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.
No comments:
Post a Comment