Do I Cut Costs or Increase Sales?
Why not increase sales while reducing cost of sales. As a business owner can you identify with the with what is written below?
One answer I hear a lot is fire the sales person to decrease cost and pray that sales will happen anyway. This often happens when the owner/CEO is involved in closing every sale. They don't see any reason why they had the sales person.
What Does Sales Say?
All the sales person ever does is to ask for leads and turn in expense reports after attending expensive conferences. They never seem to have any leads from the conferences either. How many of these excuses have you heard after a major industry conference?
- Booth was in the wrong place.
- The right type of prospects didn't attend.
- You needed a better booth.
- They needed more help in the booth.
- They weren't able to walk around and find leads.
- The company message wasn't good enough.
- There needed to be more giveaways to collect business cards.
- Need to attend regional conferences instead.
Or they tell you they have gotten great leads but 6 months later the leads just didn't pan out. They are sales, marketing needs to get them leads to pursue.
What Does Marketing Say?
Marketing always wants to start another 6 month branding plan. Or they want to outsource it for a three month test. Don't forget about another focus group to find out why people want to buy your products.
- We need new booth graphics and a larger booth.
- We need to advertise in the conference media.
- We need a better location.
- We need better email campaign in advance of conference.
- Sales need to close the leads we provide them.
- We need more print advertising.
- We need a radio commercial and a billboard.
- We need more staff.
- We need more branding so people know who we are.
What do the Consultants Say?
There is always another silver bullet and someone that doesn't know your business, has no experience in the industry, but have packaged some great workshops is just what the doctor ordered. If none of your people have the answer someone from outside has to have the answer, right?
- You need team building exercise.
- A day away from the office to brainstorm.
- Cross-functional teams workshop.
- Some ninja black belt training!
- A test market.
- 360 reviews - gets you back to where you started!
- Seal team training is the latest rage!
- Best practices.
Unless the "consultant" knows your industry and has experience to coach and nurture you current people over time messages and training from strangers doesn't last the moment they closed the door to deposit your check.
What Do You Say?
As the business owner or CEO you have the answers, you just don't know how to impart the knowledge on the rag tag group of employees you have to depend on the make things happen. You have kept the business alive and if there were enough hours in the day you would do what is needed yourself.
- You know who buys your products.
- You know what your ideal client looks like.
- You know your product's features.
- You know your product's benefits.
- You know your product's function.
- You know what makes you or your product different.
- You know your competitors.
- You are tired of losing money on marketing and sales programs that don't work.
- You are tired of excuses and nebulous metrics of impressions, contacts, or calls.