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#10. Sales
In contrast to the Sales Process explored earlier, this is the macro picture of your overall sales and their impact on operations, corporate function, financial and fiscal viability and overall health.
In today’s economy, big and small businesses are seeking every opportunity to win sales through competitive advantages. Smart owners of small business know that a sales strategy can create a competitive advantage.
Selling consists of two main functions: tactics and strategy. Sales strategy is the planning of sales activities: methods of reaching clients, competitive differences and resources available. Tactics involves the day-to-day selling: prospecting, sales process, and follow-up.
The tactics of selling are very important but more vitally important is the strategy of sales. The advantages are too compelling to ignore.
Competitive Advantages of Strategic Sales Planning
Triple-tiered Sales Strategy
The development of any type of plan begins with research. The insight gained for a competitive advantage comes from the marketplace, and only later from your mind. The approach to use is what is called “Triple-tier Sales Strategy“. Look at your client and the outside influences pressing their business. Approach all three tiers to understand your client.
Tier 1: Associations: What associations does your target customer belong to? Contact the membership director and establish a relationship not for selling but to better understand their member’s needs. Civic groups, religious congregations, business forums, leisure gatherings and informal (but regular) groups as well as service/volunteer organizations may be fruitful for you to investigate.
Tier 2: Suppliers: Identify non-competitive suppliers who sell to your customer. Learn their challenges and look for partnering solutions, especially with an eye toward INNOVATION. Let’s Do It Differently!
Tier 3: Customers: Work directly with your customer and ask them what their needs are and if your business may offer a possible solution. A HUGE percentage of failed businesses NEVER ASKED their customers what THEY wanted, and went down trying to sell buggy-whips to car owners!
An excellent example of developing a “triple-tiered sales strategy” is a story of a small accounting firm. This firm wanted to target independent truck drivers for accounting services.
The competition for this firm was a big accounting company. This small business approached the truck drivers association and learned that one concern of their membership was receiving financing for a new vehicle, which can be in the $130,000 to 175,000 range for a new, air-conditioned tractor rig.
A discussion with the suppliers of trucks, revealed financing was only approved after the truckers supplied financial statements. The financials were often prepared by a large accounting firm who set appointments on their time and in their office.
The pieces of the puzzle were now coming together. The customer was the last piece of critical information. Truckers were frustrated by the inconvenience of visiting an accounting firm because of the time they spend on the road. The best solution was to bring the accounting service to the customer on their terms and time.
The small accounting office had defined a clear sales strategy: offer in-home financial statement preparation for truck drivers seeking financing through truck manufacturers. All sales leads would be referred from the supplier. This strategy was a win-win for the association, the supplier, the customer and the small accounting firm.
The moral of the story is to gain a competitive advantage by looking at all sides of the equation, tactics and strategy. Use the triple-tiered approach to win business and outsell the big companies in your market.
Action Plan: Review and tweak YOUR overall Sales Strategy. How can you find another pillar to support it? Where can you expand? Where would innovation make sense? THIS alone can double your profits in very short order!
#9. Marketing (Strategy)
Marketing strategy is your process allowing your organization to concentrate its limited resources on the greatest opportunities to increase sales and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.
A marketing strategy should be centered around the key concept that customer satisfaction is your main goal. Marketing strategy is a method of focusing an organization’s energies and resources on courses of action which can lead to increased sales and dominance of a targeted market niche.
A marketing strategy combines product development, promotion, distribution, pricing, relationship management and other elements; identifies the firm’s marketing goals, and explains how they will be achieved, ideally within a stated timeframe. Marketing strategy determines the choice of target market segments, positioning, marketing mix, and allocation of resources. It is most effective when it is an integral component of overall firm strategy, helping define how the organization will successfully engage customers, prospects, and competitors in the market arena.
Corporate strategies, corporate missions, and corporate goals. As the Ideal Client constitutes the source of a company’s revenue, marketing strategy is closely linked with sales. A key component of marketing strategy is often to keep marketing in line with a company’s overarching mission statement.
Basic concept:
Action Plan: Set out, in writing, a simple, clear, concise one-paragraph Marketing Strategy. (This ties in with Ideal Client and Elevator Pitch. Get on it, NOW!)
#8. Ideal Client
By marketing to and networking with your ideal clients, you spend your time and energy directly on the individuals who will purchase the most of your products or services! Makes sense, doesn’t it? So take the time to study a bit and LEARN who your Ideal Client is, in order to learn WHAT he/she wants and WHY he/she wants it. Ideal Client is the driving motive for the very existence of YOUR company, YOUR niche!
One tool that can help you to market to your ideal client is called your “Ideal Client Profile.” Designing this profile is a great personal exercise, although you should involve others in it, too. Why? Because only too often business owners are too close to their own enterprises to accurately create the best overall picture of their own ideal client. Michael Gerber, author and consultant, speaks to this issue in what I consider the most important book for a business owner to read, “The E-myth Revisited”, available at Amazon.
To make sure that you know who your ideal client is, create a survey for your current clients to complete and provide them with a discount coupon or gift as an incentive for helping. You can also network with other business owners and ask their opinions about who would buy your products, and why! Finally, it doesn’t hurt to ask new clients what they would like or want as part of the terrific customer service you provide. I’m betting you’ll learn a lot!
When evaluating new marketing tools, ask yourself:
· Is this something my ideal client would need, enjoy or purchase? · Will this attract my ideal client to my business?
If not, the idea may be better suited to the ideal client of another business. In that case, contact the business owner! After all, building relationships and collaboration is a big part of both life and business, isn’t it?
Things you can do with your Ideal Client Profile:
1. Give a copy to all your friends, family, employees or contractors.
2. Put a copy on your business stationary
3. Find a terrific frame for it and hang it on your office wall.
4. Use it on your Web site.
5. Carry a copy in your wallet, car, and briefcase.
6. Create an affirmation that will help you to attract your ideal client.
7. Review your ideal client statement or list every six months as part of your overall business plan.
Over time, your Ideal Client Profile will change as you raise your standards, alter your business plan or add new products. To be prepared for such re-evaluations, make note of who you are really attracting to your business: who is asking questions, who is buying, and who is subscribing to your newsletters. Keep track of these things over time, analyze the patterns you find there and use the information to your best advantage when deciding on, and marketing to, your ideal client.
Briefly, this means DISTILLING the FEELINGS, PROBLEMS and NEEDS which drive and motivate your Ideal Client!
Answer these “Ideal Client Questions”
If you print this out, you should have enough room to fill in the answers, OR you can copy from this email, pop into your Open Office word processor, (okay, or MS-Word) and expand the writing space to your tastes.
Age, gender, sexual preference, religion and whatever demographics fit.
What attributes do they posses? (Passion, consistency, committed)
What are they passionate about?
Where do they live? Where do they work?
What types of people, places or things do they like?
How do they learn and where do they like to go to learn?
How do they learn about YOU/Your Company and where do they like to go to learn more about YOU?
What do they read? When do they read it? Where do they read?
What shops, Web sites, etc. do they purchase products from?
What meetings, groups, and classes, forums, users-groups, Web 2.0 social spots do they attend?
What type of people are you attracting to your business?
Action Plan: Talk to your Marketing, Promotional, Advertising and other relevant Team members, both INSIDE and OUTSIDE your Company, and start learning WHO your Ideal Client is, TODAY! Get back to this a couple times a month, and keep it exciting!
#7. Decision-Making
Decision: the Key to Transformation
In his classic work, “Think & Grow Rich“, Napoleon Hill stated that 98% of working people are in the jobs they have through indecision, that is, because they never made the decision about what they wanted to do in their lives in the first place. Indecision explains why many people feel that they have a life purpose, but have no idea what it is: the key to transformation. It is one of the key character traits distinguishing high performers from the vast ranks of the mediocre.
Decision is, by definition, behind every truly great achievement anyone ever makes. Interestingly, the most successful people make decisions quickly and change them slowly. They persist with the decisions they have made. However, failures are very slow to make any decision at all (most never make any), and they change the ones they have made very rapidly indeed. Which description applies to you?
Decision-Making Defined
Decision making is a process of first diverging to explore the possibilities and then converging on a solution(s).
The Latin root of the word decision means “to cut off from all alternatives”. This is what you should do when you decide. Burn your boats and your bridges behind you. Get radical, root out everything but your Definite Chief Aim!
Analyzing Proposals: Six Thinking Hats
The Six Thinking Hats proposal analysis tool invented by Edward de Bono4 is particularly useful for evaluating innovative and provocative ideas. While most of our thinking is adversarial, the six thinking hats technique overcomes these difficulties by forcing everyone to think in parallel. As participants wear each hat – red, yellow, black, white, green or blue – they all must think a certain way at the same time…
Here are some popular Best Practices:
Make Quick Decisions by Establishing Guiding Principles
Companies fast-on-their-feet have demonstrated the ability to sustain surge and velocity and have established sets of guiding principles to help them make quick decisions. Abandoning theoretical and politically correct ‘values’ and bureaucratic procedures in favor of a practical, down-to-earth list of guiding principles will help your company make the decision-making process much faster and at the lower, hands-on, front-line level. Only one question will need to be asked of any proposed course of action: Does it fit our guiding principles?
Tools you can investigate include:
Action Plan: Set onto paper your company’s Guiding Principles. Discuss them with the staff who’ll need them, with an eye toward Practicality, Simplicity, Courtesy and Justice.
