Hunter or Farmer?

Having a successful business is all about getting the right team, doing the right job at the right time, the sales side of your business is no different.  The sales team are at the coal face, they are the one’s that interact with your clients day in, day out so they had better be good at what they do!!

As I have written before in a previous article there are generally two types of sales person, there is the “hunter” and the “farmer” and they are very different types of people with very different strengths and weaknesses, so which one is right for you?

The Hunter

These sales people are hungry, they are highly focussed individuals that revel in the chase, they love closing the deal but don’t expect them to hang round too long after that as they are off hunting down their next prey.  If you need to break into new markets, or saturate your current one, these guys will get the job done, but you had better be sure to have a robust follow up process in place as they tend to leave plenty to tidy up.

The Farmer

These sales people are extremely focussed on keeping their clients happy, they will go out of their way to ensure their clients get what they want, when they want it.  Due to the time they spend with their current clients, they have little time to chase down new business (not that they wont recognise an opportunity when it presents itself), but if you are trying to consolidate a market or provide premium service as part of your offering, these guys will get the job done.  The down side to farmers are they can erode the bottom line if the are not managed properly, due to the amount of time some of them can spend securing that extra dollar from their client base, again you will need to have a robust process in place for them to follow.

These are extreme behavioural examples of both, most sales people are a bit of a mixture, but will have a stronger emphasis one way or the other.  As a business owner it is up to you to find out where they naturally lean towards and utilise that information to your advantage especially when you are incentivising and motivating them.  Which ever type you have they must be managed well, they will need good sales processes, they will need their call cycles established and they will very definitely need to understand your customer’s resonating factors in order to achieve their sales goals.

It is true, you are only as good as your last job, so it stands to reason that if the last job was a good one then you have nothing to worry about, right?  Wrong!  There is another factor that you must keep front of your mind and that is the human mind, more exactly the memory.  Think about the last time you received fantastic service, received a great product from a polite and knowledgeable staff member, how did you feel at the time?  How many people did you tell about it shortly afterwards and do you still talk about it with the same enthusiasm now?  To the last question the chances are you don’t, why, because time dilutes emotions and it is for this very reason that it is essential that you keep in front of your clients minds, how do we do this?  We practice sales farming 

Sales farming or farming the client base is a practice that I developed many years ago as a key account manager for a communications company and has five stages to it (check out my a previous article on this subject).

1. Plough the Fields – Research the company(s) that you intend to call upon, what have you already sold them?  Who is the key decision maker?  What plans do they have for the business this year?  Have they diversified in any way since you last talked to them?  Is there any additional products or services that you now have that compliment what they have already bought from you?
2. Sow the Seed – Arrange a meeting with them, have an objective for the meeting, find out what the business’s plans are, introduce a new product or service that you may have or  meet the new purchasing officer.  Whatever you do, do not waste their time or yours by going to a meeting without a purpose!
3. Nurture the Crop – Follow up on the previous meeting, ensure you fulfil any promises that you have made.  It is at this is the point in the cycle that you prepare quotes and continue the process of educating the client.
4. Harvest the Crop – You get the clients commitment to purchase your product or service, again you make sure you meet your clients expectations around delivery and quality of product or service.
5. Plough the Fields – Follow through with the client after they have received the product or service, make sure they are happy, if they are not, what can you do to change this and get any feedback you can from the client about their experience buying from you and your business.

"Do I have to phone them again!!"

Following on from last weeks sales article about managing your revenue I wanted to talk this week about the processes you should think about putting in place to really optimise your sales activity for your business.

Did you know that you should only ever “cold call” any particular company once, but many businesses continue to cold call the same companies, often over extended time periods over and over again, why do you think this is?

They have no process!!

This year I was asked to help a sales team, improve their cold calling hit rates to help their parent company gain market share with one of their premium products.  On further investigation into the process the sales team followed, we discovered they did not have one!!  They never recorded who they spoke to, their Sales Manager had a weekly meeting which discussed very little, the sales team had no targets and it wasn’t unusual for one member in the team to talk to a potential customer on the Monday, just to discover than another member of the team talked to the same potential customer on the Thursday!!  Again why was this happening?

They had no process!!

Am I starting to make my point here?  If you want you or your sales team to be effective, you must have some sort of processes in place, here are 4 for your to think about.

1. Set some targets:  Whether you are the sales team or whether you have 20 in your team, you need to have a goal, how much do you need to sell each month to make your desired level of profit?  Break that down into weekly or even daily targets for every member of your sales team.  If they don’t know what they need to achieve, they will never achieve it!
2. Record all sales activity:  My comment earlier about “you should only cold call a company once” refers to this.  Once an initial contact and conversation has been made with a potential client it should be recorded on a database, preferably a sales data base called a Customer Relations Manager (CRM) system, there are many on the market, a simple but effective one that we use is called CapsuleCRM.  Every entry should have the following information; who you talked to, what was discussed and what action is to be taken.  With this on the system, the next time that potential client is contacted you can refer to the last conversation which no longer makes the call a cold one!
3. Conduct effective sales meetings:  If you have a sales team, meet with them regularly, discuss the hurdles they faced since the last meeting, educate them in promotions or new products, ask them how you can further help or support them in their role (especially important for those out on the road all the time),  review how they are performing in relation to their targets but most of all, ensure they leave the meeting positive, fired up and motivated.
4. Keep the sales team accountable: Everything in business needs managing, not necessarily micro managing but they will need some degree of managing.  When I talk about keeping sales teams accountable I’m not just talking about their sales targets, I’m talking about making sure they are all using the sales processes ALL of the time.  Are they seeing enough new clients, how many quotes are they generating, are they following through on all these quotes, what is their conversion rate from “sales quoted” to “sales won” and are they following up and adding their new clients to their call cycles after the sale is completed?

In our experience it is one of the least organised, least thought about parts of the business, why?  Because as business owners we just do it, if we didn’t we wouldn’t have any customers and so, would not be in business!  We don’t need processes for this part of the business because we already know what we are doing …. right?

We would say to some degree this is true, but what we see are huge inefficiencies in sales processes which regularly lead to missed opportunities, lost sales, slow growth or declining revenue, but it doesn’t need to be like this.  There are four key areas any business owner should focus on to help grow their sales revenue.

Process

Every business should have a process to record ALL sales activity done by the business owner and their sales team, if you do not continually record who you have talked to, what were the conversations about, what opportunities may arise (now and in the future), what quotes have you done, how many have you won or lost, the list goes on, how are you ever going to understand if what you are maximising your efforts and getting the returns you want?  Our next blog will concentrate specifically on this subject and will be published within a week of this article.

I would ask you to look at your current sales system, are you in a position to answer the above questions right now, do you have this information at your finger tips?

Call Cycles

Every sales process has a life, it has a natural cycle of growing, harvesting and re-cultivating, we call it farming.  When was the last time you spoke to your current customers to get their feedback on your product or service?  When was the last time you actively networked with other professionals that also have access to your customers, have you thought about educating them in what you do or provide, so they in turn can refer you on to their customers?  If you do these things, when was the last time you spoke to them, do you need to speak to them again, how soon is too soon?

Understanding what farming your client base means, will minimise the loss of opportunities and will reduce your cost of sale to, again more about this in this article.

Sales Team

How are you or your sales team approaching the market?  Is there pressure to get sales quickly, do you have a more aggressive approach to ensuring your sales figures are met?  Maybe you already have a substantial customer base and most of your time is spent looking after your current customers, when new ones come along they are usually being referred from other customers so you have a more passive approach to sales.  It doesn’t matter whether you approach sales from one extreme to the other or hover around in the middle somewhere if you don’t understand what works best for your customers, again, you will not be optimising your sales team.  We will talk about this specifically in a separate article.

 Resonating Factors

What is this?  How does it affect the sales process? This is one of the least understood principals of sales, yet it is one of the easiest to apply, if you, as a sales person can understand how to “resonate” or connect with your current and potential clients almost immediately the the rest of the sales process becomes so easy, you wont even have to think about it.  Like the other three points I will be talking about this in a separate article, that will be published soon.

As a business owner you may well have some of these areas covered, I would encourage you to read the supporting articles of the areas that you cannot comfortably say you have and if you know any other business owners that may benefit from these articles, please forward the articles link to them.

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.