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Don't Shoot the Sales Team
Revenue is down. Sales are slowing. The CEO looks up from the business plan and realizes that the company won’t meet analysts’ expectations. Focusing on the organization’s sales leader, the stage is set for sacrificing a scapegoat.
Upon who...
Five Dirt Cheap Ways to Increase Sales in Your Cleaning Business
Whenever a person is starting a cleaning business or looking to
grow their business certain questions usually come up. How can I
do it inexpensively? What are the most effective methods? Since
most janitorial work is done after hours this leaves...
How You Can Learn to be a Better Manager
When you first take over a department, expectations are usually high but operations are sometimes in disarray. The staff is disorganized, goals aren’t being met, and hours are spent on unproductive tasks. Just when you think the company would...
PayPal Dedication Can Leave Your Business Exposed!
To many web users, PayPal is not the kind of pal they had envisioned when starting their online business. Long on track history but overwhelmingly unpopular among merchants and buyers one is left to wonder why PayPal has continued to grow.
...
Smart Choices: How to Hire the Best
Your organization’s continued growth and success depend on making smart choices and hiring the best. Today’s economy is exploding with talent, allowing you to be selective about the staff you hire. Yet, the crucial step to filling a position...
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Riding The Sales Rollercoaster
Riding the Sales Rollercoaster By Mark Wardell
It's one of the biggest frustrations in business. One month
you're busier than you've ever been, and the next month you're
wondering if you'll make payroll. Why is it that so many
businesses ride the "feast or famine" rollercoaster?
There are two main reasons why your sales might fluctuate in
this way. One is externally imposed, and the other is internally
imposed, but both can be managed successfully with a little
planning.
Externally imposed sales fluctuations are driven by factors
outside your direct control. For example, a roofing company
often can't do much work during the rainy months, while an
umbrella retailer might find it hard to make sales during the
dry months.
One solution to this problem is to expand your product or
service offering. Your company may have skills that are
transferable to a service that is needed in your naturally
slower months. For example, in our area, winter is more of a
rainy season, so a roofing company could become a roofing and
drainage company. They could install drainage tiles and so forth
when they can't work on roofs. Similarly, the umbrella
distributor could expand its product line to include products
people need in the summer.
More often, however, sales fluctuate due to the owner's focus of
attention. These are your internally imposed fluctuations, and
they happen something like this.
A web design company needs more sales, so the owner focuses all
her attention on finding new business and aggressively ramps
things up. That's great; except that now she has so much work
that she needs to refocus her attention on project management or
she'll risk falling behind. She works hard to get the work done,
but when she finally looks up from her desk, she
notices she's
out of work. So she jumps back on the sales train and digs up a
bunch more work. And on it goes... the sales and production
departments going back and forth from out of control busy, to
sitting around with nothing to do, and back again. It's an
endless cycle that's easy to get caught up in (we see it all the
time), but it doesn't have to work that way.
At Wardell, we manage this process using a simple, yet powerful,
forward-looking sales tool. Here's how it works.
Begin by tracking your sales process in detail. Using a
spreadsheet (or your favorite sales-tracking software) track the
number and dollar value of all your warm leads or sales quotes.
Next, estimate a closing date for each potential sale. And
finally, compare those numbers to your actual sales.
Over time, you'll learned how many of your prospects are likely
to turn into clients and when, including the potential dollar
value of those sales... extremely powerful information.
Follow this simple formula, and you'll be able to predict fairly
accurately how much business is coming down the pipeline, months
before you get there. If you don't have enough prospects in the
pipeline, you can do something about it before it's too late.
Conversely, if you have plenty of work coming up next month, you
can either refocus your sales efforts on the following month, or
prepare yourself for a busier month.
Either way, you'll take charge of the sales rollercoaster and
build a much more sustainable business.
About the author:
About the author:
Mark Wardell is President and Founder of Wardell Professional
Development, a business consulting firm, focused on the unique
needs of private growth companies. mailto:info@wardell.biz
http://www.wardell.biz
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