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I’m dedicating this weeks blog to one subject; predictable sales growth. This is the holy grail for most SME’s. Imagine being able to plan for growth based on a stable platform of sales that you could forecast?
Can a business truly predict revenue with certainty or is it fanciful to think this is attainable? This week we unpick the bones of this complex issue.
Predictable sales growth – Goal or flight of fancy?
If you had the confidence to ...
One of the key principles within the coaching system I belonged to was that your business is either growing or dying. This is another one of those statements that is hard to disagree with whether we are referring to companies or people. But you know me well enough by now to know that is exactly what I intend to do. By the end of this article you will see more options for growth than you are currently seeing.
Money, money , ...
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Its a bit of a problem when your customers don’t seem to want to spend time with you. If you struggle with getting face time with your customers then read on……
One of the participants on my Sales Ninja programme is an Account Manager responsible for keeping and growing the revenue of about forty of the companies larger customers. As I am sure you can imagine it is a bit of a problem when some of them don’t want to see ...
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I was talking to one of my clients last week trying to help them identify and plug a margin leak. These leaks occur when the net and/or gross margins do not not add up to what is expected. There are basically two types; pricing or efficiency leakage.
Pricing leakage happens when the pricing is put together.
Efficiency leakage happens when it costs more to deliver the product or service to the customer than was priced ...
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Lots of businesses in the area seem to be very busy at the moment. Some companies have full order books and are actually struggling to keep up with customer enquiries. This is cause for celebration (providing of course that your margins mean this is profitable business).
This type of activity is what I like to call ‘hamster wheel’ work. It is the core activity or the ‘quote to invoice’ process that every business has in some form or another. Without this ...
Continue Reading →My old boss at Tesco had an interesting way of considering whether to invest the companies money on stuff that we told him we needed. He calculated the profit in an average shopping trolley using this value as a unit of currency to measure whether expenditure would provide a good return for the business.
For example I wanted to do an advanced facilitation training course. We worked out that 55 trolleys of shopping would have to be sold to pay for ...
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I bought a new car just before Christmas. My homework was done and I knew what manufacturer I wanted but I was not entirely sure which model or specification I was going to buy.
On arrival at the dealership I was excited at the prospect of picking the right vehicle for me. My salesman (let’s call him Gareth to protect his identity) proceeded to ask me absolutely nothing about the type of driving I do, what I look for in a ...
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Ladder Rung 1 – Suspect to Prospect
Out there in the world there are plenty of potential customers who would be perfect for your business. In ActionCOACH we call them suspects. They don’t know you and you don’t know them. Your goal with suspects is to find them and turn a percentage of them into prospects. This is the process that you know as marketing.
Watch the short video for an explanation of how to find suspects and ...
Continue Reading →Most of you will have had experience of hard selling at some point in your life and will know how it actually puts you off making a purchase. Even if you do buy you are unlikely to become a regular. We can sniff out a sales pitch from a hundred yards so the historic “foot in the door” approach just doesn’t work. Sales is about professionally helping the right people to buy your products and services. Start thinking like that and see what ...
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1. Resolve to stay brutally optimistic. See the opportunity in every difficulty and anticipate the most favorable outcome out of every situation. Whatever you look for, that’s what you’ll find. We can get better or we can get bitter; it all depends on the lessons we draw from each experience. Optimism is like electricity — very little happens without it. Know this truth: you have all the resources you’ll ever need to handle all the challenges ...
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