Scalable and Repeatable Sales Processes

One of the biggest entrepreneurial business lessons you can learn the hard way is that if you do not create scalable and repeatable processes in your business, you are at danger of becoming a victim of your own success.

Imagine yourself taking a great idea and building a business around it.   You execute your marketing strategy and you convert suspects into prospects and prospects into customers.  Yea!   That’s fun…

Now you do it over and over and you are generating good cash flow.    One day the next really cool idea comes along and maybe it is an even bigger opportunity but alas you can’t take advantage of it because your stuck doing your sales process because no one else can do it like you can do it.

Learn from me – don’t do as I did.   Build your business from the get go with the thought process of how am I going to replace myself when this grows beyond my time commitment.    You will save yourself some stress and gray hairs, I promise!

Be a builder of businesses by creating procedures for everything the business needs done.   Build the processes so that anyone can do them.   (Think Ray Croc and McDonalds)   I highly recommend reading “Entrepreneurial Myth Revisited” by Michael Gerber for insight into how best to do that.   When you get to the hardest process to define, the sales process, feel free to call me for some tips.

And if you are really serious about growing your business, call me and I will help you automate the sales and marketing process.

The Best Small Businesses Build Procedures into their Sales Process!

The typical sales process rarely uses procedures to develop a consistent approach to converting marketing prospects into actual clients.

Instead, the usual sales process involves a sales rep who is responsible for the entire sales function including non-sales related activities like reporting.  The sales rep does not follow any consistent procedures and uses intuition to make decisions about applying resources.  In fact, the sales rep uses a variety of ad hoc activities that may or may not be the most efficient way to convert prospects to clients.

By establishing systematic procedures for the sales rep to use (much like you would create for a manufacturing process), the Small Business Owner can greatly improve the sales function.  And in the future, eventually automate the sales process so that is is consistent across the company, scalable and highly repeatable.

If you would like a free consultation to see/hear how that might look for your small business, please call me at 817-690-4989.

The ability to follow up after a “No” or “Not Now”

The ability to follow up after a “no” or “not now” is what differentiates top businesses from average businesses.

How do you create a sales plan to give you the ability to follow up?     By taking standardized and repetitive tactics and automating them!

You have to create a sales action plan!

Most Small Businesses Don’t Have A Sales Plan

You have a business plan.  You created a marketing plan.  Then what do you do?

Most Small Businesses don’t even think to create a sales plan.

Maybe you’ve read all the books from Brian Tracy or Zig Ziglar on how to be a super sales person.   In fact, you can listen to all the Sales Trainers in the world and they will tell you all day long that you need to do this and you need to do that to sell.   But that’s all theory.

Intellectually knowing you need to do an activity is not the same as actually doing it. We often know what we need to do but that doesn’t mean we do it.

Why?  Because when you first started marketing, you had lots of time to keep up with prospects and customers.   But eventually, you start running out of time.

Now you have to close the business at hand.  You have to work the hot deals and low hanging fruit because either you need to feed your family or your sales manager is nagging you because he wants sales yesterday.   So while you are chasing all those hot deals, you are leaving behind all the rest of your opportunities that your business and marketing plan are generating.

So what do you do?   How about creating a sales action plan…

Statistics show that 82% of people who inquire about a product or service will purchase a similar product or service from someone within the next 14 months.  Will that be from your small business or from your competitor?

What if you could create a system to automate all the best sales strategies and tactics like the experts tell us about.  YOU would sell more, wouldn’t you!   I guess we do need a sales action plan after all.

What’s the difference between Marketing & Sales?

Marketing is simply about developing key strategies to find suspects and qualify them to prospects.

Sales is about developing the right tactics to take your prospects and turn them in to actual customers.

One of the most commonly used marketing terms is Positioning, a concept that was coined by Al Ries and Jack Trout in the late 1970s.

Small business owners like to focus on positioning themselves in their market place; however, they often fail to develop the necessary tactics to then close their qualified prospects and turn them into clients.

In fact, sales in nothing more than communicating with your prospects and customers.  The more you touch them (communicate with them) the more likely they will become a client.