It has been a few years since I worked in a retail environment, but this last week found me working closely with the owners of a business in the catering industry, where these rules very clearly applied.  This particular business had 3 core products that they made the most of their revenue from, of these 3 products, one was very unique and gave the business a very real opportunity to grow well beyond their traditional competition.  The problem was this unique product was not selling.

They had done their market research, there was very definitely a need, so what was the reason why these unique products were not selling?  The answer was staring them in the face or should I say more accurately wasn’t!!  When a customer walked into their premises the other two products could be seen very clearly, there was no mistaking what they had and the price that they were selling them at.  The unique product on the other hand, was very difficult to find, there was no pricing and because if it’s unique nature nobody even asked about them.

Taking both the staff and the owners through their premises soon highlighted to them what was needed, where it was needed and in what quantities to ensure their customers could not miss the opportunity to purchase this unique product.  All they needed to do, was to display all three variations of the product, have sufficient quantities of each and have them displayed in THE most prominent area on the premises.  The very next morning they sold 3 unique products within the first half an hour, more than they had sold in the previous couple of months and sales continue to grow.

The lesson here is very simple, whether you are a retailer or own a cafe, you must keep your displays full of product, ensure anything that you want to sell quickly or in good quantities is displayed in a prominent location and is easily accessed by your customers.  This is especially true for this time of year where less than vigilant staff will not be so diligent in stocking up displays of products, but let that slip at your pearl.

Remember you always need the wood to sell a tree!

As is traditional with most business to business sales processes, the majority of the clients would receive an invoice for their goods, payable on the 20th of the following month (or whatever your terms of trade are) and because an invoice has to be sent out, the staff naturally get all the details from the customer.  What happens though, when the customer pays cash on pick up of the goods, does your company pay the same attention to collecting the clients details?

In the case of the business at the start of this article, they weren’t capturing any information other than a contact name (often only their first name) and a contact number (often a mobile), the amount of clients paying cash for their goods was in excess of 20%

So what you might be thinking, they have the money what’s the problem?  The problem is that 20% of this company’s data base are cash payers, that means that when they spend money the business cash flow is improved so wouldn’t it make sense to continue to talk to these companies and encourage them to keep spending?

The only way you can do this is to send your sales reps out to visit the company’s (if you know where they are located) or ensure they are on your business’s email list but the only way you can do this is to capture basic information such as:

• Full contact name of the decision maker.
• Email address of the decision maker.
• Physical address of the clients business premises.
• Office and mobile phone numbers of the decision maker.
• Social media contact details (why not connect with them over FaceBook or Twitter)

What is a KPI?

Wikipedia states that “KPIs are commonly used by an organization to evaluate its success or the success of a particular activity in which it is engaged. Sometimes success is defined in terms of making progress toward strategic goals, but often, success is simply the repeated achievement of some level of operational goal.”

The key word in the above statement is evaluate, if you do not evaluate your staff’s performance then how on earth do you know if they are doing a great job or a terrible one …… that’s right, your don’t!  One of the biggest threats to any business is it’s staff performance, the only way you can keep them focused on what they should be doing is to keep them accountable.

Norman, the inspiration for this site!

Since August 2009 when a Norman McKenzie, director of web design company Meta Solutions suggested to me that I create a “blogging” website for my business I have published a continual stream of blogs, most designed to give business owners the heads up on things to think about within their business, others were funnier blogs about my observations coming from the eyes of a customer and more recently my blogs were the only thing that kept me focused on my business through the most devastating natural disaster to hit our city in over a century.

When this site was first created, I doubted the wisdom of Norman, I didn’t “really” think I had it in me to continue writing, but he identified something within me that I hadn’t identified myself …. the level of passion I have for what I do!  The excitement I still get from putting out information, I believe will help others in business help make their life just that little bit easier, is always there and increases when my readers interact by leaving comments or sending me emails.

The blogging journey started off by launching a couple of blogs per week for the first couple of months, talking about marketing and how businesses can really refine their message to their target market by understanding the 5 principles of marketing, the feed back in the early days was limited and when I look back at the content, it was not as good as some of the later articles but it did put our website at the top of the main search engines for most marketing inquiries – they did their job.

One of the single most popular blogs I wrote was titled When The Journey Is Better Than The Destination, it was a more humorous blog about a weekend trip across the alps in New Zealand and what we faced at the end of it, during the trip we learned that New Zealand has it’s very own Rambo …….

From a business point of view the most well received blogs that had my inbox running on over time were Where Is Your Time Going? which talks about the modern day time vampires of business, the internet! Sales Rep or Account Manager? which highlighted to many that there was indeed a difference between the two and depending on the sales objectives of the business would very much influence the decision as to which would be right for the job.  Coping With Adversity was written after the biggest earthquake, a magnitude 7.1 hit Canterbury on September 4th 2010 and was intended to help local business owners keep focused on their business to ensure it was ready to trade as soon as the local economy started to pick itself up again.  This article had comments and emails from all over the world, from business owners who had experienced disasters like floods and tornado’s.

The most important blogs I have written since the creation of this site was the Christchurch Earthquake series – A Business Mentor’s Story, this series began after the earthquake of the 22nd February 2010 a 6.3 magnitude quake that brought our central city to it’s knees and left nearly 200 people dead.  From that day, we had no work for 6 weeks as business owners fought for their own survival and then the survival of their businesses.  To drag me out of my own dark place, I decided to write about what we (my family and I) were going through with a commitment to my readers that I would talk about what I, as a business mentor and coach, will be doing to rebuild my business, in a hope that I can inspire other business owners along the way to do the same.  This series went worldwide, with emails and comments coming from all over the world, all with words of support or sharing of their own similar experiences, this series kept me accountable and very definitely saved our business.

In my mind, the advice I received from Norman that day, in July 2009 was the best advice I think I received for my business, blogging is indeed a very powerful tool, ideal way of keeping your clients and followers up to speed with principals and experiences that can enhance their own business, of course it is also a great tool for ensuring the search engines know your site exists and ultimately blogging lets potential clients get an understanding of how you think and gives them a good indication of the level of experience you have within the industry, giving you the best chance of converting any inquiries for your services into paying work.

Where will the next two years take us, who knows, but two things are for sure, the earthquakes and their aftershocks will decrease and the economy will grow and we will definitely be around to experience both!!

Harvest Time, the reason we are in business!

We all work really hard to build our client base, in the early years of any business, this is one of our main focuses, find that next customer.  So at what point then does a business stop paying attention to it’s original clients, the ones that came on board when no one else would, when no one really knew about your business or understood why it was there?

At some point in a business’s growth cycle, you the business owner, get too busy to worry about the clients that have already used your services and by the time you have extra staffing in place to cope with the demand, you realise you didn’t put systems in place to accurately record and update your clients details, thus they are forgotten about.

How Do We Manage Our Client Base?

Firstly you should use some sort of Customer Management Relations (CRM) software application, these tools record all sorts of information about your clients, from their business details, key contacts, what they purchased, opportunities expected, proposals written, proposals won & lost and the list goes on.  With one of these applications (there are many to choose from depending on the demands of your business – I personally use Capsule) it makes it very easy to track all the relevant information so when you next visit that client, you don’t need to guess about what was discussed on your last visit or trying to remember what they last bought.  So you have the tools in place, how then should you go about managing your clients, let me use a farming process as an analogy:

Plough the Fields

The first time you “plough your fields” your spending the time identifying your potential clients and planning how you are going to approach them and what message are you trying to convey.

Sow the Seeds

We have our first meeting with our potential client, we find out as much about their business as possible and introduce our own business to them.

Nurture & Grow the Crop

We continue to build the rapport and the relationship between our business and theirs, further understanding their needs, now we start introducing our products and services that best meet those needs.

Harvest the Crop

The day every farmer waits for and the day you as a business owner also waits for, the time to take the order and make the sale.

Plough the Fields

This time when you are ploughing the fields, you are following through with great after sales service and providing whatever support your client needs.

Sow the Seeds

We continue to keep in touch with our clients informing them of any of your own product or service developments.

Nurture & Grow the Crop

We continue to build the rapport and the relationship between our business and theirs, further understanding their needs, introducing other products ans services as and when they have a need for them.

Harvest the Crop

The day every farmer waits for and the day you as a business owner also waits for, the time to take the order and make the sale.

….. and the cycle continues over and over again.  Without effective tools in place to help you manage this process, you WILL lose opportunities with your current clients, worse, you may even lose them to your competition because you have not taken care of them.

If you want to know more about this and how to plan your client call cycles, please check out our training module Farming the Client Base or contact us directly.  If you found this useful, please share amoungst your your friends and followers on FaceBook or Twitter by clicking the links below.

"Cost of training has always been prohibitive"

It now means that any “qualifying” NZ business who wants to develop their business in a number of key areas can now get help with the training they require through the Capability Development Voucher Scheme This scheme will provide funding for 50% of any training course cost(s) up to a value of $5,000 per year.

The NZTE have set up a network of “Regional Partners” around the country to help facilitate the scheme.  Each partner will help business owners assess whether or not they qualify for any funding, if they do they will then point the business in the direction of suitable providers for the training they require to take their business to the next level.

Do I qualify For Funding?

The following criteria will be used by the regional partners to identify whether or not your business qualifies for funding:

• Have fewer than 50 full time employees.
• Be operating in a commercial environment.
• Be registered for GST in New Zealand
• Be privately owned or a Maori Trust or corporation under the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act 1993 or similar organisation managing Maori assets under multiple ownership.
• Demonstrate a desire to innovate and grow.
• Have undergone an assessment with a Regional Partner

What Areas Can I Get Funding For?

There are a number of areas within your business that you can get assistance with, for more details, you will need to speak to a Regional Partner near you but here are the general categories:

• Marketing Strategies (Includes Sales Strategies)
• Business Planning
• Business Systems
• Finance (Including Budgeting)
• Business Sustainability
• Managing Resources
• Governance
• Lean Manufacturing / Business Operations
• Export

What Areas can Dave Sewell Ltd Provide Training For?

We provide training and coaching services in the areas of marketing, business planning and managing resources.  All of Dave Sewell Ltd training modules and workshops qualify under the Development Capability Voucher Scheme, for more details on the content of these check out our Products page.

If you have been thinking about making improvements in your business but cost was a prohibitive factor, now just might be the time to start considering getting the help needed to make that improvements happen.

If there is one thing I have learnt about being in business for yourself, you are the sales team and the sales manager, whether you have staff or not.  The problem we have as business owners, is that the Sales Manager role is a 24/7 job, it never stops.  Even when you are on the touch line watching your kids play footy, the Sales Manager is never too far away, you never know who you may be standing next to, you never know who you are going to speak to, who may need your products or services and because of this, everyone you talk to or interact with may well become a customer.  Inevitably the pressure is always there, that feeling you always need to conduct yourself professionally always looking for that queue, someone has a problem that your business can help with.

As business owners, we have our own business because of the love of what we do (for the majority!!), the sales process is a process much like accounts, we know we have to do it but it doesn’t mean we like it or are good at it, for those of you that understand where I am coming from, I am going to shed some very basic rules on managing your sales and clients for (this article will focus on business to business, my next blog will have a business to customer focus), keep these in the back of your mind and you’ll find this part of the job will become easier.

Be Prepared

If you are about to have a meeting with a potential client, do your homework.  Websites are awesome sales tools, check out your potential clients website, go to the “About Us” section, see if you can get any details of the person you are about to meet.  Check out the range of products and services that they provide, maybe have a question or two about some of these (shows interest in what they offer).  If they have a link to a FaceBook page then click on the link, “Like” their page and see what information they post on there, they may have other activities being talked about that are not on the website but maybe more relevant.  The more information you have the better, one word of warning, do not start drawing assumptions from anything you have found out prior to the meeting, it can be the quickest way to lose any chance of a sale!!

Set An Objective For The Meeting

Despite popular opinion it is not necessary or prudent to try and close the sale at every meeting you ever have with a customer or potential customer and in many industries it is just not feasible so lets remove that pressure now.  If you are meeting a potential customer for the first time, the objective may be to gather as much information about this business, maybe you will have to take the information and ponder over it later and come up with potential solutions, in this case maybe the objective for the meeting would be to secure another meeting (possibly at your own business premises so the potential customer gets a better understanding of the type of company they may do business with) or secure the opportunity to provide a quote.

Follow Up & Stick To Your Promises!

Whatever was discussed at the previous meeting with your customer or potential customer, make sure you deliver, set expectations (especially with potential customers) on what you can do and how quickly but be warned, once you have set that expectation you had better stick to it!!  Lets use my business as an example, as a business mentor, my first meeting is always at no charge, I use this meeting to gather information, what is my customer’s issues and plans?  This meeting is also used for them to find out more about my skills and experiences, at the end of the meeting, all going well, I tell them that they will receive my “assumptions email” within the next two days.  This email summaries the meeting (demonstrating that the information I gathered is accurate), clarifies their issues and goals and providing all this is right, outlines a plan to go forward, it finishes with a statement that says I will follow this email with a call (on a specific day) to get their thoughts.  This is my window of opportunity to get things right and secure a new customer, if I don’t follow through on any of this, chances are, I will not have a new customer!!

Keep In Touch

It is widely accepted in sales that if you are not communicating with your clients at least every three months (preferably in person) you run the risk of losing them, either because you are not keeping up to date with their needs or your competition has been given the time to weasel their may in under your nose.  You need a plan in place to ensure this does not happen, Customer Relations Management (CRM) packages are a great tool for this, you can record every interaction with your customers, you can add values of sales pipelines and sales achieved and you can schedule your next visit, ensuring you never leave them too long without a visit.  However you manage this process it is important that you take the guess work out of when you should next visit your client and when you do, go back to the first step “Be Prepared”.  Ensure you know what you talked about last time, do you have to follow up on anything specific, have you launched new products or services?  If so you need to educate  your customer about these, have they launched any new products or services?  Again, if they have, can your business help them in some way?

As the Sales Manager to your business, remember, always be prepared, never assume anything prior to meetings, listen well, keep your promises and be sure to stay in touch, if you start this process today, within the next three months you will be back in control and actively managing  your customer base.

Preparation is the key, take control of the conversation before you even pick up the phone or walk into their offices.  You decide how the conversation will go, you decided what to talk about and in what order, most importantly you set yourself an objective for the meeting.  What is my ideal outcome for this meeting (what will success look like).  If you are very clear in yourself what you want from the meeting, you have already increased your chances of it being a success, if you have prepared the meeting to reach that outcome, you have increased the chances even more of the outcome being realised.

I would recommend that this approach is taken for every meeting that you have in business, whether that is an internal meeting between you and another in your team or an external meeting between yourself and potential clients, existing clients or your suppliers.

So what are the elements of a well prepared meeting:

• What is the aim of the meeting, what is your ideal outcome?
  • Is the outcome to secure a second meeting?
  • Is the outcome to find a specific solution to an ongoing problem?
  • Is the outcome to get your customer to pay their invoice?
  • Is the outcome to have the customer confirm the sale?
  • Is the outcome of the meeting to discipline your staff member?
• To get that outcome, what specific areas need to be discussed?  There are a number of things you should think of here, depending on the situation, these may include:
  • Ask questions to gather any information you may require to progress the meeting.
  • Address any questions and fears the other party may have (anticipate these and come prepared).
  • If tasks are to be completed by the other party, be specific and include time frames and any other expectations.
  • Agree a course of action going forward with time lines agreeable to both parties
• Ensure you have all the resources in place to follow through on any potential outcomes from that meeting, make sure you can deliver on your promises.

Lets look at an example, you have a call come through from a potential client, they found your web site, they have used a competitors product for a number of years but like the look of what you have to offer, you set up a meeting for the following day.  Your preparation may look something like this:

1. In my industry the sales process can take up to 3 months, my objective for this meeting is to be allowed to present a proposal.
2. To provide a proposal I will need to understand the following
   1. How are the key decision makers within the organisation?
   2. Get them to summarise what it is their business provides?
   3. What was their motivation for using that type of product in the first place?
   4. Is the product still providing a solution to that problem?
   5. Why are they looking to replace or change this solution? (never assume here, it may be obvious but ask the question!)
   6. What level of support do they require further down the line?
   7. Is there any other issues they may have that you can provide a solution for?
   8. What are their time scales for putting any potential solution into place?
3. To ensure the meeting starts off well, improve my knowledge of their business, check their web site, to get a basic understanding of what they do and understand some of their trade terminology.
4. Understand where they are located and ensure I give myself enough time to get there.

In this example the business owner will have an understanding of their potential clients business, will have a basic understanding of their issues but by preparing for the meeting in a bit more detail, they will ensure they have all the information required to provide a comprehensive proposal when the opportunity presents itself.

It does not matter what type of meeting you have (and that includes phone calls) if you prepare before hand, you’re more likely to come out with a favourable result.

Why am I talking about this?  It dawned on me that the business owner who sold Kirsty the helicopter would have had no idea of how happy I was when I received one of their products, this particular company had awesome service and making it very easy for Kirsty to deal with and ultimately make the decision to buy their product (she had been looking around for a while!).  Having been a retailer for many years I realised that it is very easy to lose sight of why you are doing what you do, ultimately when in a retail environment you are there to provide a solution to your customer’s needs and the better you can do that the happier the customer will be, the problem with working in retail is you often do not get to see the real fruits of your labour.

It is for this reason that it is important to emphasise to your staff this importance and when you are doing your in-house customer service training; it may pay to jog their memories about the last product they bought that gave them that WOW factor thus keeping it in front of their mind this is the reason retailers do what they do.

Going back to my story of the helicopter, the only thing this retailer didn’t do was sell Kirsty some spare blades, you are guaranteed that you will need at least one spare set until you get the hang of it, it would have been an easy add sell for the retailer.  As it was the retailer had plenty of stocks of spares which I have since been grateful for.   If you are interested in getting one of these for yourself check out this companies web site www.ferntech.co.nz the home of awesome toys!!

Here is a video clip of my Top Gun skills (yeah right) prompted on by my flying instructor (aka Kirsty) and supported by Hamish (the mut!!)

I hope you all get WOWed over the Xmas period and have a wonderful festive season.

What do I mean by consistency?  I am talking about a consistent standard of service to the paying customer, I am talking about consistency in service between departments within a company that will ultimately benefit the paying customer and I am talking about consistency in service between the suppliers of a business to help fulfill the needs of the paying customer.  If you do not have a consistently high level of customer service between all parties involved in getting the end product to the customer you risk damaging the reputation of the business.

It’s this consistency that I find lacking in many businesses I work with, it’s not that they provide a bad service or have a bad product, they just find themselves having one too many bad days and spend too much of their time fighting fires, if they were more consistent across there entire business, many of these fires would never have started in the first place.  Here are some tips on providing a consistent service:

Training

To get a certain standard of service to your customers all of the time you will need to train ALL your employees as to what that service looks like (and equally important what it does not look like) and train them in all the relevant areas such as product knowledge to ensure they can deliver that standard of service.

Communication

To be able to deliver the consistently high service communication is vital throughout your business.  If you are a restaurant the Head Chef must communicate to the front of house staff what the specials are, what the waiting time is for any particular dish and as the evening progresses lets them know when they are starting to run low on any particular meals.  If you are a web designer the designers need to tell the sales team how long it will actually take to deliver the set project, the sales team need to let the developers know everything the customer wishes so the project continues smoothly and the developers must communicate when there may be possible delays all to ensure the customers expectations are set and then met.

Processes

Everything needs to run smoothly throughout the entire operation to ensure the customer experience meets the service levels the business has set.  To do this everyone within the business should know what their responsibilities are, what they are accountable for and who their customers are.  The last sounds obvious but in businesses where some of the staff never see the paying customer, their immediate customer may be someone else in the business (known as an internal customer) and it is equally important for them to treat others within the business as if they were the paying customer.

Delivery

Whether your product is an off the shelve product, a customised solution or a service based experience, how you deliver it is vital.  Lets take the restaurant mentioned earlier, a service based experience where the atmosphere is equally as important as the food presented it would be important to ensure the restaurant looks the way it should to entice the customer through the door.  The dining area must represent the menu, if you are serving burgers etc then the need for table cloths would not work but quick turnaround time would be essential.  If you have an A la carte menu it’s likely that well presented tables would be a necessity but the turn around time would be slower.  In both cases the staff should be presentable, polite, happy and with uniforms that represent the type of dining experience on offer.

If a business strives for consistently high service levels in everything it does, it will more likely succeed in delivering them to their customers all of the time.