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You want to increase your sales then?
You're not alone, everyone wants more! |
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But the trouble is few owner managed businesses are truly proficient at the sales and marketing process. Most have limited resources in terms of people and finance to go out and “sell” their business.
Usually the business owners themselves are accountable for winning business and they have little or no experience of how to do it, because as Michael Gerber, author of world famous business book “The E-Myth Revisited” tells us, most people who go into business do so because they know how to do what the business does rather than because they understand strategic planning, sales and marketing, customer service or running a team.
Sales and marketing are two very different functions, marketing is the first step in winning new business it’s the generation of interest in your services, creating leads, people who identify themselves as being in the market for your products and services.
Once you’ve identified those leads the sales process kicks in where you convert them into orders for you to fulfil and as a business you need to be proficient at both sales and marketing. |
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| | | | | | | | There are several stages to go through in generating a message that will bring you business: |
| | | | | | | | | | | | Who are our ideal customers?
As an owner managed business we’ve already said resources are limited so you can’t get to everyone out there. So what does your ideal customer look like? What trade are they in? Where are they based? Why do you like dealing with them?
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How can I reach those customers?
What media is most likely to succeed in getting the message across. Marketing can be expensive so you need to allocate your budget carefully, to explain that point here are two examples of companies who didn’t think things through properly.
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| | | | | | | | A Midlands based recruitment company spent over a third of their total outgoings on generating business. They came to us because they were struggling so we analysed their activity, which included:
- Radio Advertising
- Several areas of The Yellow Pages
- Regional daily papers
- Local free papers
- Advertising hoardings
- Even the back of buses!
We asked them which worked best, where they got most of their customers from
”we’ve no idea” they replied. They were spending many thousands of pounds on different marketing activities with no idea whether they were working or not.
Measurement is crucial, even just a simple system like asking every new customer where they’d heard of you.
Sadly they came to us too late and were out of business before we had the chance to work with them.
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| | | | A West Midlands Private Hire Company we were already working with called us one day very excited that a regional business magazine, aimed at company executives had offered them the chance to promote themselves at a significantly reduced rate, which was still far more than they’d ever spent on marketing.
“Shall we go for it?” they asked.
Our reply was to point out that their area of operation was almost exclusively large council estates, “How many readers of that magazine are likely to live in your catchment area?” we asked.
The advertisement never happened, saving the business owner a four figure sum!
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How do we differ from our competitors?
The chances are your potential customers already have a supplier for the products and services you offer so why should they switch to you?
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Without a tangible difference between your service and your competitors they have no reason to try you out, unless you are cheaper!
It’s a strategy most businesses have used at sometime, “we need more sales, let’s lower our prices.”
But just consider the effect for a moment.
If you are a company with a gross profit percentage of 35% and you lower your prices by 10% to get more orders you would have to do a massive 40% more work just to stand still.
So the real question is would a 10% discount cause us to win almost half as many more orders as we do now, probably not!
We believe customers buy value and value can be described in a mathematical formula as:
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| | | | | And we’ve already set decreasing cost is a poor strategy then we need to build more benefits into the way we serve our customers, and that becomes how we differentiate ourselves from the competition. |
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What are buyers key frustrations with my industry?
This is a great question to help you differentiate yourself. By talking to existing customers, your team and through your own knowledge find out what really annoys customers to your industry in general. |
| | | | | | | | Solving these issues in the way you do business is a great way of differentiating yourself from your competition and giving potential customers reason to buy from you.
Call us now on 0121 552 9869 to learn more about sales and marketing and how we can help you on either a one to one basis or through group workshops, or just fill in your details below:
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