Tag Archive for 'sales'

SBA Poll: Are your small business profits up?

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on June 14, 2013
in Economy: National and Global and Sales - Sales Management
. 0 Comments

The Question:
Some surveys indicate that small business profits are up. What is your experience?

17% - We’re profitable and are seeing profits increase lately.

57% - We’re profitable but are not seeing any improvement.

14% - We’re not profitable, but we’ve started heading in that direction.

12% - We’re not profitable and it doesn’t look like we’re going to be soon.

My Comments:
As you can see, less than one-third of our sample said they were seeing an improved profit trend, while the rest of our respondents refuted the news. Small business profits have always been an elusive beast - almost mythological to many. I’m going to have more to say about this in my column in two weeks. Stay tuned.

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Listen to my latest interviews with Sam Norwood of Tatum, LLC. We discuss the latest Tatum Survey of Economic Business Conditions.

Tatum Survey: Cap Ex and borrowing are not growing

Tatum Survey: Sales and hiring are up

Tatum Survey: Business conditions are improving

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Don’t forget to listen

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on June 12, 2013
in Sales - Sales Management
. 0 Comments

Perhaps the two most important things salespeople can understand is:

1. The information in their own head is not as important as the yet-to-be-mined information in their prospect’s head; and

2. Knowing how to talk little enough and listen long enough, to be able to mine that gold.

The lesson is similar for small business owners who’ve gone to a lot of trouble and expense to hiresmart employees. We already know what we know; we need to know what’s in the heads of the members of our brain trust. We need our folks to be open and productive with their ideas about problem-solving and business strategy.

How do we do that? Not by behaving like we’re sitting on our throne with all the answers, that’s for sure. Instead, let’s consider the thinking of author and management guru, Peter Drucker, who said, “My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant, and ask a few questions.”

I know you’re very proud of what you’ve learned and how much you’ve accomplished; and you should be. But if your business isn’t hitting on all cylinders; if your plans just aren’t coming to fruition like you intended; if you don’t seem to be getting the most out of your investment in the other humans in your business; perhaps you should try acting ignorant and ask a few more questions.

And don’t forget to listen.

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Managing the three clocks of small business

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on April 15, 2013
in Cashflow - Credit - Collections and Finance - Accounting - Taxes
. 0 Comments

“Time Is On My Side,” is the title of one of the classic rock ’n’ roll songs performed by Mick Jaggerand the legendary English band, The Rolling Stones.

This bold statement works in a song, but for small businesses … not so much. The reason is because of the complicated dynamic between time and our most precious asset, cash.

In the marketplace, there are actually three different clocks at work that every business uses: one for operating expenses, one for sales and one for cash. Let’s take a look at how these three clocks impact your small business.

Operating Expense Clock
Every month like clockwork, regardless of sales volume, cash collections or profitability, payroll must be met, rent must be paid, taxes must be remitted, plus phone, utilities, insurance bills, etc., must also be paid. The Operating Expense Clock is hardwired to Greenwich, England for accuracy within a nanosecond per millennium, and nothing stops it short of a global, thermonuclear holocaust coinciding with a direct hit from Haley’s comet.

The only way to influence this clock is through operating efficiencies – you won’t be billed for what you don’t buy.

Sales Clock
This clock is powered by the customer relationships you’ve created so sales result each month. You project when each sale will occur by qualifying prospects and attributing a clock to each potential transaction so that you can budget future sales volume and meet your cash requirements.

How the Sales Clock operates is completely logical and intuitive, but it only works in your favor when the purchase requirements of customers have been met.

Cash Clock
What is not logical or intuitive is the Cash Clock and its relationship with the other two. Think of it like this: Cash is to sales as snow is to cold: You can have cold without snow, but you can’t have snow without cold. You can have sales without cash receipts, but you can’t have cash receipts without sales. And expenses are like weather – you get some every day.

But what hits small business owners hard is that for every glitch in the mainspring of the Sales Clock, there are 1,000 potential sprocket failures that slow or stop the Cash Clock. Consequently, the Cash Clock requires constant maintenance.

Murphy’s Law lives inside the Cash and Sales Clocks, but the Operating Expense Clock is immune to this insidious law and rocks on just like The Rolling Stones.

Small business success requires understanding the three clocks of the marketplace.

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Check out my latest segment from The Small Business Advocate Show below. I go into more detail about managing the clocks in your small business

Managing the three clocks of small business

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Are you hidebound or visionary?

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on August 21, 2012
in Sales - Sales Management and The Age of the Customer
. 0 Comments

Since 1995, control of the three major elements of your customer relationships – product, information, and buying decision – has been shifting from business to customer. As you may remember, I’ve identified this shift as a marketplace transition from the original age to the new one – the 10,000 year-old Age of the Seller is being replaced by the Age of the Customer.

As this shift plays out, two types of businesses - Hidebound Sellers and Visionary Sellers - currently exist in parallel universes, but not for long. Which one are you?

Hidebound Sellers

These companies are so invested and entrenched in the old order of control that they deny the reality in front of them. They can be identified by the following markers:

  • Misplaced frustration: As performance goals get harder to accomplish, frustration makes those who deny the new realities think their pain is caused by a failure to execute.
  • Bad strategies: It is said that armies prepare for the next war by training for the last one. So it is with Hidebound Sellers. Not only do Age of the Customer influences make them think they’re being attacked, but they persist in using Age of the Seller countermeasures.
  • Destructive pressure: Convinced of execution failure, pressure brought to bear by management results in an employee casualty list instead of a growing customer list.
  • Equity erosion: Defiance in the face of overwhelming evidence sustains the deniers only until they run out of Customers with old expectations, and/or equity and access to credit are depleted.

Visionary Sellers

These businesses are adjusting their plans to conform to the new reality of more control by customers. Visionary Sellers are identified by these markers:

  • Acceptance: They accept that the customer is now in control and make appropriate adjustments to this reality.
  • Modern sales force: They hire and train their sales force to serve increasingly informed and empowered customers.
  • Technology adoption: They offer technology options that allow customers to find, connect, and do business using their preferences.
  • Relevance over competitiveness: They recognize that while being competitive is still important, today it’s just table stakes and is being replaced in customer priority by the new coin of the realm: relevance.

In the Age of the Customer, Hidebound Sellers are dinosaurs waiting for extinction. Visionary Sellers are finding success by orienting operations and strategies around a more informed and empowered customer.

So what’s the verdict? Are you Hidebound or Visionary?

Check out more great SBA content HERE!

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Blasingame’s Law of Sales Pipelines

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on June 19, 2012
in Business planning and Cashflow - Credit - Collections
. 0 Comments

Selling is a numbers game. Do you know how to manage your sales to plan future revenue? Watch as Jim explains the sales pipeline and how to use it to forecast sales, revenue and cash flow.

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Blasingame’s Law of Sales Pipelines

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on March 6, 2012
in Business planning and Sales - Sales Management
. 0 Comments

Here’s a maxim: Selling is a numbers game.

A maxim is a generally accepted truth and this is one because of two realities:

1. There are hundreds – if not thousands – of things that can cause a fully qualified prospect to not complete a transaction, at least not on your preferred schedule.

2. Regardless of all of the bumps on the path to a signed contract, it’s still your job to produce enough sales revenue to stay in business.

Enter the sales pipeline.

A sales pipeline is a planning concept that helps managers and salespeople forecast sales for any given period – week, month, quarter or year. Think of your sales pipeline as overhead plumbing with faucets positioned at the calendar intervals your business requires. And from these faucets you draw the mother’s milk of any business – sales revenue.

Pipeline faucets come with screens that only allow a sale to pass through. So into the pipeline you load only those prospects you have qualified. That means the prospects that have answered enough questions to allow you to determine that what they want, and your ability to deliver, will combine to produce a faucet-conforming sale within the timeframe or your forecast. Once in the pipeline, a prospect is either on track to become a sale or a forecasting mistake to be removed.

As you record a prospect’s entry into the pipeline you must include what you know about their stage of decision-making, plus what you have to do to move them to customer status. Identifying what’s left to be done with each prospect – demo, trial, proposal, final close, etc. – will help you forecast which faucet –you can expect a sale to pour out of, whether next week or next month.

At this point, let’s refer to The Bard. In Act I, Scene III, of Hamlet, arguably Shakespeare’s most important work, Polonius famously says, “This above all, to thine own self be true.” If you aren’t honest about a prospect’s progress to faucet-conformity, you’re setting yourself up for forecasting failure.

How much revenue you draw from your sales pipeline depends on the twin standards of sales success: quantity and quality.

Here’s Blasingame’s Law of Sales Pipelines: Load the pipeline with enough prospects on Monday (quantity) to have enough qualified prospects to close on Wednesday (quality) so that you can draw the sales you need from your pipeline on Friday (success).

Forecast sales successfully with quantity, quality and to thine own self be true.

Today on my radio show I talked more about sales forecasting and the sales pipeline strategy. Take a few minutes to click on one of the links below to download or listen.

Blasingame’s Law of Sales Pipelines

Forecasting sales with a sales pipeline strategy

Check out more great SBA content HERE!