Do you waste time speaking to the wrong prospects or writing detailed proposals, all while knowing you may not even have a shot at the deal?
Are your sales up one month and down the next?
Have you accepted lower margins due to lack of sales in the past?
Have you realised later how damaging this is to your profitability?
People often tell me they’re not born with the ‘gift of the gab’ or a natural confidence for sales. The great news is you don’t need either of those attributes to succeed. In fact, confidence in a sales call comes from a well-thought-out sales process, which almost anyone can follow.
Most successful business owners eventually employ a professional salesperson. But before they did that, they developed a sales process to follow.
A great sales process consistently addresses these five things:
I have helped many business owners, managers and sales specialists to develop sales processes and sales collateral that have increased profit, saved time and helped their prospects buy what they need.
I started working with Arjen Bloem in November 2014. At the time, I already had 26 years of professional sales experience. During the next 30 months, we created and fine-tuned a very effective sales strategy and sales collateral. During this time, our sales increased from… $48,210 per month to an average of $248,516 each month – this is a 515% increase. Arjen has a thorough understanding of sales strategy, sales process and product development and is pragmatic in his approach to sales. I would recommend Arjen and Successful Ventures to anyone wanting to increase sales and profit within their business. Read more “Lance Tomsett”
Many business owners I meet have no written strategic plan or, if they do, it’s a document that typically sits in the drawer gathering dust.
This is one reason many business owners get side-tracked and lose hope – they forget where they’re going. Many businesses are simply trying to manage their way through day-to-day problems. They spend all their time working IN the business, not ON the business. I’ve seen many examples of how this has crippled the morale of both the business owner and their team.
Working out a written strategy is actually not too difficult or complicated. It takes into account your dreams, expectations and where you’d like to be in the future. Once you have a plan in place, you’ll find the day-to-day problems are no longer the sole focus of your energy. You’ll now have your eye on the destination, rather than just the storm in front of you.
After I’ve worked with you to develop a strategic plan, we’ll review it every three months and create a simple three-month action plan. This action plan becomes a template for you to work from on a weekly basis.
Strategic plans are incredibly liberating. It’s like being on a journey to a great destination. You have a map in hand and you can see your progress. Even when you take a step sideways, you still know where you’re going and how to get there.
Click here or call me on 021 442121 to find out more about strategic planning.
If you’re interested in consistent sales or growing your business, you’ll need a well-thought-out marketing plan.
A good marketing plan will ensure you have control over the number of sales leads you generate. This will allow you to regulate incoming leads up and down, as needed. This ultimately gives you control of the all-important ‘sales pipeline’.
I can work with you to develop and execute strategies and content for print, online, social media, websites and Google advertising.
When building a business, we invest massive amounts of time and energy into it. As with any asset, high liquidity means you can turn your asset into cash whenever you want or need to (think retirement, change of direction or illness). It is always wise to prepare the business for sale at a future date, and I can help with that.
Business value is generated by a number of features. These can not be changed overnight but they can be part of a business’s overall strategy here are the features that would impact your ability to sell your business and get the best possible sale price.
When working with a business owner I encourage these “sale ready” features into the overall strategy. This isn’t too difficult as most of these features are also great to have in a business you want to keep.
Having a business that’s ready for sale enables you to realise value whenever you wish to exit the business.
You may not be expecting to do this anytime soon but if your circumstances suddenly change, it may be too late.