Inspire Sales

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Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail

Some companies are sales driven, others service driven with a side of sales.  Some companies live eat and breathe their sales pipeline and the pressure for sales managers and reps to perform is insurmountable.  The companies that drive hard on sales are often companies that are publicly traded or companies who have taken investment funds from private equity companies… or quite possibly convinced Kevin O’Leary to invest after a stand off on the Dragon’s Den.

When a company owner makes the decision to go public and/or take investment dollars, there is the risk of some soul selling.  Don’t get me wrong, there are significant financial benefits to going public or taking in investment dollars…. IF you have a solid proven growth strategy and are willing to forget about the warm and fuzzy customer service and focus on the margins.  IF you are absolutely sure that with the injection of cash you WILL be able to increase profits and revenues 100 fold.  If you can, then there is a good chance your public company will be lucky and not become soulless…

However IF you don’t manage that money properly and IF you do not make your forecasts and IF your stock prices fall…. Well you might find yourself more concerned with making your quarter than doing what’s right for your customer.  You might find yourself mimicking instant gratification sales guy….

When a company is accountable to investors it HAS to perform.  It can’t make excuses like “the cat died so I couldn’t make sales calls”.  The NASDAQ does not give a crap about anything but the price of your stock so when that quarter is coming to an end you had better made your forecasts or corporate heads will roll... 

If you have your own business that you would like to grow minus the capital from Kevin O’Leary or the market you absolutely still need to be sales driven.  It is the only way to grow.  If you are doing sales off the side of you desk then you may likely have a decent stream of revenue coming in, but it’s unlikely you are creating any capital for your business to invest in growth.

I’ve heard a lot of small business owners talk about the chicken and the egg thing when considering a growth strategy… the strategy is usually this:

First I’ll find the business and see where I’m at then I will consider hiring the people or putting the processes in place.

That may sound like a good plan, however it’s not a plan.  It likely means your company will not grow or if it does by accident you’ll have a lot of back peddling to do and things will on a varying scale start to fall apart a little.  Most companies refer to this as ‘growing pains’.

My suggestion to business owners who want to grow is to put a plan in place that would impress the likes of Kevin O’Leary.  Think about your growth.  Set goals.  Plan HOW you intend to achieve the goals.  Put sales targets in place and be accountable to them.  If you aren’t comfortable selling – keep reading my blog I’ll give you advice here and there, or use someone like me to help you get sales processes in place.  Ask yourself a few questions:

What and who is your market?

How do you reach your market?
Who is your competition?
What makes you different from your competition?
Why do people want to deal with YOU?

 When you know who your market is and how to reach them (and don’t say everyone because it’s not), think about it in realistic terms.  Think about how many businesses and people could use your products and/or services.  Think about the value of sales to each of these people.  Think about how many people or businesses you could service at the size you are now.  Think about a realistic growth plan over a period of time (like 3 years).  Think about how much money you want to make and how many sales you need to make to make that money. 

Think about what people and processes you would need to put in place, not if, but when you reach your goals. Write it down and hold yourself accountable to it.  Be realistic in the revenue numbers and likelihood that business will close and make a realistic conservative plan along with a more speculative plan just in case you hit the mother load.  

If you don’t want to risk payroll investments, consider Elance or posting contract positions.   More and more people are opting for contract work versus traditional employment and more and more companies are enjoying the benefits of having contractors do work for them.  Leverage this and these people  Think about what your contracts look like, what kind of work these people could do for you.  Have the processes in place for WHEN you need them, don’t assume you’ll figure it out if and when the time comes.

Fail to plan, plan to fail.

Companies often suffer when they grow because there generally isn’t a plan in place to accommodate the growth and they opt to react rather than pro-act.  This often leads to disorganization and poor thought out solutions… Bad decisions and disorganization generally leads to ultimately unhappy clients AND staff… this then results in loss of business and employee turnover – both extremely costly.

Starting a business begins with a great idea.  Growing a business means either letting someone else run with your idea while you take care of business OR letting someone else run your business while you foster your idea.  Either way it’s important to think about your company’s strategy and the best way to execute it.

Running and growing your own business is not for the faint of heart.  It means risk.  It means relying on other people and letting them help you.  It takes a crazy kind of vulnerability to grow your business but if the idea is sound and you have an actionable plan in place you can grow it and feel confident the dollars WILL come in to support the plan AND growth!