How to Increase Sales Is Process Driven and Begins with Existing Customers Not New Ones
How to Increase Sales Is Process Driven and Begins with Existing Customers Not New Ones
Can you answer these questions quickly and honestly?
Do you know the top 20% of your customers who deliver the 80% of your sales?
Do you know the bottom 20% of your customers?
Do you know the top customers who make referrals that actually turn into clients?
Do you know what customers generate the most profit?
Do you know how much your existing clients cost you to acquire?
Do you know if your existing customers are high maintenance, high profit or high maintenance low profit?
Do you know your customer’s customers?
When you can begin to answer these questions, you can construct a sales process to work your existing clients. This process allows your to not only understand how to increase sales, but how to increase profitability.
For example, what would happen if you ranked your customers not only by sales, but by profitability? Would you be surprised by the results?
According to sales research, your top 20% most profitable customers generate more than 150% of your annual profits. When you lose one of these (this is why customer loyalty is more important than customer satisfaction), you need to find 10 to 25 new customers who generate average profitability. Now does that make sense wasting your sales skills and resources on mining for new customers when you already have a known vein of gold?
Additionally, that bottom 20% drains the overall profitability of the company. If you can help turn them around to at least a break even point, you would have doubled your company’s overall profitability.
By creating a sales process where your best customers are continually:
Touched through additional meetings
Asked for their thoughts on growth and innovation
Listened to for their concerns about customer service and overall organizational management
You can strengthen those relationships while simultaneously increasing sales and profitability. And you are actually helping your clients grow their businesses.
Then by working through the least profitability customers, again through a process, you can help them build their businesses and even fire a few customers if necessary. Maybe those bad clients are slow pay. Have you spoken to them as to why there exists this challenge? Possibly, you can establish new higher prices based upon their payment and offer cash discounts if bills are paid early. Who knows, you are only limited by your own thoughts.
Yes, you do need new prospects because of attrition and time frame of your products and services. However, if you want to know how to increase sales, begin first with your best customers for that is your gold, your known treasure chest. The hidden goal is those 20% bottom customers.
How to Increase Sales Is Process Driven and Begins with Existing Customers Not New Ones - To learn more about this author, visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website.
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So you want to know how to increase sales? Maybe you are looking in all the wrong places as that old song goes. Have you considered revisiting your existing customers and begin a process to help them grow instead of focusing on your sales growth?
Can you answer these questions quickly and honestly?
Do you know the top 20% of your customers who deliver the 80% of your sales?
Do you know the bottom 20% of your customers?
Do you know the top customers who make referrals that actually turn into clients?
Do you know what customers generate the most profit?
Do you know how much your existing clients cost you to acquire?
Do you know if your existing customers are high maintenance, high profit or high maintenance low profit?
Do you know your customer’s customers?
When you can begin to answer these questions, you can construct a sales process to work your existing clients. This process allows your to not only understand how to increase sales, but how to increase profitability.
For example, what would happen if you ranked your customers not only by sales, but by profitability? Would you be surprised by the results?
According to sales research, your top 20% most profitable customers generate more than 150% of your annual profits. When you lose one of these (this is why customer loyalty is more important than customer satisfaction), you need to find 10 to 25 new customers who generate average profitability. Now does that make sense wasting your sales skills and resources on mining for new customers when you already have a known vein of gold?
Additionally, that bottom 20% drains the overall profitability of the company. If you can help turn them around to at least a break even point, you would have doubled your company’s overall profitability.
By creating a sales process where your best customers are continually:
Touched through additional meetings
Asked for their thoughts on growth and innovation
Listened to for their concerns about customer service and overall organizational management
You can strengthen those relationships while simultaneously increasing sales and profitability. And you are actually helping your clients grow their businesses.
Then by working through the least profitability customers, again through a process, you can help them build their businesses and even fire a few customers if necessary. Maybe those bad clients are slow pay. Have you spoken to them as to why there exists this challenge? Possibly, you can establish new higher prices based upon their payment and offer cash discounts if bills are paid early. Who knows, you are only limited by your own thoughts.
Yes, you do need new prospects because of attrition and time frame of your products and services. However, if you want to know how to increase sales, begin first with your best customers for that is your gold, your known treasure chest. The hidden goal is those 20% bottom customers.
How to Increase Sales Is Process Driven and Begins with Existing Customers Not New Ones - To learn more about this author, visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website.
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Leanne Hoagland-SmithAre your sales where you want them to be? Will you be one of the few who achieves sales or business success or one of the many who have failed to change? Are you tired of being told you are like everyone else? Then you may find my first book on sales of interest. Be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits, The Keys to Unlocking Sales available at Amazon or at http://www.processspecialist.com/red-jacket.htm. This book is a reflection of my no-nonsense approach to improving sales to overall business results. If you are truly committed to making sustainable changes, then I can help you secure a positive return on your investment because I focus on executable solutions not telling you the problems you already know you have. From training to corporate (group) coaching to executive one on one coaching, my approach is to assess, create awareness, build a goal driven action plan and then execute. The bottom line question is "Not do you or your employees know it, but do you or they want to do it?" Please call for a free strategy session at 219.759.5601. - Visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website |
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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George LudwigGeorge Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website |
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David AchesonDavid Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns. David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website |
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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John BrennanJohn Brennan Ed.D. Dr. Brennan is President of Interpersonal Development, LLC, a training and development firm. Interpersonal Development has provided sales training and coaching to more than 3,000 sales reps from over 100 companies. A native of Australia, Dr. Brennan received his doctorate from the University of Rochester. His dissertation researched the effectiveness of Behavioral Modeling Technology in training people in interpersonal skills. While he has spent most of his career designing or delivering training, he was also a Vice-President of Sales of a training and development franchise with operations in 25 markets. Dr. Brennan has designed and delivered sales training in North America, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. He has been a guest speaker at numerous national and regional professional conferences. When Microsoft wanted Best Practices articles on sales for their web site, they called Dr. Brennan. The results are at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX011387391033.aspx His firm’s clients have included Volvo, The Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Eastman Kodak, Gannett, Equifax Europe, the Economist Group and countless small businesses. - Visit John Brennan's Website |
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Dianne CramptonDianne Crampton is an executive leadership coach, team consultant, author and president of TIGERS Success Series, Inc. Dianne has been helping CEO's and Executives connect their employees to their core values and goals for over 20 years using the trademarked TIGERS team culture process, which stands for trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success. To download a free white paper on behaviors that build strong teams and behaviors that will predictably tear them down go here. - Visit Dianne Crampton's Website |
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Kim CastleWith nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website |
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