Sales Systems, Increase Profits + Business Coach

Business Coach Teaches The Sales Systems That Produce Results

Learn from an experienced business coach how to increase your company’s sales.

Business Coach Ample Example:

I once worked with a bakery and discovered that the business owner was getting 15+ appointments per week from her website, inbound leads and referrals, yet her gross revenue was less than $6,000 per week. After examining her entire workflow, I discovered that the owner’s closing percentage was AWFUL. This person was only closing 1 out of 15 set appointments. By simply moving her into a position where she could thrive (making the cakes) and moving a honey-badger (deal closing focused person) into the position of sales, the bakery was able to close nearly 7 deals per week at nearly $1,200 per wedding cake, on top of the additional $6,000 per week that they were already generating. Never underestimate the likelihood of having a human problem. I have found that once you build the proper systems, 9 times out of 10 you simply have non-compliant people messing up the systems.

“RIGHT PERSON, WRONG SEAT…This person has been promoted to a seat that is too big, has outgrown a seat that is too small…Generally, this person is where he or she is because he or she has been around a long time, you like him or her, and he or she is a great addition to the team. Until now.” -Gino Wickman (Bestselling author of Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business)

1. Don’t move on until you have fixed the problem. Having worked with thousands of entrepreneurs, I have found that many people struggle with focusing on a problem until it is solved and therefore, nothing ever truly gets done. Everything within the business just gets half-done. Focus on the problem with laser intensity until it is no longer a problem. Here are some examples of areas possibly needing a fix:

• Fix your sales presentation materials. You might have third world marketing materials that simply don’t inspire confidence in the minds of your ideal and likely buyers.
• Fix your sales presentation. You might have great marketing materials, but your sales presentation or the person giving the sales presentation might need to change.
• Fix your scripting. You might have inbound leads coming in all day, but your inbound sales script might be incredibly awful and it might repel ideal and likely buyers.
• Fix your people. You might have great systems but awful people. Small and medium-sized businesses tend to hold on to bad hires because they operate with a scarcity mentality, which is fueled by the fact that they invest nearly zero time or money into the ongoing recruitment of honest and diligent people.
• Fix your product or service videos. Your demonstration videos might be awful and in most cases, they are. Recently I sat with a man who has an absolutely brilliant business idea, but his videos were beyond bad. I would have laughed if I didn’t want to cry for him. He was doing his best, but he wasn’t comparing his video quality to his competition and he wasn’t aware of the options that exist for him to have a quality video made at a very affordable price point.
• Fix your product or service photos. You might have terrible photos that look like your mom took them because your mom actually did take the photos for you because she is a sweet lady. I used to use terrible photography in everything I did because I didn’t know how to access the world of great, high-quality photography. Some of the early designs I used are almost comical in their appearance. However, when I consider that they were keeping me poor, it’s just not funny.
• Record your gold-standard sales presentation for your team to pattern themselves after. It’s very hard for people to do an excellent job at something if they do not know what an excellent job looks, sounds, or feels like.

  Business Coach Ample Example:

  Years ago, I was hired as a business coach and I went into a commercial paint supplier’s call center in Texas and simply asked them who their top sales people were. Everyone agreed that in the call center of 30+ representatives, two people were just dominating in terms of the total amount of sales revenue they were able to bring in each month. We invested the time to record their over-the-phone sales presentations and we quickly discovered that these two women were doing almost the exact same sales presentation, yet it was 180-degrees different from the presentations the other sales representatives were delivering on a daily basis. We quickly created sales scripts that documented the systems, wording, and overall strategy these two successful reps were using, and we agreed to teach it to the two next most successful representatives. After teaching the next two sales representatives the sales moves, they began to nearly replicate the previously unattainable amounts of sales being generated by the top two ladies. This type of training is commonly referred to as “best-practice modeling” or “best-practice duplication.”

  As a business coach, I want to make sure I am conveying here is that you need to focus on making one actionable improvement to your system at a time. Don’t try to reinvent everything in one day. My friend, you must always keep in your mind that it is better to implement fewer ideas that you can actually execute that to try to implement a ton of ideas that never get done.

  “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do. It’s true for companies, and it’s true for products.” -Steve Jobs (Co-founder of Apple and former CEO of Pixar)

  Business Coach Fun Fact:

  When Steve Jobs returned to take over Apple in 1997, the company was within 60 days of going bankrupt. During the last quarter of 1996, the company’s sales had dropped by 30% and Microsoft was beating the heck out of them. In order to save the company, Steve had to get them focused on two major needle-moving activities. First, he needed to infuse the company with capital. He knew that Microsoft’s co-founder Bill Gates needed to end the public perception (and reality) caused by the pending federal lawsuits that were threatening to break his company apart, that Microsoft had become a monopoly. Thus, Jobs went for and successfully secured a $150 million investment from Microsoft who could not actually say that they had invested in their own competitors. Second, he needed to get Apple focused on producing “insanely great” products instead of dozens of crappy products. He cut the number of products that Apple was focused on developing by 70%. MOVING FORWARD, JOBS FOCUSED ON THE CREATION OF ONLY FOUR PRODUCTS.