The Levers to Your Sales Growth Success

Dun & Bradstreet conducted a study that evaluated the factors that contribute to business success. They concluded the following:

– businesses with high sales tend to succeed

– businesses with low sales tend to fail

– all else is commentary    

We can cut our costs, improve our efficiency, consolidate our purchasing power, etc. However, ultimately, our success is going to be measured by how well we sell our goods and services. Hence, our future success lies in how effectively we pull on those levers that influence sales growth.

Sales Growth Success

Brian Tracy is the person who introduced me to the following approach related to sales growth. He describes adherence to the following as The Way to Wealth.

In order to generate increased sales revenue, we need to determine how we can leverage the four inputs that drive sales.

First, we need to find more leads who we will convert into prospects. (This step requires that we know where or how we can find leads.) In turn, we need to convert the resulting prospects into customers.  Both of these steps have a corresponding conversion rate. That is, what percentage of our leads do we turn into prospects and what percentage of prospects become customers?

Can we find more leads and increase our conversion rates?

Once we have customers enjoying our goods or services, we need to know the number of transactions per customer that have occurred during a given period. For the sake of illustration, let’s consider a 12 month period.

How do we increase the number of transactions of each customer?

Finally, our measurements need to capture the average dollar amount per transaction during the 12 months under consideration. Do we have a strategy that we can use to increase this number?

Now, please understand that measuring the above numbers are critical to understanding where we can apply greater leverage to our business. So, if these numbers aren’t part of our current key performance indicators, we need to realize that flying in the dark can be extremely hazardous!

In summary, we know that the levers to our sales success include finding more leads and converting them to more prospects and subsequently converting them to a greater number of customers. What can we do to improve our lead/prospect conversion rates?  Once we have them in the door as customers, what actions can we take to increase the frequency of their purchases and the dollar amount that is spent on each purchase?  This is where we might put on our marketer’s cap to contemplate such things as segmentation and differentiation, as part of our marketing strategy. But, that is for another post.

Now it is time to leverage your sales growth to greater heights!  May the fulcrum be with you!

For some greater detail on the above subject, you might like to listen to a webinar that I recently conducted for SmallBusinessSolvers. It can be watched below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01V2ZSoUxUM

 

 

 

Sales Success Intensive

Brian Tracy has done it again!

The survival and success of all businesses relies upon the ability of the business to sell its products and services. Highly skilled sales teams and managers have a greater impact on revenue and volume than any other single investment or activity. With this reality in mind, Brian Tracy International has launched a video based sales training program that features Brian Tracy presenting the seven steps of the sales process. It is an intensive one-day training program and it is appropriately called Sales Success Intensive.  Hold on to your hats, as it is very impactful.

Brian Tracy is certainly one of the world’s leading sales training authorities, if not the leader in this field.  He has trained approximately two million sales professionals, around the world, during his extensive career. His methods are proven. They work.

I am now a certified Sales Success Intensive facilitator. Sales Success Intensive is an experience based teaching program.

Contact me to learn how you can develop new skills in the field of sales or simply “sharpen the saw”. An investment in yourself is one that keeps on paying.

 

 

Brian Tracy on Goals 2014

I’ve just finished listening to Brian Tracy discuss goals and how to make 2014 your best year ever.

For me, there were some very simple, yet practical takeaways from his presentation.  Not least among them was his suggestion that we need to be clear about our goals but flexible about our process to achieve them.  I wonder how often our personal experience bias gets in our way and prevent us from being as flexible as we could be?

It was also interesting to think about the three major obstacles that prevent goal achievement, as presented by Brian.  He suggested that they are:

1) Comfort zone.  We become complacent about our status and progress.  Overcome this obstacle by committing to doing something different.

2) Fear of failure.  This will paralyze us into inactivity.  Commit to failing fast and learning from the failures.  Self correct and then repeat the process.  Failing fast and early in the process will keep the cost of failure low.

3) Path of least resistance.  Taking the easy route might sound compelling but how many times will we miss opportunities because they are disguised as hard work?

Brian also reiterated his 10 goal method.  He particularly focused on developing a list of ten goals and then identifying the one goal that will have the greatest positive impact on your life.  Move it to the top of your list and then do something.  Get started and keep going.

One of the great anchoring questions that he posed to the audience was:

“is what I’m doing creating value or generating revenue for my business”?

Of course, if our answer is NO, then surely we should ask ourselves, “why am I doing this”?

I’m always impressed by the breadth of ideas and suggestions that Brian makes available during his teleconferences.  These sessions are designed for FocalPoint coaches but we are encouraged to invite guests to participate.  If you have any interest in being made aware of future Brian Tracy presentations, let me know.

Hunt or Be Hunted

The top 20% of salespeople earn 80% of the money.  But, we need to remember that the top 20% of salespeople started out in the bottom 20% of the selling population.  Those at the top do the hunting, while those at the bottom are hunted.

Selling consists of a stepwise process that can be learned by anyone who has the motivation to improve his or her selling results.  I had a public school teacher who was fond of saying “repetition for emphasis”.  Well, the process of learning new ideas; practicing them; getting customer feedback and then repeating the process would have my former teacher nodding her head in agreement.

The learning cycle normally takes one from unconscious incompetence (don’t know what we don’t know) to unconscious competence (know it instinctively).  Your selling results will track this learning cycle.  So, if we want to be in the top 20% of salespeople in our particular field, we need to be sufficiently motivated to be hunters rather than the hunted.

FocalPoint Coaching, in conjunction with Brian Tracy International, have condensed the best sales teaching materials of Brian Tracy into an impactful one day, video based training program.  Brian has trained more than two million sales professionals over the past 32 years and now his understanding and insights are available through the Sales Success Intensive (SSI) training program.  I have been certified to facilitate this program and you can be on your way to significantly improved sales results if you participate in this training program.  View my endorsement from Brian Tracy here. 

Contact me to learn when the next SSI program is scheduled.

Impending Success

I can’t help but think that fall represents a kind of dash to the finish line for many businesses.  We are starting to think about 2014 but we still have fifteen weeks to hit or miss the targets that we built for ourselves twelve months ago.  Are we up to the challenges that still lie ahead?

I’m off to an upcoming Brian Tracy Sales Certification workshop and I can’t help but wonder how many companies are in need of some sales help.  John Kenneth Galbraith once said that you “can’t expect improved results with unimproved people”.  Furthermore, a Dun and Bradstreet analysis of business success found that “businesses succeed because of high sales; businesses fail because of low sales.  All else is commentary”.  It can’t get much more succinct than that.

When we talk about our sales effort, we  frequently focus on those people that are charged with the responsibility of bringing new sales in through the front door.  Interestingly, anyone involved in a customer touchpoint can impact our sales performance.  The reference to touchpoint means any of a number of occasions when we interact with the customer.  It is possible that some of those interactions are not viewed by us as sales opportunities.  Examples that come to mind include such transactions as invoicing, product delivery and the provision of after sales service.  However, all touchpoints influence our customers and impact their decision to continue their relationship with us in the future or not.  Hence, at a minimum, they are opportunities to influence future sales.  But, do we invest in the training of all employees who can impact our sales performance?  Or do we perhaps tend to think that the selling stops when the purchase order is processed?

The major reason that existing customers decide to leave us is driven by a lack of courtesy displayed towards them.  Really!  In a world where it is tough enough to find customers, you would think we would do everything we can to hold on to the existing ones.  That would suggest that a modicum of sales training should be in your program.

On the new customer front, do we realize that selling is a process that can be taught?  Selling doesn’t need to be the hurdle that we often make it out to be.  There is no magic to the selling process and it isn’t that some are born to it and the vast majority of us simply can’t do it.  The truth is that we are all involved in the selling process, in some form or another, all the time.  We just don’t think in those terms.  Another truth is that we can all get better at it.  Are we doing enough to ensure that happens?

In closing, here is a sobering quotation to ponder: “the company that stops getting better gets worse” or so suggests Phil Kotler, a well renowned marketing professor.