Who decides your price?

This is a very pertinent question. I have assessed many businesses over the years who have a pricing policy decided ultimately by the salesperson.

Often there will be a cost or trade price with the salesperson receiving a percentage of the profit between the trade price and the sale price and this can prove highly successful. 

It can also be problematic as many salespeople are inherently selfish and will often adapt any proposal to suit their needs rather that of the customer or their employer.

So how do you manage pricing within your business? How do you ensure your customers are getting value whilst still allowing your business to make a profit and keep your salespeople well rewarded? In truth it is very hard as there are so many moving parts to keep well-tuned. What you may regard as a fair price for your product could be deemed to be expensive by a competitor who has a differing business model. Offering a very low price will affect your profit and probably the commission of the salesperson too.

It all ultimately comes down to the overall objectives of your business and what you are looking to achieve. I have operated a few schemes whereby the customer gets a good deal and the salesperson gets the lions share of any profit and I gain the benefits of the ongoing business. This has always worked well for me as my previous businesses were generally centred around long term sale value rather than a need for a large trading profit. These schemes allowed me to reward salespeople at a level that few others could match and our customers got a good deal - and my client base grew quickly.

Salespeople will always need some degree of flexibility of pricing as giving a discount or doing a deal is a fundamental part of the sales process. By not providing the salesperson with a discount tool in their kit is like asking an artist to paint without a brush.

There are a lot of businesses who apply a simple markup over the cost price - this is very common in retail and low-margin, high volume businesses. On the whole these do prove successful but can also be very predictable for competitors who know they will be competing against you for your business - a big problem for standard B2B sales in a localised environment.

If your business has a need to issue a price list to clients or on its website then it becomes essential that you have a robust and regularly researched pricing policy as comparisons become very easy and you will often have no human interaction to justify or explain your pricing.

It is important to remember that pricing is not everything. I have had clients historically who have proved very profitable for me and pay a high price for my products and services but they get what they need. It may be they needed me to be on call 24/7 during the rollout of a project or that they needed full time project management or for me to be able to drop everything during a key phase and produce some advice at 3am on a Sunday morning. My clients understand that they are paying a premium for me if they need me to be available for them regardless of the time of day and we all regard this as being completely fair.

For me as a business owner it is important that everyone feels they are getting a fair price. The customer must not feel they have been charges excessively, the salesperson must feel well rewarded and I must feel that I am doing something worthwhile. There is little benefit for anyone involved if either party in a transaction is resentful of the price paid.

Please follow us on Twitter @salesfrienduk, subscribe to us, like us, follow us, share us and comment.

Do you really need a Sales Manager?

I have encountered this a few times. The head of sales has been promoted through the ranks and now manages the sales team and takes responsibility for all sales related issues within the business. They rarely sell.

Often they have been a top performer with a great track record and are therefore the natural choice to head the team when the time comes. Natural choice? For who? 

Taking your top performing salesperson away from sales duties and into a management role can defy all business logic and whilst they may be delighted with the pay rise, better car and the prestige there has been little done to be any benefit to your business. If you have a salesperson who performs consistently why on earth would you change anything that may affect that performance?

I have learned over the years that for most sales teams of ten or less people there is no need for a Manager or Director. Motivated salespeople need very little management. There is certainly a need if there is training required by then this is best organised in the field with the sales staff and certainly does not need a dedicated person with a title. As the owner of the business you are best placed to manage the needs of your sales staff and adjust things accordingly - a sales manager in a business of ten of less salespeople is an expensive and unnecessary luxury.

I have been in the position of Sales Manager with sales teams of between seven and  nineteen people. My life with the team of seven was hardly a challenge, I did not ask for the job, salary, bonus or the Range Rover that came with the title but all was laid on regardless. I had my seat at the monthly "Management Meeting" and I was able to hire and fire but other than to intervene in the odd issue between sales and operations there was little to my job and I found myself missing the buzz of the win.

I met with my MD and we collectively agreed that the position was part-time at best and really required little more than a few hours each month and as such I returned to a predominantly sales-based role where my skills were best utilised whilst I "managed" the sales team on a part-time basis and remained as part of the management team.

As a salesman I didn't want or need management. I was able to manage myself and worked to a simple principle that Monday to Friday was for selling and weekends off. I would happily work 20 hours a day in the week but would never work on the weekends and this discipline worked well. I knew that without time away from work I would perform badly so I allowed no compromise in this regard.

With a team of nearly twenty there was certainly more of a demand for me to wear my Manager hat but this was only really to support salespeople with prospects that I would have handled alone had I remained as a salesperson.

I am not suggesting that there is no need for any management with a sales team but I do question whether any sales team of less than twenty needs a full time manager. It is really the case that with experienced and performing salespeople there will be very little need for daily management. Actually, it is often the case that a manager can negatively affect performance as they can find it necessary to instil their own methods on people that have no problem performing. 

In my opinion, it is essential in any business that management within a sales team (if they are necessary) must be actively selling and maintain their own customer relationships. A Sales Manager who does not produce sales will quickly lose the respect of their team. Whereas a performing "manager" who is also part of the team will have plenty of respect.

If you have a Sales Manager in your business ask yourself what value is created by their position? In my experience the vast majority of the duties in this role, such as reporting and monitoring, can be performed by an Admin Assistant with the support of the part-time Sales Manager to handle the few management responsibilities that are required.

By their very nature Sales Managers are well equipped to justify their positions and benefits but the reality will often remain that they are best for you when they are in front of customers.

Please follow us on Twitter @salesfrienduk, subscribe to us, like us, follow us, share us and comment.

How much should you pay a salesperson?

The million dollar question!!

As an experienced salesman I have had salaries ranging from £6,000 per year to well over £200,000 plus commissions and bonuses - but I do regard myself as one of the best! :D

I was always very careful to ensure the package I was offered was balanced - a salary that is too high just made me complacent and ineffective and a salary that was too low just bred resentment.

The one criteria I always set myself was that by employer had to make money from me - if they were making money and I was then we were both happy.

A "get it while you can" attitude simply equals a short term position. No employer will tolerate you getting paid a huge salary without exceeding all expectations.

When I have been the person footing the bill for salespeople I have always worked to a 1:4 ratio. The salespersons salary should be 1/4 of their On Target Earnings and their OTE should be realistic. I always paid high commissions and big bonuses as I always wanted my salespeople to be chasing the next target. Therefore I was happy to pay a salary of £25k if the OTE was £100k and this would be the minimum acceptable level of performance. Anyone that sat in front of me and wanted a higher basic salary and lower commission would experience a very brief interview.

By sticking to these principles I was fortunate to work with some very successful sales teams who simply did not tolerate the interference of managers who wanted to overhaul the methods of consistent performer. They wanted to be left alone to perform and expected to be well rewarded for doing so whilst always knowing was help available when needed.

I have never had a problem with a salesperson who requests a minimum take home pay for a limited period in order to get established - in fact this filled me with confidence. A salesperson who simply needs to earn big money in order to fund his mortgage and lifestyle will be very driven and will nearly always excel. In every instance where a candidate has requested a minimum level of take home pay I have always requested previous wage slips. If they are requesting a guarantee of £3000 for three months then I need to be shown that they have consistently earned in excess of this figure and that the request is genuine. This of course provides me with additional proof that they have previously performed at a high level.

A good salesperson with a proven track record may well be worth breaking your budgets to win but remember that whilst salespeople are good at selling themselves but there are a myriad of issues that may arise when and if the salesperson starts working for you. I am guilty of following my gut instinct a few times too many and have paid too much to people who did not perform as promised and I have subsequently had to have some difficult conversations. I now work on a very clear principle, I will pay great money when the salesperson has proved themselves and I have no problem with committing to that within the offer of employment I send to them. If they meet the required targets for an agreed period of time they will receive whatever has been promised. I will often award the increases or bonus in stages over twelve months as I have often seen an initial flourish followed by a barren spell in the first year of employment.

The reality is that I cannot tell you what to pay your salespeople but I can tell you to make sure that they earn just enough to live and need to sell to live comfortably and need to sell lots to live well. Do not over-reward underperformance. Remember you only employ a salesperson to make money and/or to increase your value and the majority of salespeople are not as good as they claim!

Please follow us on Twitter @salesfrienduk, subscribe to us, like us, follow us, share us and comment.

Whose clients are your clients?

So your best salesperson wins a great new customer.

Things are good and this is one of the customers you have been targeting for a while. Sales will increase and so will your profits...nothing but good news, right?

Hopefully.

Now take a step back, does the salesperson refer to this new client as "his" or "hers"? If you hear this phase then you have a problem.

This client is YOURS - you paid the salary of the salesperson to win this client, you will have paid the commission and probably the mileage of the car to get to the appointments. You will have paid the mobile telephone bill for all the calls and all the emails will have been sent from your domain name. You cannot allow this client to be owned or controlled by the salesperson.

Regardless of how much your salesperson resists you need to make sure someone else meets this client, your client. Take them to lunch or just meet with them, if nothing else call them and introduce yourself.

These words are not intended to ensure that you undermine your sales staff or to imply you should not have complete trust, they are intended to protect the investment you have made in securing your clients. I have lost count of the businesses I have met that have experienced desperate times after a key salesperson left the business only to embark on a complete assault of all clients known to them and have "stolen" the clients for their new employer. These clients are often told many untruths as encouragement to change.

I have found one consistent fact in most of these cases - despite what could be many years of loyal service, the salesperson will generally lose all loyalty to you once they are working for a competitor and have new targets to meet. In the cold light of day - the "existing" clients of the salesperson will be the easiest catch out there and many find it hard to resist.

When I raise this issue with clients I am often told "don't worry, that is all covered in our employment contract. Our salespeople cannot approach our clients for a year after they leave". "That's great" I reply "have you considered if and how you could enforce that contract before the damage is too severe?" Silence is the most common response to this question.

Take a minute to think this through. You have 500 clients of which 40 clients place orders every month. Your salesman, let's called him Kevin, he has left for pastures new and you can still recall the handshake he gave and the assurance that he won't cause you any problems in his new job. A couple of weeks after Kevin left you have noticed sales are a little down, nothing severe but enough to register with you. End of the month arrives and sales are more noticeably down, by 30%. You look through your sales ledger and see there are ten or so regulars that have been quiet. You call a couple of the owners you know, they are not available but you are assured of a call back. A week goes by, no calls returned and still sales are falling. You call another few regular clients. Finally one tells you the news that will send a small chill down your spine "Oh Kevin came to see us and told us he could save us 20% on our bills so we have signed up with him".

Kevin has been busy, in fact by the time you are first advised he has broken his word to you he has already signed up 20 of your "regular" clients and in effect has halved your businesses regular income.

Now Kevin won't answer his phone or reply to your messages, emails or letters. You contact your Solicitor to enforce the contract of employment. A very strong letter is sent out and you feel that all will be OK. Kevin may take notice, he may not but you will not win those clients back as a client will not be told who they must buy from. If you attempt to reduce your prices to match or undercut those of Kevin you will be asked why you didn't offer these prices before. Either way you have lost and there is nothing you can do.

You may send a few more letters to Kevin threatening court action but you won't actually go to court as your Solicitor will tell you that you are unlikely to win. Perhaps you do go to court and you do win, what have you won? Can you realistically collect any compensation? Will you get your clients back? It is all so stacked against you, the damage is done and you will need a minor miracle to come out of things unscathed.

So what can you do?

Well there is little you can do to guarantee this will never happen to you but there are many steps to reduce the possibility. Certainly a tight contract will deter some and a good amount will keep their word to you. For sales staff I always consider paying an additional 2.5% commission as a loyalty payment to be paid no less than six months after they have left your employment. If "Kevin" earns around £3000 per month then you will add £75 to the loyalty fund each month. After five years of service this fund could be £4,500 and that is hard for anyone to walk away from and may well focus his mind on keeping his word. Six months after he left you will have had chance to build new relationships with your clients and Kevin will find it much more difficult to win that client's business. I have found this method effective in retaining loyalty and also taking them out for lunch on their final day to set things on the correct course seems to end things well. Finally, as a last action on leaving day I draft a letter to all customers for the leaving salesperson to personally sign and send to thank them for their business and to send them best wishes for the future. This letter always concludes with: "due to my personal desire to keep my word to, agreement with and my respect for ABC Limited I will be unable to keep in contact with you professionally and hope that you can understand these principles...." I have never had a single person, having shaken my hand that then refuses to sign these letters.

Whilst there are many options to protect your business - the easiest and most effective of all is to recognise you need to manage your clients in a way that means they have a relationship with you and your business too - not just your salesperson. This will not happen overnight and certainly should not start when a salesperson has just resigned or left - your clients will see right through that. Regular contact with all clients is essential, whether it is a monthly customer service call or an event/open day when your clients can meet you in a social environment your clients will stay much more loyal if they know many members of staff at your business. 

Encourage your non-sales staff to build good relationships with clients when they have the opportunity to do so. If a client makes a payment ask staff to call them to confirm receipt and say thank you - simple little touches that will often lead to a brief chat or moment of humour can really help build relationships and make a big difference when changes do occur.

Losing a client is painful at any time, it is agony when you lose a client to someone to whom you paid a handsome wage and trusted.

Please follow us on Twitter @salesfrienduk, subscribe to us, like us, follow us, share us and comment.

Can your customers afford you?

Do you offer a high value product or service that is only really available to businesses with deep pockets? Do you offer flexible payment solutions?

If the answer is No then you need to read on.

Making your product affordable or linked to the cost benefits it creates is simply a non-brainer. A product that saves £300 whilst costing only £200 a month is a very attractive proposition.

By allowing your customers to spread the cost of their investment in your product you are making your product easier to sell without affecting your cash-flow negatively.

How can this be?

By allowing your customers to rent or buy your product over a fixed-term contract can result in your business getting paid for the product in full upon delivery and your customers to pay monthly or quarterly.

With some schemes, at the end of the term of the contract ownership of the equipment can be passed to the customer, the lender or the seller and this can mean that the product can even be returned to you at the end of the agreement.

I have found that many businesses that use this service are able to satisfy the needs of customers with all budgets: Companies that want new equipment can be assured that they will have their equipment replaced every three years whereas businesses with less available capital are able to rent the equipment that is no longer required by others for a low rental. The company that made the original sale get to provide value and make money from both clients and therefore everyone is happy.

Funding services are provided by a number of operators, for more information feel free to contact us.

Please follow us on Twitter @salesfrienduk, subscribe to us, like us, follow us, share us and comment.

Email marketing - Informative & clear advice.

When does a salesperson become successful?

So you employ salespeople.

Whether you have one salesperson or one thousand - the requirement is simple, they need to be making you money. But how do you judge this?

Do you judge it on the performance of the last month, the last quarter, the last year, the ongoing orders from their initial sales or the back end value to your business?

This is a really tough but really important decision. If you employ salespeople or plan to then it is vital that you decide how to measure their success or failures.

I have worked with and for a number of businesses where their requirements of me were not clear. Would they prefer that I deliver ten clients a month who spend £1000 each or one client a year worth £300,000? The client who spends £1000 will be a significantly easier sale than the £300,000 spending client but what is better for your business? Lots of regular income that covers the costs of the salesperson each month or more income in large bursts but with the added cash-flow pressures of funding the salesperson while they try to win the larger deals?

It is really important that you do not become the employer that wants it all ways. It is perfectly possible to have a good mix of sales but if you are one of the 4.9 million small businesses in the UK it is unlikely that you will have a salesperson delivering twenty clients every month spending between £1000 and £300,000 anyway.

You need to decide what your ideal client is. Is it a client who makes just one large order or one that makes orders every month? Is monthly profit or back end value your primary objective? Can you achieve both? Are the skills of the salesperson suited to gaining your ideal client? Should your salespeople be focused on new business only or are they required to look after existing clients too? These are all questions that you must ask and answer before you employ salespeople as these issues will arise constantly and will cause confrontation.

I used to own a telecoms business. Before it was sold in 2012 we offered a huge range a products and services ranging from telephone lines and calls through to telephone systems and maintenance contracts and even with clearly defined responsibilities there were conflicts constantly from hungry salespeople chasing every deal they could. If a salesperson sold a telephone system to a new client all was simple but what if that client wanted to spend another £20,000 after two months? Who should run that sale? The original salesperson or the account management team that looked after the customer post sale? 

We in fact worked out that the initial sale was of little value to us so we rewarded the salespeople very well for the initial sale and we retained the benefit of forward business. The salesperson was happy with the lions share of the profit on the original deal whilst we wanted the long term value from the client and managed the relationship thereafter and paid the salesperson a token percentage of all future business - this worked well as they felt there were getting something for nothing.

Only once you have considered, planned through and communicated the criteria can you start to measure the success of your sales staff. If your business is based around a single sale to a single client then clearly performance is easy to assess. But if you get an initial order and then lots of regular orders or other elements of your business are able to cross-sell products into the same client then the ultimate value gained from the initial sale can be much harder to measure. This complication can be increased if there are other salespeople further down the line who are also making sales to the customer and need to have their success assessed.

Salespeople are very territorial and feel like they own every client they sell to and there are some arguments to back up why they should feel this way. They did, after all, win the client originally and could therefore argue they are best placed to manage all the needs of the client. But then what happens is that you can have salespeople doing very little work as they are able to earn significant income from the sales of their existing base and therefore new business can dry up.

It is a challenging problem for many businesses.

There is no right or wrong answer as every business is different but I think every decision you make in this regard should be solely based on what is right for your business. If you allow the decision to be clouded by the views of salespeople then you will regret it.

Of course you want to ensure people are rewarded for their performance but you pay commission for that. You do not pay commission to salespeople for them to demand anything beyond that reward. You need to make sure the targets of your salespeople relate to the needs of your business and then when targets are met you can be sure that your business objectives are also being met. This method will stop your salespeople making great money while your business is not progressing.

Please follow us on Twitter @salesfrienduk, subscribe to us, like us, follow us, share us and comment.

It's long but does make some valid points...worth watching

Who do salespeople work for?

Quite a question!

Any business needs their sales staff to be self-motivated, driven and focussed on success but to what extent?

When I started in my life of sales the salaries were low, the commissions high and the rewards were there for all that wanted them. These days it all seems a little different. I see adverts weekly in the press offering sales positions with generous salaries, car allowances and high commissions. 

I know that the UK Minimum Wage regulations impacted on the packages of salespeople but I can't help feeling that life is a little easier for the salespeople of today.

I started my sales career when I was eighteen years of age. Full of chat and proud of my Ford Escort. I had a suit from Burtons with a jazzy waistcoat to match. I started training on a Monday morning in 1992 and by the Wednesday I was told to get on the phones and start making appointments. My basic salary was £6,000 per year, commission of 30% of the profit and a hope of a company car after three months if all went well. There was little monitoring during the month but on the last working day we were either publicly applauded for hitting or exceeding target or derided for low sales. It was hard work with great rewards for the winners and humiliation for the losers with the possibility of being fired.

We had to work very hard, my first appointments were made between 0915 and 0930 and my final appointments were as late in the day as I could make them. Monday to Friday was dedicated to work and weekends were my downtime. It was not uncommon for me to leave home at 6am and return at 11pm and still have correspondence to catch up on.

I am pretty sure I would end up in a tribunal if I demanded a similar performance from the salespeople of today.

I know there are still many very driven salespeople out there but things have definitely changed. At one recent sales assessment we completed for a client the sales team made their first appointments of the day at between 10:00 and 10:30 depending on the travelling required. The last appointments were generally made for around 3:30pm and often earlier if the return journey was long. All this means that the business of today may well only get one third of the effort of twenty-two years ago - whilst paying salaries of perhaps four times the amount.

For many of the sales people I meet now the effort required to make good money is significantly less and that can only be a bad thing for businesses. What shocks me is the apparent offence at my suggestions of what I regard as a "full day's work". "If I need to leave home at 6am then I want overtime" "I am not paid enough salary to work those hours" "that appointment is not in my territory so I am not doing it" are just a few of the comments I have heard in the last few months. I have heard sales staff being critical of telesales staff for making appointments with customers that are "not convenient" or not acceptable because "Man City are playing....". My particular favourite is "my basic is only £45,000 a year and is not enough to do that" when suggesting sales meetings happen outside "core selling hours".

I am unsure if the market has changed or if people have. Is dedication, commitment and "hard graft" a thing of the past with sales staff? Whether it is banging on doors, writing letters and emails or getting on the telephones - all these tasks are the fundamental duties of a salesperson and yet when I mention them I am often met with a look of utter contempt. "I don't make my own appointments" "I am too busy to get on the phones" are worryingly familiar comments.

Now I know there are vast amounts of sales staff out there who are incredibly committed and work hard for their employers and are not afraid of the good old "hard graft" but do they work for you? Are they the norm? I am sure I sound like an old misery complaining about the good old days but really, why are employers so less less expectant of hard work from their salespeople these days? There seems to be a culture emerging in many businesses that sales staff are paid a salary for simply being employee's and if hard work is  demanded then that of course costs more!! Hitting sales targets used to be necessary in order to keep your job - these days it attracts a bonus.

It seems to me that in an awful lot of businesses the salespeople have a sense of entitlement to large salaries for not performing and then get very annoyed when this is suggested!

When I am called into a business with under performing sales staff one of my first objectives is always to get some old principles introduced.  A working day structured around using the core hours of 0930 - 1700 for face-to-face meetings with proposals, quotations and correspondence being completed outside the core hours. The old values of hard work for big rewards really can still be instilled in sales staff but it is a much harder task to introduce this to an existing sales team rather than making it clear at the point of recruitment. 

There are also a number of disciplines that I consider to be essential within any sales team. Appearance should be expected. Nothing that catches the eye whatsoever. A standard, well fitted suit, white or blue shirt, conservative tie and clean shoes. This attire will be expected by a client and will present a professional appearance. I have never allowed salespeople of mine to personalise their own appearance, regardless of the latest fashions or trends. I have lost count of the salespeople I have sent home to shave or clean their shoes, whom I have lent a tie to replace the "Where's Wally?" tie or insisted that the huge tie-knot is retied into a standard Windsor Knot. 

This may all seem petty and certainly does annoy salespeople but there are a number of elements to be considered; They are being paid by you to represent your business and therefore you have a right to decide how, within reason, they dress. It also demonstrates respect for your business, if a salesperson cannot be bothered to adhere to your dress requirements they are very unlikely to be bothered about any more procedures you have in place in the sales process. Salespeople should be paid a salary to reflect their skills, position, experience and to provide some degree of financial security any worker is entitled to. But this salary should clearly be defined as being paid to be a salesperson with commission being paid for achievements. Therefore, hard work, dedication, additional hours when required, wearing suitable work attire and always working in the interests of the business will be the norm and do not become things that attract additional pay or benefits.

Please follow us on Twitter @salesfrienduk, subscribe to us, like us, follow us, share us and comment.

What do people think of you?

This is a challenging blog as most businesses think they are doing all that is required, some are and many are not.

Yes it does seem an obvious question and many think the answer is obvious, but when did you last actually think about this? It is likely that your customers have a perception about your business; what you do well, what you offer and what you do not. Are these perceptions correct? Do you know these perceptions?

I sometimes find businesses that are quite lost in this area. They are nearly always very well established and profitable and those are quite possibility the reasons why they have gotten a little lost. They feel like all is ok, the bottom line is stable, cash-flow is stable and there are no worries.

It is a very simple perception to tap into. Think of yourself, if you need a tin of paint your mind will instantly take you to one or two sources and you will have perceptions about those sources..expensive? Not a great range? Good advice? Easy to park? Fast delivery? If the sun is shining and you want a beer with a pub lunch, again your mind will take you to a few possible destinations and your mind will have made instant assessments about those options...nice food? nice beer? too busy? nice garden? good service?

It is these perceptions that can define your business. It is these perceptions that others will pass on when asked. It is likely that their perceptions will be the judgements they pass on.

As a consumer it is easy and natural to find things you don't like about any business, you may like the overall business and may be a loyal customer but there will be some things you wish they did differently.

The big problem is that most people don't like to tell you what they don't like about your business, they will find it much easier to tell others! This can be very frustrating for the business owner as most owners I know would change anything in a second if they knew their customers did not like it.

The advice for any individual business is so varied it cannot be condensed into a blog post but certainly there is lots that can be done to both understand these perceptions together with ensuring you benefit from the positive perceptions and manage or change the bad. 

There is some general advice we can offer that applies to most businesses;

• Be open. Let your customers feel they can offer feedback, whether good or bad. Remind them it is the best way for you to serve them and improve what you offer for them.

• If online, offer discount vouchers from the next order for a review of your business.

• If local, offer a suggestion box or a prize draw with a comment card designed as part of the draw entry.

• Have an open day or evening event for clients where clients can pop along and chat informally over a glass of wine while seeing your products or understanding about your services.

• If online, there are great products out there like www.surveymonkey.com who provide a really simple interface for you to ask questions of your customers. This an be a great tool to offer at the end of a checkout process.

It is this fine-tuning of a business that can make a significant difference to the bottom line. Your business is there to serve its customers and it needs to adapt accordingly. If you run your business to suit solely your needs then you are, without doubt, inhibiting its growth.

Talk to SalesFriend, talk to your customers, talk to local people if local, post on forums if online....it's the simplest advice I can offer...talk and ask.

Please follow us on Twitter @salesfrienduk, subscribe to us, like us, follow us, share us and comment.

When it is going wrong.....

Sales falling? Income dropping? Sales staff demotivated? 

It is very tough when things are not going to plan. It can be very hard to pinpoint what is wrong and it can be very easy to jump into conclusions as a panic measure.

I have managed sales teams and sales processes for many years and have seen all the ups and downs. From the euphoria of winning the huge deal to the bewilderment that can come from a flat month of sales - these are the highs and lows of running a business that is dependent on sales.

I have learned along the way that there is very rarely one single reason when things are going wrong. It is often a myriad of reasons that individually make little difference but collectively can be very damaging.

Very often if things are not going as normally expected then something will have changed. It may not be obvious but it does not need to be. If you have sales staff it may be one of the team who is unhappy and dragging others down. If you have changed prices or service levels then perhaps your customers are not as happy. Perhaps there is a competitor who is out there talking to your customers. Whatever the reason the important thing is not to panic and to understand that these dips can be difficult to understand and require a balanced approach. I have lost count of the times I have been involved in trying to understand a drop in sales and then being equally mystified when sales suddenly increase without any changes being implemented.

There is no textbook for sales, there is no sure-fire path that sales follows. If sales were a person it would be the your best friend and your worst enemy, it would be the life of the party and the misery in the corner. It would be moody on a bad day and uplifting on a good day. At best it would be unpredictable and at worst it would be downright cruel. It could leave you feeling amazing and it could leave you feeling you are useless. But overall, you would want sales in your life. Embrace sales, regard them as a challenge you can enjoy. Know they will be a pain sometimes but remember they can make you feel such huge pleasure. In the end, it's normally worth knowing sales.

The big problem with sales is that it has so many elements, so many component parts that all need to work together to produce positive results. For sales to be successful then the seller, the product and the buyer need to be synchronised perfectly and this can be very hard to manage for the business owner. You can, to some degree, influence the behaviour of your sales staff, you can manage your products, services and suppliers and you can hope to influence your customers or prospects. 

Sales needs to be constantly kept fresh, it needs to take account of what others are doing. It needs to be reactive and reflective. It needs to be open enough to embrace change and yet disciplined to remain consistent.

It is for all these reasons that sales is a constant challenge and getting it right constantly is impossible. You will make mistakes and judge things incorrectly, you will get things wrong and you will learn from these mistakes and you will get better. Things that happen will always take you by surprise and somethings and as long as you expect the unpredictability then you will always be well prepared!

I consider that my failures contributed heavily to my overall success. I feel like I achieved what I wanted to achieve by accepting that failure is a part of sales. You won't win every customer, you won't close every deal, you won't always win the deal you expected to win. But if you learn to understand these events you will ultimately start to control sales rather than be at its whim.

Ultimately an external review is always worthwhile. It can let people with no prior history of your business evaluate everything about your sales process, your customer satisfaction and the moral of your most important assets - your staff. SalesFriend can just help you understand your sales. We will engage with your staff, evaluate your overall offering and help you monitor and manage the future. We can take a look over your literature, your online presence, your advertising and anything else that we think can impact on your sales.

Please follow us on Twitter @salesfrienduk, subscribe to us, like us, follow us, share us and comment.

Theo Paphitis, simple and straightforward....

Thinking of selling your business in the future? What is it worth?

Retirement? Change of circumstances? Nobody to take over? Time to exit?

What ever the circumstances, selling the business at some stage in the future will cross the mind of many business owners.

So what is your business worth? Is the loss of annual income worth the sale? How can you increase value?

These are all questions that will float around the brains of many business owners at some stage and many do not know the answers. Many have spend decades building their businesses but really do not have a plan to deal wit the time when they no longer wish to run or own their business.

One client I met recently was in exactly this position. He and his wife and had built the business over eighteen years and were starting to consider retirement. Here is our conversation:

SF: "What do you think it is worth?" 
Client: "around £3 million" 
SF: "ok, how have you reached that figure?"
Client: "well, eight years turnover is around £3million" 
SF: "and has anyone verified that value for you?"
Client: "no"
SF: So why do you think an 8x multiple of turnover is an acceptable basis for value? Are there other examples in your industry?
Client: "I don't know"
SF: "what is a buyer getting for his £3m?"
Client: "the company name, the clients, the vans, the staff, the stock and the website"
SF: "what is the value of the stock and the vehicles?"
Client: "hmm, around £70,000 to £80,000"
SF: "ok, so the buyer is getting the name, the website and the staff for £2,920,000?"
Client: Well.....yes"
SF: "ok, how much is the business making net per year?"
Client: "around £140,000 after everything"
SF: "what is the income from recurring contracts per year?"
Client: "nothing"

In reality this business may be worth between £400,000 to £600,000 today - if a buyer can be found.

I have met many clients who over-value their businesses as they often relate value to the effort they have put in over the years AND the potential value of the business in the future. Neither of these create value for a buyer. It sounds ruthless but its true. A buyer is not interested in the past efforts any more than he or she is interested in paying for the future that does not yet exist. They are interested in NOW.

If you aspire to selling your business in the future then you simply must get some advice as to what is it worth now and how you can create value in the future. A business that is designed to generate a healthy income for its owners may not be correctly designed for creating long-term value. Many business owners do not appreciate the value of their relationships with their clients and many businesses fail after the owners have retired or sold the business.

By talking to SalesFriend we can help you understand how to create the value that businesses want to buy. The vast majority of businesses that we meet are missing opportunities to create value with a few simple changes to their business plans. Here is a very simplistic but genuine recent example: A client had a business offering maintenance services on printing machines. In this business, a client without a contract who earns a profit of £50 per month would be worth only £150 of sale value, however if this client had agreed a 12 month contract then the value of this client would increase to £950 and more again if clients paid via Direct Debit.

As you can see it is often simple changes to trading terms can create a large increases in value. There is little to be lost by letting our team review your business and give you some advice and supporting numbers to help you grow value.

Please share, like, follow and tell others, thanks!

A great intro to Google Adwords

Facebook for Business Tutorial - nice and simple!

Introduction to Google Plus

How to use Twitter - the basics

When invisibility is not a superpower

So you have a great new site.

You have paid the bill and you are rightly proud. The problem is that nobody can see you. On the internet you are invisible.

Seem familiar?

Welcome to the biggest competition in the world! You are competing to be noticed in a space where there are currently 956,426,733 websites and growing by the second.

Yes, it's a challenge but it's not as bad as it seems and it really is possible to get your site noticed on the Internet search engines. It is my personal opinion that if you want to get your site listed on the "Holy Grail" of the first page of the relevant Google search then you have two simple choices:

• Pay money for sponsored listings and/or Google Adwords for virtually instant results
• Pay nothing and invest lots of time into back links, search engine submissions, social media, blogging and discussion forums. This takes much more time but with constant effort and excellent content you will find yourself creeping up the search engines organically.

As with life, organic is best. People are more likely to click your organic listing as they expect your site to interesting and match their search requirements. An organic listing takes time and attention to achieve and I think people have some respect for the efforts invested to be on page one. 

As an outline guide, I find that most clients who are committed to providing good content online through all the methods I have mentioned above will start to see noticeable improvements after around nine months and after eighteen months many have achieved page one listings. Most of these businesses have required some assistance, particularly with the back links, keywords and the background things that can help Google index your site but these skills can be learned easily through online tutorials. There are thousands of businesses out there who will tell you that they can get your site flying up the search engines, normally for a fairly sizeable fee - it is important to carefully research these businesses in detail before instructing them. So many of these businesses make big headline claims whilst offering no guarantee's or promises.

In some instances there are ways to get your content listed higher up the search engines while your actual website may be listed much lower. An online blog is very likely be listed very high with the web address (URL) of the blog and this can be a great way to get people to find your content while your own site climbs the rankings. Channels on YouTube together with cross-pollinating social media will also make a significant difference. 

I will shortly add a few tutorials from YouTube to this blog that will help you to start the building process and more in-depth information will be published very soon.

Thanks for reading my blog, please take just a minute to share and like it so that others may enjoy!

A great video from a business legend

Giving it away at what cost?

We all love something for nothing. We like to be able to try before we buy, to taste a sample, to use the product, to try the service without parting with a penny. The free offer is a tried and tested method of growing a business or increasing the profile of a product. 

It is not necessarily a simple promotion to get right though...

Giving something away will of course get people interested, the key is to ensure that the people interested are fully engaged and understand what you are trying to achieve.  I always think a free item should be just that - free. The old school tricks of "give us your credit card details now and just cancel if you don't like us" do not deliver customer confidence and can be one of the biggest turn-off's. 

I often see some examples of give-away's that leave me feeling exasperated at the lack of planning and consideration applied. A great example of this is a product I sampled recently at a local event. This product was available to taste for free. It was simply delicious and so original that I instantly purchased some. Within a month the bottle is empty and I really want some more. Can I purchase it in the town where I sampled it? No - I have to order it online with delivery costs that are higher than the product itself. What a disaster for this business - all this effort and investment to develop such an impressive product (with great branding too) and then to engage a local audience so well with your product but fail to ensure there is a local outlet willing to take advantage of the obvious sales that will ensue for such a brilliant new product.

This is a classic example of a business that has a great product, a great brand, a clear commitment to expanding the profile of the product but has not completed the sales cycle before pushing the product into the outside world. If this business had a strategy planned through from the initial brand to how the customer can access the product then I know with a product of this quality they would have seen far greater sales performance.

Sales advice and planning is so important and yet people do not give it the attention it deserves. SalesFriend really can help businesses like this, we do not charge the huge fee's of management consultants and in some instances we won't charge you at all while you are growing your business and funds are precious. The longer we work with you the more of an impact we can make and if we need to forget fee's in the early days we will!

We have many clients who simply use our telephone package that means we are always at the end of a phone to listen to your ideas and help you plan and make sure you have covered all the required steps to make your give-away a commercial success. We think for as little as £49 per month businesses would be crazy not to use our skills and benefit from our experience. 

A step into the known

Research done? Check. Thinking done? Check. Decision made? Check.

So where do you start?

There are no clear cut answers to this, there are a myriad of companies out there who can build you a website and create a brand for you. The key decision for you is whether or not you need them.

Getting a website live can be very simple and it can be very difficult. It can be free and it can costs thousands. It can be staggeringly quick it can be frustratingly slow and whilst I cannot make the decision for you I can give you some tips and facts I have learned over the years to help you decide:

• It is very rare for the first site you launch to be perfect. Only through having a site live and in use will you begin to understand what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong. Do not be afraid to start small and test your conclusions. There are many providers out there who let you build your own site in a very easy way for only a few pounds each month. There are also some great template sites available that take only a few hours to get live with your content.

• Plan your site correctly BEFORE you start to either build it or ask for quotations. How do you want people to navigate around your site? How many pages do you require? Do you want to be able to change the content yourself? Do you want connections to social media on your website? Do you need any form of "live help" that allows you to chat with your clients online? If you are listing items for sale or products do you need to be able to edit prices, photos and descriptions yourself? Asking someone else to make the changes for you is never as fast as being able to do it your self.

• You WILL make some mistakes, you will very probably overestimate the potential in the early days. Making a website live is the easiest part - getting people to see it is much harder. I still meet people today who have spent thousands on a nice new shiny website, it is launched without any marketing plan and they remain confused after a few weeks when nobody has seen it. 

• Establishing a logo and brand is a fairly easy step but is best left to those with the skills and software to make something impressive. Again there are many providers out there that will design you a logo for as little at £10. I do this for free for most of my clients as it is a great way to start a relationship with the business owner.

• The content on your site is the most important element to get right. Yes, new clients like to be greeted by a nicely designed site that is easy to navigate but ultimately they will want to see or read about the item that made them come to your site in the first place. Writing text for a website is a skill and needs to be right so make sure you pay particular attention to this. Other sites can help you with effective ideas for content but you should never copy and paste the content from others. It is unprofessional, will not get your message across clearly and may well result in a little trouble if you get caught! Make your content interesting to read and informative and keep it fresh. 

• Before you open your site to the big wide world ask any many friends, family members and businesses associates to look at your site and comment. They will find things that do not make sense to fresh eyes, they will find errors and they will give you honest feedback.

The last piece of advice I can offer when it comes to this stage of opening your new online business is to be determined. It is rarely easy, there is lots to learn and it will not happen overnight. A new site needs constant attention, it needs to be fed with information and it needs to be nurtured. If your site is not offering products that change and is more service based or informative then making changes, updates and adding content daily is a must. If you let the content become stale then why would people return? Would you read book you read last week? This is where a "Latest News" section or social media connections can really help keep your content up-to-date and your readers engaged. 

Month one after launch is the learning zone, months two and three are the changing zone and months four to six is when you can start to enter the benefits zone. Perhaps you are lucky or have deep pockets but realistically if you work to these expectations then you will be well prepared for the online world.

I have met many people who can moan endlessly about the vast sums of money they have lost while trying to build an online business but I have never met anyone who spent a couple of hundreds pounds at the beginning and then moaned later. They either turned the business into a success or they lost very little in trying.