Free Advice

Don’t ignore your sales strategy

In its simplest form, every business has only three components. Those are operations, marketing and finance.

Operations is the production and delivery of the company’s product or service. Marketing is making customers aware of the product or service and selling it to them. Finance lets you know how marketing and operations are doing.

In small businesses, the owner usually knows their product or service, how to develop it, make it, improve it and deliver it. If they’re lucky, they also know how to efficiently market and sell so the company consistently grows.

Getting new customers is always a challenge. Some companies use marketing to bring the customers to them. Others use salespeople to go to the customers. And for some it’s a combination.

Know your sales process

Let’s concentrate on the sales process, which is an area that often breaks down. Now there are more books and sales training programs out there than there are coffee shops in greater Seattle. Surprisingly, there isn’t much on sales management.

This means most company owners “wing it” when it comes to working with their sales team. Since owners tend to get wrapped up in the operations side and salespeople have the reputation of doing things “their own way,” often they are left on their own with the encouragement to “make more sales.”

The same is true in the business plan (if there is one). There’s a lot on operations and product. Perhaps there’s a nice section on marketing. But very seldom is the sales plan presented in detail, as to what the sales team will do, how often, when, etc.

Build on your strengths

Auto Consultants Northwest (ACNW) is an Edmonds based company with ten years of success as an “Auto broker.” ACNW finds new or used cars for their clients. They do the research and shopping and deliver the requested car at a fair price. If your goal is to be the first person on the dealers’ lot Saturday morning to get the advertised loss leader, this might not be for you.

If you want to avoid the hassle and get a fair price, you’ll probably like this service. As Ed Wilder, one of the two owners, told me, auto brokers are for the 20% of the population that doesn’t want to buy a car the traditional way by walking into a dealership and getting into hard negotiations. I should add that my experience tells me that 20% will grow as people realize this service is available.

ACNW wanted to get to the next level. The two owners realized they were “car guys.” They are great salespeople and their customers love them. They are weak managers who tend to tell their staff what to do before they run off to work with their own customers.

We had two goals. One was to make sure the salespeople handled the prospective customers correctly, explaining the benefits of the service and making sure they were talking to a serious buyer.

The other goal was to set the sale people up with a marketing system that would balance short-term and long-term efforts. One advantage ACNW has is a database of over 7,500 customers. (Customer satisfaction surveys told us that over 95% of their customers were extremely happy and plan to do more business with ACNW.) In addition, advertising, word of mouth and reputation cause the telephone to ring constantly.

Their situation was similar to that of many sales organizations. Most of their people were on a roller coaster. Up for a couple months and then a bad month. Their sales program has three focus points focus:

 1)       Make outgoing calls to past customers. Don’t sit around waiting for the phone to ring.

2)       Provide extemporary customer service and contact. Don’t cut corners, pay attention to all details, follow-up before and (especially) after the car is delivered. This includes a follow-up call, thank you card and a letter 30-days later.

3)       Get out and meet people. Each sales person is to belong to a leads club, plus a chamber of commerce, service club or other organization. Part of the job at ACNW, as it is at many firms, is to make prospective customers aware that this service available.

This may sound simple. It is. All sales efforts, broken down into their components, are simple. The key is to make sure you do all things you’re supposed to do and do them regularly. At ACNW there is an Excel spreadsheet that records weekly activity. The sales staff also enters all contacts and information into their contact management program.

By tracking current activity, sales projections can be realistic. That said, remember that most sales people hate paperwork and computer entry is something that has replaced paper reports. However, it is one of the key components to any sales plan and should be adhered to.

To summarize, make sure your sales staff has all the tools they need, including an action plan. Track the results so you know what works and what doesn’t and record everything so your projections are meaningful.

© Copyright John Martinka 2002. All rights reserved.