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Guest post by: Leanne Hoagland-Smith Become an Author

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Do you know your sales numbers along with the number of days remaining before the end of the quarter to the end of the year? Knowing your numbers is critical because your business operates in the global economy. As each day starts, means that you have just 86,400 seconds less to achieve your goal to increase sales.

At any point in time, you should know the following:

• Sales goals achieved
• Profit margin realized
• Number of new customers
• Number of existing customers lost
• Future business for each forthcoming quarter
• Sales cycle time as to increasing or decreasing
• Average value per new client
• Average new client acquisition cost

So are you thinking it is time to play catch up? Far too many small business owners suffer from the Catch Up Belief Affliction. These folks have been so busy with yesterday’s and today’s problems that they failed to think about the future where most of their business originates. This particular affliction can bleed any business dry and leave it in the dust along with those other businesses that have experienced a similar death. Maybe this belief helps to explain this statistic from the Small Business Administration that for every small business that opens another one closes.

What continues to astound me within my business coaching training practice is the number of sales professionals, small business owners and executive who place far greater value in the everyday written grocery list or even planning a vacation than they do in planning their businesses. Even though these individuals know that a written grocery list saves them tens of dollars and a well-planned vacation provides enormous emotional satisfaction, they view their business through the “Spray and Pray” action filter. (Spray your sales actions all over the place and pray that something will stick.)

Of course, I hear from these business owners who include single office to sales in excess of $20 million numerous excuses including:

• No time for planning
• No budget for planning
• No value for planning

My response is would you ride in an airplane where the Captain did not have a flight plan; where the airline failed to engage in routine maintenance; and where there was a high accident record? Of course not! Effective planning and goal achievement is a mindset, a belief. As long as you believe in your excuses, you will continue to realize the same sales results and eventually bleed your business dry.



Take Action Sales Coachng Tip: Now is the time to start planning next year’s business goals while working to achieve current sales goals.. There is a plethora of information available from local small business development centers to the Internet including many free tele-conferences. Remember, you can be one of the few to increase sales and realize success or one of the many who are suffering or are dead along the business highway.

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