person in the benefits of the product or service has to the customer
*Conduct communications skills training specifically in the areas of selling and relationship skills so that your team can build better rapport with prospects and customers
*Develop their time management skills so that they can maximize their productivity
*Provide personal development training in the areas of life skills so that they create a balance and can perform at their peak
For your sales people to consistently perform well, you need to implement continual training to reinforce the fundamentals.
Step 5 – The management of sales
The old adage “you can manage what you measure” stands very true in effective sales management. One of the questions I ask all business owners is have they set a target or a budget for achievement in place and is every team member who is responsible for contributing to that target, aware of their specific contribution. In many cases they do have a budget, however, in most cases they don’t tell anybody about it. So if your sales team is not aware, how can they possibly achieve expected results. You may think this is funny, but you would be surprised how many people don’t set revenue budgets and targets. And you wonder why up to 90% of businesses fail in the first five years of being in business.
I have helped clients set budgets and targets and put in measurement structures for their sales peoples performance and the results have been remarkable. To give you an example, I worked with a printing firm and we set a quarterly target that was 25% above their previous record. We then set an expected target for all their sales people to achieve. We then measured their performance on a weekly basis and within the first month they had reached a 25% increase in revenue. So we increased the budget to 40% and by the third month they had actually achieved a growth of 65%. This was largely due to the fact that we consistently reinforced and constantly focused the team to achieve that objective. “What you focus on most, becomes real to you”.
A simple plan to increase your sales revenue:
*Set quarterly sales budgets
*Set monthly reviews
*Give you team sales targets to achieve
*Measure their productivity and performance
*Reward the individuals and the team for achievement
Note that if you as the business owner are the sales person, you would also apply the same principles to yourself.
Step 6 – Educate, nurture and retain
A big part of your sales process is to continually educate your prospective and existing clients as well as to nurture your relationship and that you retain your profitable clients for as long as possible.
The idea is to look at ways of adding value to your prospects and clients by helping them to either gain more benefits from dealing with you and to maximize your selling opportunity by making sure they are aware of all the products and services you sell.
A good example of this is a telecommunications company I consulted to had developed an outstanding customer relationship management tool to not only generate “A” class clients but more importantly, to retain its clients. Here is part of the program they had implemented.
First of all, every client received a monthly newsletter in electronic and printed form to educate them with regard to new services and also to give them ideas on how to perform better in business by having business authors contribute with valuable information on management, sales, marketing etc.
Every quarter each client would have their contract reviewed and upgraded at no cost to the client so that they were always getting the best service possible. They would be given personal development programs twice a year on motivation and business and they would be invited to seminars and special events throughout the year free of charge.
They also implemented a program that touched their clients personally by sending a personal gift every other month. The purpose of this program was to acknowledge and thank the client for their support. The gift took the form of a book, magazine, movie tickets or a bottle of wine. This program was personal in its nature as information on their interests was gathered by the sales team.
The results from this program were phenomenal. Their retention rate of clients was 99%. They found that clients stayed on their contracts twice as long and the referrals from their clients were of an exceptional standard.
Look at the leaders in your industry. Observe the sales processes they employ and how they has contributed to the growth of their organization. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel – the fundamentals of a good sales process are simple and easy to implement. The key is to be clear about what you want and be committed to achieving your purpose.
John Logar helps organisations achieve more than they thought possible through consulting, coaching, keynote presentations, seminars and training in the areas of leadership, values, team performance, marketing and risk management. John has addressed and consulted to over 1,000 organisations in commerce, government and not-for-profit. For FREE sales and marketing resources and downloads go to http://johnlogar.blogspot.com
Over 90% of Australian businesses do not have a clearly defined sales process that is designed to consistently generate great customers that will invest as much as possible in their products and services and then nurture those clients into coming back again and again. These are three fundamental areas that impact directly on the growth of any business in any industry.
Let me walk you through a six step process that can dramatically improve your chances of generating great business from great customers.
Step 1 – To define and set the purpose of your business
With any objective there needs to be an understanding of the outcome. Like with any successful plan, we must begin with the end in mind. So for your business, what are you trying to achieve and why are you trying to achieve it? What is the real reason you are doing what you are doing? What is the purpose of your business? Once you have defined these, it is important to share your vision and ideals with the very people who will help you along the road to achieve those results. “So many people fail to plan and in doing so plan to fail”. If you look at the most successful businesses in Australia today, both small and large, a big reason for that growth is that they have clearly defined their purpose, they share their vision with their team and their customers, and they look to innovate constantly so that they grow and prosper profitably. So a key fundamental is to create a plan of what you want to achieve and how you are going to achieve it. Be specific.
Step 2 – Identify and target profitable customers
It makes sense that if you want to make more money in your business you need to identify what you perceive to be a profitable customer. The best place to look is your existing customers. Now, your biggest customer may not necessarily be your most profitable customer. In fact, they may be costing you money. So you need to clearly look at who your profitable customers really are and ask questions. Who are they? Where do they come from? How much do they invest in your products and services? How often do they buy from you? What’s their demographic? Are they from an industry specific group? Are their suppliers potential clients for you? Are their customers potential clients as well? The idea is to do a survey that gives you a strong indication of where you can start looking for profitable customers. Common sense tells us that if you focus on generating profitable customers your profits would have to increase.
Step 3 – Designing a proactive contact strategy
Once you know who your customers are and why they should buy from you, you have to look at how you’re going to communicate with them. Most businesses rely on advertising or word of mouth to generate enquiries and sales. Without measuring and monitoring the success of these strategies, they have little control in growing their business. The idea is that if you have multiple strategies focused on generating more clients you dramatically improve your chances of getting more business. So rather than have two strategies imagine implementing four or five strategies.
For example I had a client in the travel industry who was targeting corporate clients for their travel bookings. So rather than just advertising in magazines, letting people know that they provide corporate travel services as many of their competitors do, we devised four strategies that would target specific industries that consistently booked corporate travel.
The first strategy was a fax out campaign with a response devise attached that articulated great savings in corporate travel. The second strategy was to send out an email newsletter that educated prospective corporate clients on how they could manage their travel more effectively. The third strategy was to survey specific corporate companies on what they thought would help them achieve better results in handling their travel arrangements. The fourth strategy was to run seminars to educate corporate travelers in efficient travel management. These strategies were only targeted to one hundred businesses and in the space of two months had yielded nine clients that generated over $4.3 million in travel bookings.
By only running an ad this travel company would have limited their opportunity in generating a corporate client because they never would have come close to articulating the value in one advertisement and by taking a targeted and strategic approach they achieved an extraordinary result. How many strategies do you have in place that are consistently targeting your customers and are you measuring and managing the results of those strategies?
Step 4 – Train and manage your sales people
For many business owners one of the frustrating challenges can be the lack of performance of their sales management or of sales people. Most of the challenges are due to the lack of training, structure, systems to manage and assess sales people and support to assist them.
The key here is train them, don’t blame them. To improve the performance of your sales people there needs to be consistent training in specific skills sets, here are some to consider:
*Have regular product training and educate the sales person in the benefits of the product or service has to the customer
*Conduct communications skills training specifically in the areas of selling and relationship skills so that your team can build better rapport with prospects and customers
*Develop their time management skills so that they can maximize their productivity
*Provide personal development training in the areas of life skills so that they create a balance and can perform at their peak
For your sales people to consistently perform well, you need to implement continual training to reinforce the fundamentals.
Step 5 – The management of sales
The old adage “you can manage what you measure” stands very true in effective sales management. One of the questions I ask all business owners is have they set a target or a budget for achievement in place and is every team member who is responsible for contributing to that target, aware of their specific contribution. In many cases they do have a budget, however, in most cases they don’t tell anybody about it. So if your sales team is not aware, how can they possibly achieve expected results. You may think this is funny, but you would be surprised how many people don’t set revenue budgets and targets. And you wonder why up to 90% of businesses fail in the first five years of being in business.
I have helped clients set budgets and targets and put in measurement structures for their sales peoples performance and the results have been remarkable. To give you an example, I worked with a printing firm and we set a quarterly target that was 25% above their previous record. We then set an expected target for all their sales people to achieve. We then measured their performance on a weekly basis and within the first month they had reached a 25% increase in revenue. So we increased the budget to 40% and by the third month they had actually achieved a growth of 65%. This was largely due to the fact that we consistently reinforced and constantly focused the team to achieve that objective. “What you focus on most, becomes real to you”.
A simple plan to increase your sales revenue:
*Set quarterly sales budgets
*Set monthly reviews
*Give you team sales targets to achieve
*Measure their productivity and performance
*Reward the individuals and the team for achievement
Note that if you as the business owner are the sales person, you would also apply the same principles to yourself.
Step 6 – Educate, nurture and retain
A big part of your sales process is to continually educate your prospective and existing clients as well as to nurture your relationship and that you retain your profitable clients for as long as possible.
The idea is to look at ways of adding value to your prospects and clients by helping them to either gain more benefits from dealing with you and to maximize your selling opportunity by making sure they are aware of all the products and services you sell.
A good example of this is a telecommunications company I consulted to had developed an outstanding customer relationship management tool to not only generate “A” class clients but more importantly, to retain its clients. Here is part of the program they had implemented.
First of all, every client received a monthly newsletter in electronic and printed form to educate them with regard to new services and also to give them ideas on how to perform better in business by having business authors contribute with valuable information on management, sales, marketing etc.
Every quarter each client would have their contract reviewed and upgraded at no cost to the client so that they were always getting the best service possible. They would be given personal development programs twice a year on motivation and business and they would be invited to seminars and special events throughout the year free of charge.
They also implemented a program that touched their clients personally by sending a personal gift every other month. The purpose of this program was to acknowledge and thank the client for their support. The gift took the form of a book, magazine, movie tickets or a bottle of wine. This program was personal in its nature as information on their interests was gathered by the sales team.
The results from this program were phenomenal. Their retention rate of clients was 99%. They found that clients stayed on their contracts twice as long and the referrals from their clients were of an exceptional standard.
Look at the leaders in your industry. Observe the sales processes they employ and how they has contributed to the growth of their organization. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel – the fundamentals of a good sales process are simple and easy to implement. The key is to be clear about what you want and be committed to achieving your purpose.
John Logar helps organisations achieve more than they thought possible through consulting, coaching, keynote presentations, seminars and training in the areas of leadership, values, team performance, marketing and risk management. John has addressed and consulted to over 1,000 organisations in commerce, government and not-for-profit. For FREE sales and marketing resources and downloads go to http://johnlogar.blogspot.com
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