Categories
Sales & Marketing

The Metrics That Will Haunt Your Sales Team

Before you read on, take a moment to soak in all of the metrics that can be found in the infographic below. Those are sales metrics that basically mean you’re losing business and it’s all because no one is helping the sales team understand the numbers of sales.

For a sales professional their career is basically a never ending numbers game from targets, quotas to meetings per week. Their ultimate success and they reason they’ll be given a bonus is down to the number of sales they bring in which then brings me to the effectiveness of sales approach.

From a sales professionals point of view very few are going to spend the time inputting data and metrics that show how many times they called someone which also means they are incredibly unlikely to take the time to compile the data to analyse and determine the best course of action.

For a sales leaders point of view compiling data should really be your task to complete because you’ll also have the added benefit of not putting bias on data that is the strong point of a sales person rather you’ll be looking at the whole process from meeting to closing.

Once you understand the metrics and the data behind it you’ll soon begin to pick up on the sales people who are the all stars and laggards not by the number of deals they bring in but by they efficiency and effectiveness during the sales cycle.

This is key data that needs to then be shared with the team so that they can understand where they need to improve and where they are excelling because until then most sales people and leaders tend to rate success on the number of deals that are brought it.

However a fluid and efficient process not only limits the amount of missed opportunities, lack of follow ups and ultimately lost business it also helps to create a sales team that has a different attitude to the sales process.
sales infographic

Categories
Entrepreneurs

The Secret To Getting Your Office Schedule On Track Revealed in 5 Simple Steps

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It’s easy to let things slip over the summer – after all the weather’s far too nice to be indoors organising your office! However, the reality is when you do settle back into working after a break unless your office is organised you spend more time looking for files, business cards, papers, than you do working.

It’s a lot of wasted time! Use my tips below and get your office schedule back on track.

1. Clear out your desk and files

Make way for those exciting new projects that have been put on the backburner over the summer. I recently did this and apart from getting rid of four grocery bags of papers, I felt much more motivated to start those projects that had been lurking for months! And it’s amazing what you come across too!

2. Set up a Resource Folder

Keep track of those all-important pieces of information that you come across daily. How? Create a Resource Folder:

:: on your PC — store all those downloaded documents and create a shortcut on your desktop so that you can easily access your information. Go one step further and create folders within your folder, each relating to a specific topic, i.e. industry news, marketing, accounting — decide what works best for your business!

:: in your Favourites Folder in your web browser — bookmark those web pages that you find useful so that you can easily access them again. Create subject specific folders within the main resource folder.

:: using a ring binder file — print out articles that you come across while surfing or any emails that you may need to refer to again; cut out useful magazine articles; store newsletters, circulars or magazines. In fact use your resource binder to store anything that you will want to keep and refer to again! Use divider cards so that you can easily access resources on a particular topic.

Or use a combination of all three for maximum efficiency!

3. Get back in touch with your clients and contacts

Now’s a good time to update your client and contact database. It’s easy to let things slip over the summer, so drop them a personal note or email and make sure that the information you currently have for them is up-to-date — and this will ensure that your information is accurate when you come to send those all-important Christmas greetings!

4. Get your website listed in as many places as possible!

Update your directory listings; get entered on new industry directories; check backlinks — set up a spreadsheet to keep track of all of this.

5. Get your finances organised

I know, it’s summer; you’d rather be outside enjoying the sunshine than inside organising your receipts. Now’s the time to drag out all those business receipts and get your bookkeeping system back on track!

Follow these simple tips and you’ll soon have your office schedule back on track!

Categories
How-To Guides

How To Keep A Steady Flow of Clients And Prospects Coming Into YOUR Business Before It’s Too Late!

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Building a successful long-term profitable business isn’t about “marketing” your business, it’s about “managing” your business – the marketing comes once you have your management systems in place.

You cannot begin to market your business if you can’t find the information you need, don’t know who you are marketing to, and don’t know where you are in your business.

So, let’s go back to basics and take a look at one of the key office organization systems you need to have in place to “manage” your business before you can start to “market” your business – your contact management system!

If set up correctly your contact management system allows you to:

* Keep a note of clients, potential clients, and colleagues contact information.
* Easily and effectively follow-up with a prospect.
* Locate critical client contact information quickly and easily.
* Build your business.

Having all of your contact data readily to hand will allow you to build your business. You have all the information you need; it’s all in one place, and you can locate it quickly and easily. Follow-up becomes a much smoother process and in turn it builds your business.
Let me share with you below my 5 easy steps for creating your ideal contact management system so that you constantly have a full pipeline of interested clients and prospects:

1. Choose your system. You need to decide on a system that works best for YOU and YOUR business. This could be using Outlook (as I do) to manage all your contact data, appointments, To Do lists, etc. or you could use dedicated contact management software. A third option might be to utilize one of the many web-based contact management systems.

2. Draw clients into your pipeline. Once you’ve got your contact management system in place, you need to have a system for keeping in touch with people you meet at in-person events, online networking forums, or visitors to your website. One way to do that is to publish a regular ezine (electronic newsletter). This will keep clients and prospects flowing into your business and provide you with a base of interested people who want to find out more about you, your services, and your products.

3. Define the process for working with new clients. Once you’ve got prospects into your pipeline the next step is to create a system so that those clients who are ready to work with you are able to do so. This could be through an initial complimentary consultation to determine if you are a good fit for one another. List everything you currently do and come up with a system for streamlining the whole process.

4. Keep it all up-to-date. It’s all well and good having the systems in place, but if you’re not keeping it all current, then your contact management system quickly becomes of no use to you at all. Ideally, you should be updating your client data as you go along, but if you find you’re not doing that, spend 15/20 minutes at the end of each day, before you shut down your PC, reviewing who you’ve talked to/emailed, what the outcome was, and when you promised to follow-up with them. Note it all down in your contact management system.

5. Create a waiting list! If you find that you have more clients wanting to work with you than you can handle, offer to put them on your waiting list. If you suddenly get a client who has to cancel (and it does happen, for a variety of reasons), then you’re not left with a big hole in your cashflow – you simply approach your waiting list and let them know you have an opening available. Plan to keep in touch with your waiting list on a regular basis so that they don’t forget you!

Consistency is the key to keeping a steady flow of clients and prospects coming into your business. Make the commitment to spend time each and every day on your contact management system, and watch your business grow!

Categories
How-To Guides

Stop Sickies and Make People Happy At Work

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If you’re an employer or a manager then work place absence is costing you money, inconvenience, and upsetting your customers. And as we all know, not all days taken off work are due to genuine sickness. Many employees “take a sickie” because their morale is low and they just don’t like or can’t do their work.
The challenge for employers and managers is to make people happier at work. And if people are happy at work then they are less likely to take a day off every time they wake up with a stuffy nose. Some bosses think that paying more money, improving job security or working conditions is the answer. It isn’t and it’s also something that can be very hard to achieve.
People who employ or supervise other people need to become more tuned to their employees’ emotional needs and find out what really motivates them. This is also much easier to achieve than paying more money or improving job security, however there is no quick fix. Some years ago I inherited a tele-sales operation with low staff morale and poor sales
results. It took nearly a year to fix. The long-term benefits were of course worth it in terms of fewer days lost due to sickness and an increase in business.
To reduce the number of sickies there are three steps you need to consider. Firstly, pick the right person for the job. There’s a television advertisement running at present
for a recruitment company. It highlights the fact that many people are in the wrong job for their skills and attributes. The daft thing is that it was an employer or manager who put them in the job in the first place. We need to get better at interviewing and selecting people. Take more time over it; pay more attention to the applicant’s human side rather than their qualifications or experience. Get to know them better.
Find out what makes them happy, how well they get on with other people and how much energy and enthusiasm they have. Make sure they know what they’re getting into and be sure
the job suits them.
A manager in the telecom industry was telling me about an engineer who was taking too many sickies. He was being blamed for a poor attitude to his work. His job involved working in tunnels under the city repairing and installing equipment. Eventually it was discovered that the poor guy was claustrophobic and was trying to deal with it on his own. He still works for the same team but in a job that doesn’t involve small spaces. It’s not always easy to move people, which emphasises the importance of getting it right in the first place.
Secondly, you need to believe in your people. If you’ve interviewed well and picked the right person for the job then you need to trust them to do that job. You need to constantly demonstrate to your people that you trust and believe in them by what you say, your tone of voice and your body language.
If you believe that your people are not to be trusted, that they’re unable to make a decision without checking with you. That they’ll turn up late and go homeearly, then that’s exactly what they’ll do. If on the other hand you believe that they’ll do their job well, that they can be trusted to make decisions and they will give you a fair day’s work, then it is more likely this is what you’ll get. As with all theories there is no guarantee that it will
work every time, however the majority of employees are reasonable people and if you treat them as such then they are more likely to behave in a positive manner.
The third and probably the most important thing you can do to motivate your people is to give them feedback and coach them. This is where so many employers and managers fall down in dealing with their people; we are hopeless at giving feedback. Many managers are uncomfortable telling staff how they feel about their work performance.
Most employees want to know how they are performing in their job; they want to know if they are doing it right or how they could do it better. If you really want to motivate your people then you need to give them feedback on what they’re doing well and what needs improvement.
When you notice an employee doing something you do like, tell them about it. When you notice something you don’t like, tell them about it.
Do it as soon as possible. Acknowledging a job well done is not much good six months later. Also, if you don’t immediately call someone’s attention to something you’re not happy about, then they’ll assume its okay. Either that or they’ll think you didn’t notice or you don’t care. Do it in private. Why is it some managers still feel its okay to reprimand someone in front of their colleagues? Even the mildest rebuke can have a negative effect on morale.
When you do speak to the person use “I” messages. Say things like “I liked the way you did that” or “I’m unhappy with the way your reports are always late and I’d like your views on why this is”. Avoid “You” messages such as “You’re doing great”. That can come across as patronising or insincere. “You’re doing that all wrong” may cause conflict, lower morale and may not sort the problem.
Focus on one or two things. Don’t run off a whole list of attributes or misdemeanours. Also be specific about job behaviour, focus on what the person did or didn’t do, don’t make a personal attack. Employees will feel happier if they perceive their employer or manager as a reasonable and fair individual – someone who is quick to praise but also says when they’re not happy about something.
When we start to look at what motivates people at work, it’s important to realise that we all have different needs. It’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that all our staff are motivated by money. However, research conducted over the years into what motivates people at work suggests some other factors.
Money is important however people are more likely to be motivated firstly, by the work itself. Secondly, by being appreciated for what they do and thirdly by a feeling of being in on things.
The message is – if you want motivated staff then make their work interesting, give them feedback and give them the feeling that they’re involved in the business.
We can make the job more interesting by giving people more responsibility, assigning projects and by training and developing them. We need to regularly give people feedback on how they’re doing; focussing on what they’re doing well rather than on what is not so good. To meet their need to feel involved we should regularly communicate both formally and informally. We could also involve staff in meetings they might not normally attend.
These steps will take time and thought however they’ll make a huge difference as to how employees feel about their work. If they feel good and gain satisfaction from their work then they’re less likely to find a reason to “take a sickie”.
AlanFairweatherPhoto.jpgAlan Fairweather, ‘The Motivation Doctor,’ is an International Speaker, Author and Business Development Expert. To receive your free newsletter and free e-books, visit: http://www.themotivationdoctor.com

Categories
Entrepreneurs Finance & Capital

What You Can Do About Managing Your Budget And Cashflow Starting In The Next 10 Minutes

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I bet just the very title of this article is enough to make you run for cover! Along with paper piles, budget and Cashflow is another area that can drive solo business owners over the edge! In your corporate days you would have had a bookkeeping/accounting department that took care of all of this for you – they paid the invoices, they tracked the receivables, they tracked the income, and they told you the bottom line!

Now that you’re running your own business you are also the Chief Financial Officer, and it can be very overwhelming. However, it needn’t be… let me share with you three simple steps that you can put in place to manage your budget and Cashflow.

What is a Cashflow projection?

One important area of your Financial Management System is that of a Cashflow projection. Put simply, a Cashflow projection shows whether your anticipated income will be able to cover your expected (projected) expenses and this report is very beneficial to you in your business.

It is an annual report and, if set up correctly, will show you how cash will flow through your business throughout the current financial year. I’ve been using a Cashflow report in my business for many years and find it invaluable. Just recently the chance to participate in a high-profile teleclass series came up, and because I have my systems in place, I knew straightaway that it was something I could take part in!

Step 1 – Create Your Cashflow Report

This is very easy to do using a spreadsheet. Create a column that lists all of your expenses, i.e. office supplies, legal & professional fees, membership, advertising etc. and a column for each month of the year. You will need to create formulae that will tell you your total income, total expenses, and subtracts the expenses from the income, and also carries forward any amounts from month-to-month. This is so you can see how your finances are ‘flowing’ throughout the year.

Step 2 – Input Your Data

Taking your financial data from your bookkeeping system input your actual income and expenses, and list any projected expenses in the appropriate row/column. Your Cashflow report will now show you at-a-glance any time periods for which you will need to be especially aware of. For example you may have a lot of expenses in one particular month so you’ll know that the previous month you’ll need to make sure that you have the funds kept back in your bank account to take care of those upcoming expenses.

It will also show you if you can afford to make an investment in your business, whether that’s signing up for a new service or membership club, taking out an advertisement, or buying new equipment.

Your Cashflow projection can also be used as a budget planner. You can plan out when annual memberships are due and put those in ahead of time. You can also add in an amount for when your taxes are due. This will provide you with a really good feel of how cash is flowing through your business, month after month, throughout the year, and you can also tell how much you can take off for owners draw, but still leave enough to cover the anticipated expenses.

Step 3 – Schedule In The Time

Now that you have your Cashflow report in place, it’s important that you update it regularly so that you can stay aware of how cash is flowing through your business, and take any actions necessary so that you have enough to cover all of your anticipated expenses.
I recommend scheduling in at least 30 minutes once a month to update this critical financial management report.

A Final Thought…

Having an annual Cashflow projection will provide you with all of the information you need so that you can keep on top of your business financially and know where you are.

If you have a bookkeeper taking care of all your financial records for you, ask them to prepare your monthly Cashflow report for you.