4+1 PRINCIPLES FOR SALES SUCCESS

Developing that crazy idea of yours into the next big thing and getting everybody talk about it is not good enough if you are not making enough money out of it.

In the business world, it is not a celebrity contest - I don’t give a fuck fufu about how popular your company is, if you are not living up to expectations in terms of money (profits).

Whether you run a small business or a mega business, you have to pay particular attention to the sales department and the relationships between sales people and customers.

Sales=Money…… No sales = No money. So in planning and carrying out an effective and systematic growth strategy, pay ATTENTION to sales.

I did some research and drafted out these proven principles to help boost your sales. Understanding these principles will help establish a sales culture in your business that will foster maximum sales growth.

Do not read this alone. Also force get your sales people to read this article.

DO YOUR HOMEWORK: Before you seek information from customers, learn as much as you can about industry trends so you can ask informed, intelligent questions. Look for facts, figures and trends that will help you shape your product or service for the next round of sales effort. Use all available resources: online trend data, websites, annual reports for public companies, demographics, industry publications, competitors, industry guides, trade shows, customer surveys, even a good walkabout in your own retail store. These sources will tell you about your customers’ needs raise your IQ and set the table for future business ideas.

  

ANTICIPATE CUSTOMER NEEDS: Regardless of whether you’re involved in business-to-business or business-to-consumer sales. If you are going to sell as much as you can, you’ll need to develop strong, long-term relationships with your customers. The best way to do this is to anticipate what your customers need in order to customers need in order to be successful at whatever they are doing. Since sales people are on the front line in contacting customers, they should know more than anyone else does about what customers needs. The more you know about your customers’ needs the better you can anticipate what they need to buy from your company. Ask them about their short- and long-term initiatives; they will be happy to tell you. Listen as they explain their problems to you. Try to be the solution to their problems.

EXPAND YOUR NETWORK: As you are selling, work hard to branch out through your current customers. If you have many individual customers, get to know more about them after they purchase your product or services. Find out the names of those who are using them, how they are using them and why. Do they use the product alone, or do they use it in conjunction with other products? If it’s the latter, can you provide those other products as well?

If your customers are other businesses, try to work your way into the fabric of the customer’s company by expanding your reach into other parts of it. Meet people in as many different departments and other operational areas as possible. Just do all you can to expand your rolodex. The information you get will give you a huge head start on your competition.

MOTIVATE SALES: It is very important for your sales force to be extra motivated to sell (especially pre-sell) whether you’re trying to expand your business by promoting new products or services, or by going into new markets.

Few things are worse for your bottom line than a sales force that’s just going through the motions. Sales people need to care about your product or service. If they don’t, that gets communicated, and the prospect wonders, why should I care?

The sales force should never lack for motivation to succeed in a new business development arena. That’s why it’s important to give your sales people incentives to help develop new product and services, as well as new customers.

So get creative. Think of ways to get your salespeople think more about the business growth. Bribe them, shoot them, feed them, just do anything that’d motivate them – you know them better.

On a final note, also develop your talent (your employees) enroll them in trainings that will help them help your business grow. Promote internally, don’t be afraid to give opportunities to those at lower levels. Work with them as your company grows and give them the opportunity to rise to the occasion.

What do you think about these principles and kindly share with us what works for you and your business?

You can also follow me on twitter @sadiqspeaks to get more tips on business, marketing and bullshit

Photo Credit: Entrepreneur via shutter stock

ONE THING YOUR COMPETITORS DO NOT HAVE

It is no longer news that the greatest assets an organization can ever have are the right mix of people, what is news now, is the ability to harness and effectively utilize these talents. It is one thing to have a pool of talent, and another to bring out the best out of the pool for the common good of the organization and its stakeholders.

Talent management in both small and medium organization is source of concern as either the boss becomes a mini dictator or doesn’t understand the concept at all. The 21^st century entrepreneurs that must be successful should posses or imbibe a skill for finding the right people, then motivating and managing them to achieve greater significant results. The best way to achieve this is to come up with a simple but effective system.

THE TALENT SYSTEM

A business or organization needs a Talent System that is based on the key principle that there are three elements to the expectations from staff. These elements are:

Attitude

Skills

Responsibility

Attitude is far more important than anything else. It has to do with honesty, enthusiasm, friendliness, desire to learn and a host of others.

Skills are what the people need to know, what they need to be good at, in order to do their job effectively and efficiently. Examples of skills may include: communication skills, networking, writing letters, programming computers, data analyses, operating machines, driving a vehicle and a host of others.

Responsibilities are our expectations from them at different times and levels. For instance it is the responsibility of a marketer to meet his/her marketing target every month. This responsibility can only be carried out effectively amidst the right attitude and with the right skills.

Talent management all starts with attitude. If employees are recruited based on their attitudes, then trained with the necessary skills to take on responsibilities as there come, it will be a lot better and easier than having employees with the right skills then trying to ensure they have the right attitude afterwards. It can be frustrating. Imagine having a staff with the right skills but very dishonest and fraudulent? It is better to have one without the skills but honest, dedicated, and upright. He can learn the skills on the job. Employees with the right attitude will pick the required skills at a fast pace because the attitude usually determines the altitude.  But it will be pretty difficult if not impossible to change one with terrible attitude. As entrepreneurs, one of the most important signposts to watch out for in all dealings is the attitude.

Your team and the future

Most start-ups hardly imagine that there would be anyone other than them handling the business, as such fail to do a holistic plan for the future. It is honestly very easy to fall prey of never designing what the company will look like in future. Some people just add one person here, one person there, without recourse to planning. It would help most businesses if at the early stage, the owners can develop the structure of the kind of company they are building then work back from there to how it should be now. Ie, designing your business in reverse – see the end from the beginning.

You could start by itemizing the responsibilities that will need to be taken care of when the company eventually blossoms. The responsibility list for the big picture might be:

·          Manage existing customer accounts

·          Identify and research new customers

·          Approach new customers

·          Win business from new customers

·          Communicate with local press

·          Communicate with shareholders

·          Do newsletters

·          Update the website

·          Manage external supplies

·          Recruit new talent

·          Train talent

·          Effective and efficient administration

·          Invoicing

·          Debt recovery

·          Pay suppliers

·          Plan finances

·          Manage finances

·          Prepare monthly management accounts

·          Test products for quality

·          Provide certain services

·          The list is endless

It is certainly not the case that each responsibility represents a person’s job; it is just that it needs doing by somebody. Each employee will of course be saddled with many responsibilities. It is then important to allot these responsibilities according to groups as represented in the company e.g marketing, production, finance, sales, administration, support services etc. At least you have a rough organi9zational chart for the future with all the tasks broken down to the various groups. Copy onto a sheet of paper to keep and make reference to.

The present team

The next step in this system is to repeat the exercise above only this time to fit the current organizational circumstances.

Go through the list allotted each department, unit or group and begin to remove the tasks that are not currently needed in the business. Once that is done, you would be left with responsibilities that need to be fulfilled now.

The Talent cake

As a result of the way some start-ups commence their business, they usual do not see the need to put in place a formal system to define jobs and assess the performance of employees. Honestly it is not everybody that can handle freedom as such people need to be guided and controlled. The only way to do this effectively in a company is by setting up a simple system to outline expectations and requirements. To get a good system, you have to look out for one that will strike the balance between simplicity and effectiveness, and avoid creating boring, complicated paperwork.  Let’s consider the talent cake system.

Picture the Talent Cake

The talent cake is three layers stacked one above the other, getting smaller as they go up. Usually drawn on one side of the paper, it is everything need to define the employee’s job and make your assessments. Each cake is divided into slices, with each slice representing one part of the layer.

As stated earlier, the expectations from your employees re based on these three factors:

Attitude

Skills

Responsibilities

Attitude, is the bottom cake, the base on which everything is built. If their attitude is poor, then their output will be dissatisfying. Likely attitudes for team work include:

Honesty

Enthusiasm

Helpfulness

Keenness to learn etc

Divide the layer of attitude into slices of qualities you expect from your team. The quality of attitude should be such that fit into your company attitude generally.

With skills, you identify the range of abilities you expect the team to display during the course of duties. Skills can be learned, so the team members can grow their skills as they are in the organization. The range of expectations could include: Proficiency in the use of MS-Word, Corel draw, power point presentations, data base management, concept development, etc.

Responsibilities are on top of the cake, which rests upon Attitude and Skills, because being able to meet their responsibilities depends entirely on the other two. Responsibilities are particular tasks and assignments or expectations of work. This layer might include: meet monthly marketing target of N2, 000,000.00, produce xyz quantity of goods every two weeks, increase profit by 20% every quarter, etc.