How Best to Grow & Sell More

Posted on | February 25, 2010 | 1 Comment

It’s hard finding ways to beat the competition let alone keep up with them, especially in the challenging economic times we have today. So, if you get a chance to hear about key business strategies that ambitious companies intend to follow in the coming year, I think it’s well worth the time and effort to pay attention to what gets said.

And courteously of Ernst & Young LLP, that’s exactly what I got to do a week ago when I was in downtown Toronto attending the Financial Executive International Canada breakfast seminar called “Managing the upturn: Key strategies for sustained profitable growth”.

Today’s Key Strategies for Sustained Profitable Growth

This February 19, 2010 seminar was held to report the findings of a January 2010 executive research project undertaken by CFERF (the research foundation of FEI Canada) and sponsored by Ernst & Young. Their report presents the consolidated survey results from more than 200 Canadian senior financial executives that identified key strategies they will be using in 2010 to position their companies advantageously for the emerging recovery as well as detailing what are their current main issues and key concerns. 

Here is a summary of the report’s main findings:

~ 60% of those surveyed expect a return to normal growth in mid to
   second half 2010
~ 70% expect inflation to be the biggest concern
   (but this is expected to become problematic only in 2011 or later)
~ 38% felt declining profit margins was their most significant financial risk
~ 50% see IT systems as their number one capital investment priority

And of particular interest to me was the following -

~ 80% have ‘grow revenues’ as their prime 2010 corporate
   strategic objective!

This ‘we-want-more-sales’ statement really jumped out and caught my attention. That was because the specifics on how such results are expected to get delivered were not provided, other than the vague suggestion made that such would be achieved by providing better customer service. But the logic that providing more customer service can generate more sales doesn’t work for me. I think this because I see customer service as being fundamentally a post sale activity. When it is a pre-sale activity, I view it as nothing other than an expected component of the sales solicitation process.

In tough economic times, saying your organization is going to drive more sales by providing more service sounds suspiciously like nothing more than politically motivated corporate messaging ‘coded’ by executives to divert attention and deflect potential criticism, not manage expectations.

Too Often Typical Sales Growth Strategies Don’t Work

So, what’s the ‘real’ revenue growth strategy these companies intend to use?

Well, here’s the answer if we take as typical the sales management approach one major US based consulting firm I know in the productivity & cost improvement space will be using to attack their revenue challenge: most companies will use the same strategy to get out of the downturn as they used going into it, which is expecting their sales force to ‘just sell harder’.

This sales strategy is where you expect your typically down-sized sales staff to successfully sell more than they have done recently without their having the benefit of any additional marketing supports or other changes or improvements while you simultaneously fire or demote anyone deemed at fault for not delivering on management’s too often overly ambitious expectations.

If you think this reactionary, myopic strategy is too illogical to be true, it is not. And if you don’t believe me, I suggest you check out the Red Wheel Marketing survey results that I reported back in August 2009 in my Biz Money Matters article Recession Cures: What & What Not to Do. Unfortunately, despite how seeming appropriate this type of brutish approach is for these tough times, it is important to understand that it doesn’t deliver anything more than what could otherwise be achieved, and often, it delivers less.

From the logical point of view, the above noted ‘just sell harder’ strategy is misapplied management practice for it is unrealistically dependant on ‘beating up’ on sales staff typically working to and beyond their abilities trying to meet ill-conceived for the times revenue goals.

Now, didn’t someone once say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting better results?!? Such managerial approaches only become understandable if viewed from the self-preservation, emotional, political and/or ego motivated perspective.

Beyond the favoured ‘sell harder’ sales blitz approach mentioned above, other tactics and strategies that often get used in tough times to drive more revenue are:

1. Craft sales incentive campaigns
2. Increase advertising spend or frequently or both
3. Launch new marketing communication campaigns
4. Change the sales compensation program to emphasize results
5. Increase training to upgrade sales staff skills

The problem with all these sales growth strategies is that they often don’t work because they are either:

• unrealistic,
• ill-conceived,
• inappropriate
• misapplied and/or
• too simplistic.

The reasons why these initiatives cause more revenue growth disappointment than success occurs because too often, such sales tactical and strategic reactions get invoked:

• before sales fundamentals get re-assessed,
• before sales strategies get retooled for current circumstances, and
• before sales expectations get recalibrated for current times.

Now, if you are a business owner in a lifestyle company, I can understand but not condone an emotional reaction to your income level coming under threat from adverse market conditions. Similarly, I can understand but not condone executive emotionally motivated reactions in response to when your job or advancement comes under threat by factors outside your control when influential stakeholders have no perspective or patience to appreciate the reality of a situation. But there are better, more appropriate, more effective ways to deal with chasing growth in challenged times.

Lesson: ‘When the Ducks are Quacking, Feed Them’

Let me share with you the most memorable sales & marketing lesson that I learned outside business school.

It came during my early days as an entrepreneurial biotech CEO when I hired an investment banker to help me raise a first round of venture capital back in the sector’s tough financing days in 1996.

Now the fellow I brought in to get us our money was an old hand in the securities business. He had seen countless good markets and bad ones, as well as countless deals come and go, many that sold and many that didn’t. As a result, he was somewhat cynical and rather indifferent to the nuances of our or anyone’s offering. He summed up the essence of his approach to selling securities with the philosophical phrase: ‘when the ducks are quacking, feed them!’

Here is what I take took from this:

1. Selling never fundamentally succeeds as a supply-oriented push process
2. Successful selling comes when you tap into your buyer’s emotions, situation, and aspirations (the better you do this, the more you sell)
3. If your offering isn’t in much demand, which happens from time to time, being savvy means choosing to do one of three things, namely either:

• change the offering in some fundamental way so it appeal better to buyers’ wants and wishes today, or
• patiently wait for demand to return (it usually does), or
• move on to something new.

Use these insights to help you achieve sales growth success. Here’s how.

Your Keys to Getting More Revenue Growth

My mother taught me to think before I spoke. And what I’m suggesting you do is make sure you have the right thinking in place supported by substantiated understandings before you go and drive your company to chase more sales.

It is definitely scary and often more work to reassess and, as appropriate, revise your offering’s fundamentals. But having these properly calibrated and finely tuned is the real key to your maximizing your offering’s sales results for, in my sales & marketing experience, achieving a target sales revenue is 80% or more dependant on your offering’s fundamentals, not on that ‘icing on the cake’ stuff like brand packaging or the nuances of marketing communications.

So, to maximizing your revenue growth, always concentrate on optimizing your business’s fundamentals by focusing:

• FIRST on knowing what’s getting your ‘ducks quacking’ today and what will drive their quacking tomorrow, and then

• SECOND on feeding them those offerings of yours that you’ve specially tailored to meet their identified current and evolving needs.

In this you will make sure your company is absolutely focused on your business’s true  fundamentals for you will know and can prove your company has its ‘ducks’ properly all lined up. Doing otherwise runs a high risk of seeing your actions end up being nothing more than ineffective less-thoughtful reaction, which is what I call the ‘fluff response’.

How to Tune-Up Your Company’s Offering Fundamentals!

All companies have access to a range of means they can use to find out what’s getting their ‘ducks quacking’ today and what likely will drive their quacking tomorrow.  In suggested order of priority, here are 5 simple, specific and easy-to-execute things you can do to find real answers in your situation:

1. Cultivate organizational awareness: just starting to look for answers and paying attention to signals and feedback from your market is the best way to begin.
2. Solicit customer feedback and opinion via surveys, etc: following up to find out why your customers buy, why they choose not to, what experiences they had, and what suggestions they can offer you is a great second step.
3. Contract third-party competitive intelligence gathering & assessments: to insure your organization is not filtering out messages it does not want to hear or suffering from some other form of bias or market myopia, use a third-party CI service provider like CNI Rapid Research and put getting their input on your yearly activity calendar.
4. Create & regularly update archetypal customer profiles by market segment: doing this will help you and your sales team better envision the business and human issues that drive sales in each of your key market areas.
5. Compile & regularly update offering profiles & SWOT assessments: based on all the great information by now sourced in steps 1 to 4, preparing and regularly updating offering profiles and offering SWOT assessments will be a snap to do.

These suggestions are not rocket science, so you can do this stuff with help if need be.

Bolt-on Help Can Help You Drive More Success

All too often in today’s tough economic conditions and really lean organizations, management’s focus is only on ‘production’. But ‘smart money’ managers know that the best corporate returns come from regularly spending at least some time and resources on making sure their ‘productive capacity’ is still strong and up to the job at hand.

Due to the challenges I wrote about in my article Why CEO’s Are Blind To Trouble!, when you’re running hard in tough time times, it can be near impossible to know if you and your inner circle truly are seeing both your company’s situation clearly and your customers’ current and evolving needs and wants correctly.

That’s why bringing in expert help on contract can make perfect sense.

My firm, Compass North Inc. provides companies like yours with affordable help that can ensure you get the independent, unbiased information you need to learn if and how strong and well focused your company is and what you can do to maximize how to get the ‘ducks’ in your market place loudly quacking for what you can feed them today and tomorrow. I invite you to email us or give us at call because we would be pleased to talk with you about these matters for no charge or obligation.

Information Links:

- "Managing the Upturn" FEI Breakfast Seminar – presentation slides

- "Managing the Upturn" – Jan 2010 CFERF Executive Research Report

© Blog.TonyJohnston.biz & Compass North Inc. 2010

Article by –

Tony Johnston, CMC, CGA, MBA, BA (Econ)
President
Compass North Inc.
18 Balding Court
Toronto ON
M2P 1Y7
Office:  416-342-5652
Mobile: 416-346-4140
www.CompassNorthInc.com
www.CNiRapidResearch.com

Tony Johnston is a business results specialist, top level executive and management advisor. Having successfully led 4 turnarounds and with many significant operations, deal making and finance oriented accomplishments to his credit, Tony helps companies drive:

› top line growth (revenue)
› bottom line improvement (profits)
› cashflow management (credit line control)
› growth strategy (more / new)
› financing & stakeholder relationship management (debt / equity)
› enterprise value maximization (mkt price)
› acquisition planning & execution (find / close)
› divestiture preparation & execution (prep / negotiate)
› information gathering (competitive intel / market research)
› crisis control (turnarounds & wind-downs)
› enterprise leadership (CEO / CRO / CFO)

Compass North Inc. is a management & advisory services firm that helps companies achieve important, challenging operational, financial and transaction oriented goals. Examples of what we do include helping companies and their owners:

– make better decisions by providing customized competitive intelligence,
– grow by crafting strategic plans and implement them,
– get turned around by dealing with their debt or other business problems,
– borrow more money and/or raise more equity, and
– plan, prepare, negotiate and close acquisitions, divestitures and ownership
   transitions.

Bottom-line: The benefit that Tony and Compass North Inc. deliver is helping company owners maximize both what they earn while they own their business and what they bank when they sell.

> Follow me on Twitter @CompassNorthInc

Comments

One Response to “How Best to Grow & Sell More”

1. BizSugar.com
   February 26th, 2010 @ 12:55 am

   How Best to Grow & Sell More | Biz Money Matters |…

   Are you looking to push big sales growth this year like so many others? Well, to avoid the disappointment of missed expectations, you best make sure your offering’s fundamentals have and will keep pace with your marketplace’s evolving reality because r…

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 Tony Johnston
 President
 Compass North Inc.

Tony provides executive management and advisory services that help companies get MORE !!

Tony delivers the leadership or leadership support needed that can make remarkably outstanding results happen operationally, economically, financially and in the eyes of customers, lenders & transaction counterparties.

If you are a decision maker in a company that wants MORE, give him a call at 416-342-5652 or check out the Compass North Inc website [click here].

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