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Guest post by: Leanne Hoagland-Smith Become an Author

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Over a year ago I read a story about choices. A successful roadside vendor sold produce to support his family. His little fresh market provided for his family for many years and even afforded his son a college education. After graduating from college, the son came by. He asked his father if he had heard about all the bad news regarding the economy on the radio? Of course, the father never had a radio because he was too busy buying fresh produce and selling it to his customers. Given that his son was college educated, he listened to him and started cutting back on his purchases. Soon, his customers noticed the lack of variety and freshness. As business declined, the roadside vendor purchased even less. Within 6 months, this roadside vendor who had a successful operation for over 20 years, was out of business.

The point of this story, regardless if it is true or false, is the actions you take will increase sales or decrease them. To help you thrive during any economic time, I am providing you with 12 questions that need to be answered within the next 72 hours.

1. Where does your business stand specific to last year’s business results?

2. How much did you exceed, achieve or fall short of your current sales goals?

3. Where was your most profitable business growth?

4. What were the results of your actions to reduce fixed costs?

5. How many new customers did you add to your client base in the last 12 months, 6 months, 3 months and 30 days?

6. Why did you lose customers during the last year to 30 days?

7. How much did it cost to acquire new customers?

8. How many confirmed referrals (meaning a referral came in and actually made a purchase) did you receive from existing customers?

9. Did the value of your average sales transaction increase or decrease during the last year?

10.What measurable results did you secure from your marketing efforts for the last year to the last 30 days?

11. What sales skills do you need to improve? (No one is perfect.)

12. When will you be meeting with your sales coach or business consultant to review your current sales performance and set new goals?

Take Action Sales Coaching Tip: Schedule at least 60 minutes within the next 72 hours and answer these 12 questions. NOTE: If you cannot answer these questions in 60 minutes, this probably suggests that you have not been monitoring these key performance indicators. Take a 3x5 index card. Write down your new top 5 sales goals. Read this card for the next 60 days. Give me a call and let me know of your results. Remember, only you can make the necessary choices to make the current year better than the previous one.

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