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I
have worked with literally dozens of companies who had been frustrated
with sales growth and the sales process. An endless turnover of sales
people leads to a constant search for qualified sales professionals and
an enormous frustration with all the good money down the drain. The owner,
whose time should be spent in creating and managing the business plan,
spends all of their time putting out fires and struggling with their
people. The constant turnover in the sales department erodes the
confidence of the entire team. The frustration with sales team leads
the owner to micro manage the areas of the business over which they do have control leading to employee tension, frustration and loss of confidence in the owner's ability to manage the business.
Why Do So Many Businesses
Struggle with Sales Development?
I have been able
to help many businesses achieve powerful and lasting results. Of
course some failed to see the hoped for outcomes. Without exception,
however, if developed strategies were followed then results were achieved.
Most consulting
is not truly difficult work - it is really about understanding business
models combined with the real world experience to know what works and what
doesn't work. The problem for business owners and why some fail to
achieve results is that they refuse to understand the fundamental truth
of all roads to improvement.
"If we want our world to change then we must change!"
Nothing can
change in our world or in our businesses if we refuse to look at things
in a different way or accept a different reality.
I have been
fairly physically active in the last eight years. I have run a few marathons and
participated in a few triathlons. Part of the process was the
understanding that if I wanted to change my body then I needed to
change. The solution to body weight is simple - calories consumed and calories
burned. If you want stronger muscles then you need to lift
increasingly heavier weights. If you want to run faster then you need
to run faster - speed drills. The list of the obvious goes on and on,
however, how many people pay gym fees and hire personal trainers and
their bodies never change. The same is true in business.
Sales and
marketing is not a secret. Everything you need to know is out there in
books and on the web - most of it for free. The real problems lay with reality that most
business managers want their sales success to change without their
business changing. They want everything to remain the same but somehow
want their sales to increase. This is the basis of sales failure.
We Provide the Tools to Focus on
Building Your Dream
Not Struggling With Your Business.
Cold calling and
performing boring repetitive sales functions are the tools of the
salesperson who is lost. Rainmakers and the sales stars do not cold
call the telephone book.
Rainmakers
analyze the business opportunities and choose the course of action that
will provide the maximum results and aggressively pursue that course of
action supporting themselves with all the necessary tools.
Case Study
I worked with a
client who, prior to me taking on the consulting role, had a sales
person who for three years sat at his desk and cold called prospects -
writing names and numbers in coil notebooks. The sales person had no
script, no literature, no proposals to send out, the company had an
unprofessional web site that had been created by the receptionist. The
sales person was trying to sell customized software programs that sold
for $285,000.00!
The sales person did this for three years until fired
by the owner. As we started our work with the owner we presented a plan
that required a new website, sales literature, new company logo, press
releases, sales scripts, sales training, etc. At first the owner
agreed with these changes but quickly fell back on his old beliefs
demanding that what was needed was telephone cold calling. It was at
this juncture that I realized that the previous salesperson has simply
been doing what he was told to do. I confronted the owner who stuck to
his guns that this was the right path for his business. We ended the consulting
immediately.
Creating a
winning sales strategy and action plan first requires an analysis and
testing of what works best. Doing what has always failed in the past
is not a sound strategy. Try new ideas, track actions and measure
results and then incorporate the winning changes into the way you do
things. Many businesses believe that cold calling is the answer - it is
NOT the answer. It might have been 25 of 50 years ago but not today.
When Red Bull
launched its product cold calling did NOT work. Retailers did NOT want
it and would not give up valuable retail space for a test on a drink
that cost too much and tasted bad. Success did not come from
cold-calling but from creating a viral marketing plan that created
demand that retailers could not ignore. Red Bull is a 4.5 Billion
dollar business and controls 70 percent of the energy drink market - a
segment they created.
The people at
1-800-Got-Junk don't work the telephone book asking people if they have
junk they need to get rid of instead they have focused on creating
powerful grass roots marketing including spots on Oprah Winfrey and Dr.
Phil as well as hundred of publicity stunts to raise the profile of their service.
Their sales effort is focused on securing bookings with prospective
clients who call them! !-800-Got-Junk is a 120 million dollar business
in a market that until they arrived was almost always one man operation.
How is that for Vision!
Creating sales
is Not about hiring a competent sales rep and sending them to hit the
street with a few thousand business cards. Cold calling and banging on
doors is a sales process that belongs to the last century (or the
century before that). Consumers are sophisticated and busy and lack
the patience to be interrupted with what is important to our business not theirs.
Of course, sales people do. cold call but it does not make them happy and over time they loose their enthusiasm;
then selling become impossible.
Throwing rocks to kill birds may work if you throw enough rocks...
...but a rifle will get better results!
If you want results - get a rifle!
Our work is to determine, in your industry, what is the rifle!
