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| Sales Management Information |
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To Increase Your Sales and Revenue Make Sure To Add Value
What are you and your company's services and products worth to customers? What is the value you and your company bring to your customers? When working with customers and organizations, it is important to distinguish the difference between worth and value and to set a baseline value for the contributions you bring to the table. To illustrate, following is a simple example based on a company that provides training to other companies: Terry Trainer will develop and deliver from scratch a one-time 4-hour workshop on teamwork. Estimated time for design and development is 20 hours. Prep time is 2 hours. Delivery time is 4 hours. Post-delivery time is 4 hours (evaluations, follow up, etc.). Terry's rate of pay is $100.00 per hour for a total of 30 hours = $3000.00. Estimated materials cost is $1000.00. No travel or other expenses. Total for project = $4000.00. So in this example, Terry Trainer's worth is established at $100.00 per hour and the expenses incurred are $1000.00. However, what is the value that the customer is getting for his or her investment of $4000.00? To establish what it is worth to the client, both Terry and the customer need to determine the perceived effectiveness of the training. Will it solve the issue at hand or will it only solve a portion of the issue at hand? Keeping with our example, let's assume that Terry Trainer and the customer have met and determined that this training is exactly what is needed to solve a workflow problem that is costing the customer's organization $1000.00 per month in lost efficiency. Terry has explained the process she intends to take, the alternatives this process provides to solve the issue, and how the training is going to be applied and measured once attendees leave training. Through evaluations and follow up observation, the customer and Terry will determine the overall effectiveness and value of the training. Terry and the customer also identified as many obstacles as they could that might get in the way of a successful learning experience for attendees. Through this process they found several tradeoffs including delivering the training on a backshift rather than asking attendees to come in on their day off during the day. If the training is effective, it will take four months to recoup the cost of the training and then each month after that is value added to the bottom line. That is a pretty good investment-to-value ratio to consider. To make sure you are adding value to the customers and organizations you work with, keep the following in mind and make sure to: -- Identify two or more possible solutions or courses of action -- Identify the value of requested solution(s) by comparing 1. The cost to design, develop, implement, maintain each solution 2. The likelihood that solution(s) will be used by target audience 3. The probability of solution(s) achieving desired outcomes 4. The impacts on all stakeholders involved including the organization's ability to support solution(s) and the risks of success and failure of proposed solution(s) -- Recommend only solutions that add value, are feasible, and are most likely to accomplish the desired outcomes with a minimum of risk -- Describe potential value added and how it will be measured for example: 1. Increased safety, customer service, job satisfaction, productivity, etc. 2. Increased revenue/profit 3. Decreased costs/expenses 4. Decreased error rate, lost time, time to market, etc. 5. Increased on-time delivery 6. Increased reliability 7. Better retention rate of employees -- Outline risks, tradeoffs, assumptions -- Document the expected value added through use of a contract, memo of understanding, project scope, etc. -- Be honest, challenge assumptions, and act with integrity -- Don't mislead clients or customers on your expertise or overextend your capabilities. Don't over-promise and under-deliver -- Find ways to over-deliver to your clients or customers give them more added value than they ask for By defining you and your company's worth and value as two separate processes, you will go a long way in convincing customers that they should buy your product or service. Dr. Dan Strakal has been an expert on the changing workplace, business life, and career transition for nearly 20 years. He is the coauthor of and contributor to two books, Better Job Search in 3 Easy Steps and Better Job Skills in 3 Easy Steps. He is also the creator of numerous audio programs including Undaunted Courage in Leadership: 7 Lessons From Lewis and Clark, Networking to Increase Your Net Worth, Creating An Empowered Workplace, Increasing Employee Motivation in 3 Easy Steps, Balancing the 7 Sides of the Work and Home Life Equation, and many others. Through his consulting engagements, workshops, and one-on-one coaching sessions, Dr. Dan helps dozens of organizations and hundreds of people each year to overcome the challenges and barriers they face in creating satisfying and successful workplaces. Dan is a former executive in the corporate sector and is now a high energy entrepreneur who brings a well-rounded and realistic perspective to issues occurring within Fortune 500 companies, mid-sized organizations, and small businesses. More info at http://www.capable-consulting.com
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Careers and Employment Whats a Professional Sales Manager? I was in the depths of a major depression. As a third year salesperson with a good company, I was doing well, and was on my way to becoming the top salesperson in the nation for that company. But business had slowed down a little, and I did not have my usual number of proposals out for consideration. So, I wasn't as busy as usual. As my activity slowed, I began to worry. My doubts increased to the point where I had thought myself into a real depression, stuck on the question of "What's the use of trying?" The more negative my thoughts became, the less energy I had. My lack of energy led to fewer and fewer sales calls, which of course, led to less activity. And that led to more depressing thoughts. I was caught in a powerful downward spiral. Rotten to the Core: The Story of How the Best and Brightest can be Ruined The objective of an incentive is to incite action within an organization using a device or mechanism that that allows the rewarding or recognition of behaviors. This can be accomplished by offering preferential treatment, money, privileges, promotions, verbal praise, or complements. With that states, I suggest the answers to the questions above are: 5 Secrets to Managing Your Sales Manager Productively Many people believe that the main reason for representatives leaving their organisation is that of money in that they leave for a bigger salary. In fact, the biggest reason why people leave organisations is that the role they are doing is no longer offering any challenge or excitement. The second reason is due to the behaviour and capability of the immediate line manager. More often than not, the two are strongly linked with the manager taking little interest in the representative's development and as such the representative feels under valued and bored due to the lack of attention and challenge. Producing Premium Performance One of the major issues that arises in managing a small or medium size business is in the area of employee performance. Many business owners are frustrated with the poor performance of their team or some individuals within their team. No matter how hard they try, they don't seem to be able to create a sustainable improvement in performance. The tendency is to blame the employees for poor performance. However, more often than not, the problem stems from not establishing an effective performance management framework. How To Build A Worldwide Distributor Network When your product is market ready and has a good bargain, it will be no value to you if you don't know who's going to buy it, or how you are going to tell the world about it. Your product will only sell if it has a good wide distribution network. What Is A Proposal? And Why Do You Need One? Do you know anyone who regularly wins bids? Or can boast a balanced relationship between doing the hard work of producing proposals and regularly winning the business? How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Performance -- Part 1 Business executives and sales managers frequently bemoan "80/20" performance on their sales teams, where approximately 80 percent of sales are produced by approximately 20 percent of salespeople. Why do salespeople perform so differently? What is it about top sales performers that enables them to achieve such vastly superior results? The Benefits of Catalog Sales For Your Business Things to watch out for when selling your product in catalogs. Make Time, Not Excuses There are four primary activities that successful salespeople engage in on an ongoing basis. These are Prospecting (45% of time), Presenting (20%), Product Knowledge/Malleability (20%), and Professional and Personal Development (15%) Management by Osmosis Sales managers are an interesting breed, effective sales managers are a rare breed. Managing a sales team is entirely different than managing other groups; their role requires them to have not only above average management skills, but also above average ability to manage the overall sales process. However, in many organizations, the weak link in the sales chain is the front line management. Increasing Sales by Using Coupons - Will it Help Your Business? Increasing Sales by using Coupons. Will it help your business? Well, the Promotional Marketing Association's (PMA) "Coupon Council" shows that 3.8 Billion coupons were redeemed in 2003. Consumers saved over 3 billion dollars. 79% of American's used coupons last year. There are many Coupon Franchises out there with quite a track record. Here are a few of them: Val-Pac; http://www.valpak.com/info/franchise/franchise_faqs_content.jsp. Ten Awesome Ways To Incease Your Sales In Holidays Everybody thinks that the businesses will slow down a bit in holiday seasons. Ofcourse everybody thinks that people don't want to start new ventures in holidays too. Not Enough Fresh Sales Leads? Marketing is the New Sales Your sales are down and leads are rare. The phone's not ringing. Let's blame marketing! Drop Discounts and Earn Top Dollar Every dollar you discount is a dollar of pure profit you are giving away. Therefore, your efforts to remove discounts will be richly rewarded. The Hidden Competition: Avoiding the 2 Most Common Competitors There are really only two types of competitor: The Product or the Sale This is a quandary not unlike the chicken or the egg question, "Which comes first?". Do you focus on creating a superior product and continue to develop superior products or do you shift focus from the product to the sale prior to fully developing the line, or schedule of services? Increase Retail Sales With Meetups I recently attended the monthly Italian language Meetup here in Little Rock. Meetups are informal social gatherings of people with similar interests in a particular topic. Topics for Meetups range from political to cultural to intellectual to fun. Increase Your Sales Accept Credit Cards, Part 2 In part two we will discuss overcoming objections, which credit cards to accept and using the check paying option. Never Trust a Silent Customer Imagine you run a pizza parlour. You have all these neighbourhood families that pop in at least once a week for some pizza, garlic bread and Coke. On an average, one customer spends about $30 per week. But let's assume they spend just $20. Imagine you did something that bugged this customer, but he or she never told you about it. What would you stand to lose if they left? 4 Tips for the Summer Slowdown - How To Pick Up Sales You may have heard about the "summer slowdown". You may be experiencing it right now, or you may not be affected. Regardless it's important to pay attention, and do something this time of year.
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