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A POWER TECHNIQUE FOR BOOSTING SALES
So you've built your site and started to promote it. You're getting some sales, but you want to generate more.
There is one simple sales technique that almost every Internet marketing expert agrees will DRAMATICALLY boost your sales every single...
Hiring the Best Sales Athletes
The principal driver of sales productivity is the quality of an
organization's salespeople. The best sales strategies slide into
oblivion without strong salespeople. No sales management theory,
practice or system can make up for having less than...
Investors: Avoid These 5 Common Tax Mistakes
For many investors, and even some tax professionals, sorting through the complex IRS rules on investment taxes can be a nightmare. Pitfalls abound, and the penalties for even simple mistakes can be severe. As April 15 rolls around, keep the...
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...
Why Performance-Based Recruiting Produces Top Sales Performers
Many recruiting ads and job descriptions include "knockout factors" that can actually screen out QUALIFIED sales candidates. One example is a requirement that candidates have an undergraduate degree, a graduate degree, or a degree in a specialized...
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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
Associated Websites
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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