Phil Shipperlee Articles

Prospecting for Customers and Opportunities - Click To Read Article
The prospecting process focuses into individual suspects; starting to engage with specific companies and within them named individuals. It establishes the foundation for later stages of the selling cycle, identifying at an early stage where you might be wasting your time, and hence will dramatically increase your chance of success.

Opportunity Pursuit – part 2, making sales - Click To Read Article
Getting over excited that there is an opportunity to bid can be dangerous as it could distort your objectivity. This article identifies key factors in mounting the response.

Opportunity Pursuit – part 1, identifying or creating? - Click To Read Article
Too many interactions between suppliers and buyers are based on individual transactions involving the supplier re-acting to a stated requirement. This serves neither the supplier nor the buyer as the result is invariably a price driven solution with little or no consideration for the added value that could be available or for the potential benefits of a more solid relationship designed to deliver benefits way beyond the single one-off transaction.

Opportunity Pursuit – part 3, keeping a finger on the pulse! - Click To Read Article
As stated previously, opportunity pursuit is different and separate from the creation of customers; it is driven by a process which draws on information gathered earlier and continually evaluates the health & development of an opportunity right up until the contract is secured.

Mergers and Acquisitions - a guide for SMEs - Click To Read Article
This is the first of three articles which taken together will provide a high level guide for anyone wishing to make an acquisition or to dispose of their own company through a sale. This article deals with the overall strategy of Sale, Acquisition &Merger and where it should fit within the wider strategy for your company. The next article will look at the issues for you as a buyer and the process used to acquire and the final article will look at the issues for you as a seller and how to go about finding a buyer.

Mergers and Acquisitions - a buyers’ guide for SMEs - Click To Read Article
Taking a look at the things you must consider when buying a company, in particular; why you should considering buying, how you will fund the acquisition, the process to be used, and the issues to be considered once the deal is done.

Mergers and Acquisitions - a sellers’ guide for SMEs - Click To Read Article
Selling a company is an exciting, challenging and rewarding task; the culmination of the even greater challenge of preparing a company for sale, so that the maximum asset value can be realised. To help you rise to that challenge this article looks at the reasons to sell, the different approaches to selling, how to go about finding a buyer and some of the main issues you need to consider.

Market Focus – the Proposition - Click To Read Article
Market Focus; the essential foundation to how and where you get your business. Simplistically, you need to look at what you sell (your proposition), who you should be selling it to (your target market) and how you get there (the routes to market). When defining your proposition, you need to strike a workable balance between what you are able to supply and what the prospects and customers need and will be willing to buy.

Market Focus – Who will buy ? - Click To Read Article
To determine your target market, you need to decide where you want to sell, who is most likely to buy from you, when and why. It’s about rifle shot rather than buck shot.

Market Focus - taking the proposition to market - Click To Read Article
Identifying the optimum routes to your market and ensuring you have the right mix of routes for your proposition and target market are an important part of business planning.

Go-to-Market model - the value chain - Click To Read Article
Perhaps the most critical performance factor for any business is its ability to produce a reliable and predictable flow of new and repeat business, sufficient to deliver the financial goals within the business plan. If you’ve followed this series of articles, I hope that by now you will see how market focus, prospecting, creating customers and creating, identifying & pursuing opportunities all contribute to creating a solid foundation on which to build a reliable, predictable sales pipeline. What does matter is that you have available to you the means of determining the future. As Peter Drucker once said “the best way to predict the future is to create it”. So, how much more business might you get if you use the process outlined in previous articles before starting the Opportunity Pursuit process?

Creating Customers – a distinct process - Click To Read Article
Creation of a customer is a very different and separate process from that used when creating and pursuing opportunities. The process of creating a customer, as a carefully planned activity, helps you to build your customers’ understanding of the value of your proposition and the value of their relationship with your company.

Creating Customers – understanding the buyer - Click To Read Article
Part of the process of developing a prospect into a customer is to use some of the time to understand their buying habits and processes. A common mistake made in selling is to focus internally on what you do and how you do it, when the most important thing is to understand what the prospects and customers want you to do. You need to understand how they might behave, how they might re-act to you, and what will matter to them most when selecting a supplier.

Creating Customers – plan the relationship - Click To Read Article
To create customers; meaningful mutually beneficial relationships, requires time, effort and commitment from both sides. They must see you as a company that can cure problems for them and that they can trust to deliver. That way, they will want to use you and will have reasons to keep you informed of future needs that you can help to satisfy. The relationship creation process needs to be driven by the supplier, involving the creation of well designed plans, which are then implemented and executed by experienced sales people.

Do you need more business? - The big picture - Click To Read Article
Perhaps the most critical performance factor for any business is its ability to produce a reliable and predictable flow of new and repeat business, sufficient to deliver the financial goals within the business plan. Many businesses find themselves in the position of looking at the most recent month or quarter and wondering what happened. It doesn’t matter what has already happened, it’s now too late to change it. What does matter is that you have the means of determining the future. During the 30 years that I have been building and running successful businesses for myself, I have always ensured that above all I had in place a robust, fully integrated selling function; production, delivery, HR, etc. can wait because, if you cannot create enough customers to buy at the right price, then you don’t have a viable business.


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