Tweet

Maximizing Sales and Profits in Economic Recovery

Written by: Greg Schinkel

Article Overview: As the recovery takes hold your organization will start to do better simply because customers will start buying again. While this provides a much needed break from the angst of recession, it will hardly provide the motivation to excel. Instead challenge your organization to achieve its true potential and watch sales and profits soar.

Maximizing Sales and Profits in Economic Recovery

Given the recent awful business environment, companies hunkered down into survival mode, cutting expenses and waiting for business conditions to improve. Expectations were reduced to match reality. Now with the economy stabilizing and beginning to expand again business leaders will need to awaken their organization to its true potential in order to achieve maximum performance.

As the recovery takes hold your organization will start to do better simply because customers will start buying again. While this provides a much needed break from the angst of recession, it will hardly provide the motivation to excel. Instead challenge your organization to achieve its true potential and watch performance soar.

Think in terms of watching runners about to compete at a track meet. Is your organization in the starting blocks, ready to launch when the starter's pistol fires? Or will you be a spectator in the stands watching your competitors win the race?

Setting Your Organization's Thermostat

Your organization has a thermostat. The thermostat defines the performance expectations of the business and everyone who works in it. If performance drops below the threshold, heads will roll, bonuses will be reduced or eliminated and generally everyone will work harder to get performance back on track. On the other hand, if performance exceeds expectations, the organization will tend to slack off and take it easy which will prevent the business unit from achieving its full potential. Who sets the thermostat? The CEO/president/business owner, and in turn, the senior management team defines what is possible and drives the expectations of the rest of the organization.

Stop Being Satisfied with Incrementalism

Most organizations need to rethink the incremental way they manage expectations year over year. Managers are often satisfied with a 5-10% improvement because that might be the threshold that triggers bonuses and yet leaves a little something in the tank for next year. If a target is set too high, the manager might be punished for not achieving the target even though performance improved. The result? The organization leaves money on the table because it was capable of achieving more but did not do so.

Achieving What Seems Impossible is a Powerful Motivator

A sense of challenge and growth is the most powerful motivator for employees. When goals are set too low complacency sets in. Top performers leave the organization and you are left with mediocre performers who are primarily interested in maintaining the status quo. By raising expectations employees will be more engaged and results will improve; a true win/win situation.

Enabling Questions to Help Achieve True Potential

Enabling questions are those that help you achieve greater performance and get you closer to your true potential.

1. How can we dominate the market?
2. How can we turn customers into fans who rave about us?
3. What other needs do our customers have and how can we meet those needs?
4. How can we maximize profit and cash flow in good times and bad?
5. How can we have employees who love working here?

Raise the performance of your organization, your department and for yourself personally by defining your true potential, resetting your thermostat to increase results and challenging yourself and others to grow.

Related Articles
  Business Opportunity Blossoms as Canadian Recession Starts to Recover
  Seven Years of Bad Luck, or Bad Growth, or Something
  The Economic Crisis: Is It Really Over?
  Data Retrieval
  My Advice to the Wise Investor

Article Tags: business conditions, business environment, business leaders, business owner, business unit, ceo president, economy, environment companies, fires, maximum performance, motivation, performance expectations, pistol, recession, runners, senior management team, spectator, survival mode, thermostat, threshold



Related Forum Posts
Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing
Contingency Planning and Disaster Recovery: A Small Business - Contingency Planning and Disaster Recovery: A Small Business Guide Donna R. Childs, Stefan Dietrich 2002 "Among the countless tragic lessons of 9/11, an overlooked but important discovery was the lack of preparedness among small and midsized businesses for responding to disaster. While most of the media attention was naturally devoted to...., the very existence of thousands of small businesses was determined by whether or not they had adequate insurance, sufficient technological support, and viable disaster contingency plans." (People who live in hurricane prone areas need this as well...and who knows when a fire might not strike...) Table of Contents 1. Preparation 2. Response 3. Recovery 4. SAmple IT Solutions Basic safety practices Okay, the TOC isn't [i:2fu76idt]too [/i:2fu76idt]helpful, but there's lots of valuable info in this book, as to ensure that [i:2fu76idt]your [/i:2fu76idt]losses won't be catastrophic. How people cope with suddenly seeing their homes and all their possessions gone, what kinds of insurance to get, etc. etc.
Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz] I second the request...
Happy Worker as of Dec 31 2007 - Here's mine... I'm now off to make an offering to the business planning gods for their help in getting to these goals & beyond. To the combined success of Prophets 2 Profits! ----------------------------------------- 1) Corporate a) Retail - Sales reps covering all major markets (1M or more) - Retail product launch plan - 1 more retail release (TBD) b) The Toy Agency - Systems for: o Creative process o Pricing o Manufacturing o Logistics - Marketing agency strategy in place - 1 new customer every 2nd month (5 new customers); 1 of which will be rev of >= 500K/year c) Business - Creative talent pool management strategy & process - Outsourced and/or weekly bookkeeping - Monthly budgeting & forecasting - Better banking organization (Line of Credit, CCs, automate billing for appropriate vendors) - Team total of 5 - Larger office d) Web site - Daily updates - Start of separation of Blog/TTA/Retail 2) Personal - Most weekends “off”! - Entirely separate personal finances; basic personal financing plan - Family….?
Re: Joomla Now Has A GetResponse Module - Hi Kevin, Interesting that you tried Joomla and then gave up on it. So did I! There is a lot to be said for Joomla. It can make your site look very professional, you can completely change design in just a few clicks of your mouse, and if you add anything to a panel you can display it throughout your site... Also, Joomla does seem to suck in traffic. My traffic stats improved with Joomla, probably because of the interactive features it offers, such as the article directory feature and so on. However, I also experienced various frustrations with Joomla. HTML is simpler and you have complete control over your site, but you do have to recode every page when you make design changes... (unless you are prepared to learn CSS and then deal with all the browser problems...) Also, I market the Plug-In Profits Site and came to the conclusion that it would be better business practice to show my potential customers what can be done with a Plug-In Profits site by using one myself and modifying it to suit my purposes. After all, there is no better advertisement for a product than the fact that the seller also uses it! On the other hand, I know a lot of Internet marketers who love Joomla, so I think it is just a matter of choosing what works best for you. ... And if you like Joomla and use the GetResponse autoresponder service, life just got easier for you! David H


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

What If You Had a 100% Success Rate?

Are You Listening?

An Intelligent Contact Sheet

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.