The Edmiston Group would like to welcome Lisa Davidson, the owner of the Outsourced Sales Manager as our guest blogger. As you look at the types of partnerships your business forms, consider how you intersect with a complimenting business. It takes a marketing strategy with a measurable call to action to make the sale, but if there’s not a process to selling, where does that leave you? Take it away Lisa…..
The midyear point is quickly approaching, so how are you doing achieving this year’s revenue goals? Much like the resolutions we make at the stroke of midnight each New Year’s to get healthier and go to the gym more often, these goals can lose our attention as the demands of the day to day dealings of running a business can take precedence over one of the primary reasons for being in business; to be profitable!
So, as we near half way point, let’s take a look at why you might be missing your revenue marks from a sales perspective. Here are some of the common issues I find in my practice when working with my clients:
- Are you selling to your target market, or to increase sales have you stretched outside of your core business? Although this sounds like a good plan, trying to be all things to all customers is a fault many fall into. It may make the register ring, but chances are you will spend more to try and retain those new customers. This causes a loss of focus on your core business and increasing revenue in that area of your business where you truly excel.
- Is your differentiation over your competition strong enough to gain new customers? Back in the day, “customer service” or “quality products” were enough to attract new customers. However, these have become easy flags to wave and have become common tags for every business we encounter. What company is going to say, “We don’t focus on what our customers want, they get what we give them!” Or, “Our products are just OK.” Sometimes it’s hard as a business owner to articulate what makes them different from the other companies in their space. My recommendation is to ask the people doing business with you why they choose you time and time again! Who better to tell you how you fill a need over your competition than YOUR CUSTOMERS!
- Do you have a process in place to replicate your successes or do they just happen by chance? So, you get a big sale or a new large volume customer, Wooo Hoooo for YOU! In the excitement and celebration, can you detail how this occurred, so you can get MORE of them? So many businesses take the wins, but don’t bother to go back and figure out exactly how they did it, so they can do it again. Try and learn from the experience to see where you might do even better for the next opportunity. That’s one of the reasons all sports teams review tapes after a game whether they’ve won or lost. To understand their outcome and do even better at the next game.
Hopefully these thoughts will help you get back on track and you and your team will knock your revenue goals out of the park for the second half of 2018!
About the Author: Lisa Davidson, owner of the Outsourced Sales Manager, has over 30 years of sales experience predominately in selling solution based services. She is experienced in selling to organizations of all sizes, from Fortune 500 companies to small local business. Through her experiences with these organizations, Lisa has developed an excellent ability in quantifying value and sharing that ability with other sales professionals to increase their success.
Lisa has built a network of quality professionals, and since she holds certifications in various networking skill sets, she has leveraged that network to the value of growing her business and the business of her clients.