We help you take a structured and focused approach to sales which will underpin the sustained profitable growth of your business. We specialise in providing support for:

• Growing companies that are not able to employ a full-time sales manager, but who could benefit from the support of an experienced sales professional.
• People from technical/specialist backgrounds in larger organisations who have some responsibility for sales but little experience of the discipline.

Below we outline what, from our experience, we find are often key issues, the situation most companies face, the problems they experience and the implications, and how we can help you address them, and achieve consistently better sales.

The situation companies typically face

• They’d like to generate more business, which can be simple providing they adopt a structured and focused approach. But very few businesses do.
• The majority of small businesses are run by non-sales people; within larger companies, departments are run by non-business / sales people. As a result few companies have a sales culture.
• Surveys of Small Businesses show that less than 1 in 5 owners of small businesses have any sales experience. It also highlighted that around 80% of all business had ceased to trade within 5 years of starting up. The two are probably linked.
• The vast majority of sales people cannot sell effectively. They can be shown how to. Effective selling is not a mystery.
• Senior people don’t want ‘basic’ solutions, and forget that ‘basic’ is only a starting point. The basics need to be put in place before more ambitious approaches can be successfully implemented. If they stuck by the basic version, however, they may find that they don’t need the big solution

The problems

• Most companies have no idea how to sell, therefore they pay lip-service to it. Start-ups are generally specialists in their field (eg scientists, joiners) not sales people, so the business frequently starts off on the wrong foot. More often than not this is not a problem until the honeymoon period is over. It becomes a problem when they want to grow or when times are hard. The initial level of business they received - without really trying - is no longer sufficient. Unfortunately they have no idea how to change this. Inability to generate revenue is now a major problem
• When people whose expertise lies in other areas, (finance directors, managing directors, owners) get involved make value-judgements on a subject outwith their area of expertise:-
  
  • They are unable to decide what is important and what is not
  • They do not know what they are looking for
  • They are less aware of the implications of making a wrong call
  • Their viewpoint (because they are a ‘important’) will be accepted and rarely questioned
  • Because they also see themselves as experts, they cannot be seen to be lacking knowledge in any field. Therefore they regularly make decisions, irrespective of their level of knowledge of the topic under discussion (these points don’t just apply to sales of course)

The implication

Without a ‘sales culture’ approach, a business can run onto serious problems:

• Expenditure is based on sales projections and is generally committed in advance
• Production runs based on over-optimistic sales projections can lead to stock holding problems. Discounting, which lowers margins and profits, may be required to move the surplus stock
• Fixed costs may not be met by the contribution from sales
• You can go out of business…….

• If a sales culture does exist, then companies automatically perform better. However, sales culture is not something exclusive to the sales department. It involves the receptionist, the switchboard, the Finance Director, the delivery driver, the quality controller. If everyone understands that their role is to help in generating profitable sales, then the company is in a position to make the most of their efforts. Selling is not in itself the answer to their problems – the sales culture is
• You need systems, and these need to be set up professionally by someone who understands sales.
• If you have the systems in place you can train people to become good / better sales people. And you must involve someone who can a) train properly and b) understands the subject

How we can help

• We can help you develop the systems and skills a sales culture
• Firstly, we help you find out what you need to do to reach your targets starting with a basic pyramid structure.
  
  For example:
  
  • Target - £100,000
  • Average Job Value - £1000
  • Jobs required - 100
  • Conversion Rate - 1:3
  • Sales calls required - 300
    If you make 300 calls you will make 100 sales. Maintain your conversion rate you will hit your target
    
• We can provide the professional expertise and experience you need to set up effective sales systems.
• Once you have the systems in place you can train people to become good / better sales people. We can help you by providing an experienced trainer who understands both sales and business.

Surveys

We can design, facilitate, analyse surveys and present reports to help you manage your business better. We can conduct a range of surveys, including:

• Staff satisfaction
• Customer satisfaction
• Customer needs analysis

These surveys can be done quickly and easily on-line with large groups of people anywhere in the world. High quality reports are produced using easy to understand graphs (detailed statistical breakdown can be also be provided if required). Verbatim comments can also be gathered to provide richer detail to help understand and interpret the numerical scores, and to identify improvement ideas.