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Guest post by: Leanne Hoagland-Smith Become an Author

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Want more sales? Who doesn't? Have you considered introducing new products or services to demonstrate that you are truly listening to your loyal customers?

Of course some people will never, ever try something new. And there will always be people who want everything new. Your goal is to look between these two extremes.

How you can achieve this goal is to work with your existing loyal customers (external) and make them part of your innovation department. Use their experiences with your products and services to forge new products and services. By taking this action, you have not only demonstrated that you truly care about your customers, but you are not wasting precious resources on products or services that no one wants.

Then return to the people who know more about your products and services than even your clients, your employees (internal customers) do. Survey them and listen to what they have to say.

Growth comes from innovation. Would Wells Fargo be one of the major global financial institutions if it had stayed in transportation?

Change does not have to be something very expensive requiring a lot of research and development dollars. The bundling of existing products or services can be innovative especially if you remove what is not needed and add what is needed. Then you can increase something while decreasing something else. To learn more about this approach, read the Blue Ocean Strategy.

Companies have become quite successful in establishing innovative products and services while not engaging in expensive R&D. Some of these companies are now household names such as: Southwest Airlines, Cirque de Soleil and Yellow Tail Wines. And if you read their histories, you will noticed that they truly listened to their loyal customers.

Within my business coaching training practice, I discovered that small business owners to chief executives running $20 million businesses did not time for an intensive strategic planning. They realized that they needed a planning process that was fluid and would stop their bleeding of money, time and energy.

Additionally within the strategic planning process, I noticed that the process came to a sudden stop because very few of my clients knew how to plan, set and achieve goals. Sales Coaching Tip: The execution of many sales plans fail because sales professionals do not know how to consistently plan, set and achieve goals.

I could have continued to sell a process that took 40 to 60 hours including consulting time that was profitable. However, I decided to innovate and created a planning process that could be used as stepping stone into a more intensive business planning process.

So what I did was to reduce the time specific to research and increase the time specific to goal achievement. Also, I added pre-populated goal growth areas and removed fill in the blank goal categories. The end result was Triage Business Planning: Know Exactly What to Do and When to Do It; Track the Right Things to Produce the Right Results; Avoid Misdirected Actions & Misguided Decisions.

Also, I created some supplemental modules specific to research for those companies who wanted a little more, but not an intensive strategic planning process. Finally, I can deliver this product as a Tele-conference workshop; public workshop or through executive business coaching training on site sessions usually within 4 hours. If the client wants additional help, sales coaching hours can be added to the overall statement of work. Again, I have learned it is much easier to sell a round peg into a round hole than attempting to sell a square peg into a round hole.

Innovation can be your partner to increase sales as well as better profits. The choice is yours to either grow and demonstrate that you are truly ahead of the curve or stay where you are and be behind the curve.

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