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.
Future State of Affairs 