If your New Year’s resolution is to grow your business, don’t wait, start right now. Most New Year’s resolutions barely make it to midnight on New Year’s Eve, or they morph into a to-do list for the first week of January, rather than accomplishing well thought out actions.
Growing your business needs sustained, continued success. A key element to achieve it, means reviewing how we do what we do and not being afraid to improve the things that need it. This takes energy and courage. It’s always easier to make excuses and hope that things will right themselves. Usually, they don’t. What worked this year, probably won’t be quite right for next year; just like setting your sales targets, isn’t as simple as adding a random percentage to last year’s figure.
Everything in the world is changing faster than we’ve ever see before. The technology we’re using to help us streamline our businesses, is updating faster, becoming more efficient, swallowing up more of the tasks our people used to perform. And this applies to our customers and competitors too. We are better informed, but so are they. So how can we stay ahead of the game?
Easy, preparation is everything. Customers will already have significant knowledge before they think of involving a sales person, and this is a good thing. More informed customers will have done a lot of research. They know what they want and how they want it provided to them. But, whatever they know, whatever they’ve found out, their knowledge will never be as extensive as professionals working in any industry. Customer expectations will be high, and the challenge is to listen to them, offer a solution to satisfy what they want, and wow them with the expert knowledge they can’t get from the internet.
Doesn’t sound easy? Actually, it is. If you haven’t reviewed your sales process for a while because your sales team have free reign as long as they hit their targets more or less, you need to take a long hard look at this way of working. Your business is at risk of sudden movement in the market, a competitor upping their game or any number of external factors outside your control. Your sales process, your best practice, is absolutely in your control. To maximise the sales effort of all the team, not just your sales stars, deconstruct the typical process of your top performers. Look at what they do, how they win and why it works. This is the basis for your best practice. Document it and roll it out to your entire sales team.
You want your sales team to be competitive, but they must win as individuals and as a team, and not feel pitched against each other. Introducing and rewarding collaboration, sharing of sales knowledge and experience, will help to create a winning culture where the whole team are invested in the effort to beat the competition together.
If you’re putting off a review of your sales process, and yes, it’s easy to be complacent when things are ticking along, don’t. A hasty review is uncomfortable for all staff and can make your team feel under threat prompting staff movement. Your business is at risk if a top performer leaves, especially if they go to work for a competitor taking their sales knowledge with them.
Combat this by doing regular reviews. Analyse your sales data, understand what it means and keep monitoring your competitors and your market. Keep the product training up to date and encourage collaboration. You will see better engagement from your sales staff and ensure you are ahead of the game.
Bee the best you can be and make sure you’re the one to beat in 2020!
Like some help reviewing your business? www.salesenabla.com