"Burns' Business Builder" by Steve Burns

Overhauling Your Sales Effort
This article is part of a series of articles designed to help you completely "overhaul" your business. Past articles looked at the issue of overhauling your leadership and marketing efforts, (see www.steveburns.ca/articles.htm for past articles). This article is designed to whet your appetite for overhauling your sales efforts.

So, how are your sales efforts going? Are there any improvements to make? How do you know if you are on track or off track? If you could change one thing in your sales process, system or resources, what would it be?

Let me frame this article with some very interesting market research that we have performed recently on Okanagan companies:

1. 92% have established sales goals or quotas but only 58% have met their sales goals or quotas consistently over the last six months.
2. 85% are "pretty sure" they know how their sales team spends their time but only 12% actually require their sales professionals to track and report their time.
3. 75% believe that they have a defined sales management system but less than 25% could name which sales management system that they are using.
4. 72% of sales professionals are hired based upon the company's "gut feel".
5. 87% have had sales professionals leave after the first three months and 95% were primarily due to the individual's poor sales performance.
6. Sales professionals working for Okanagan companies work an average of 43 hours a week with 55% of their time spent selling either face to face or over the telephone and 45% of their time spent on a combination of traveling, waiting and administrative tasks.
7. Only 13% of sales professionals could accurately describe all five of these factors:
   • How their product or service is unique.
   • What their customers really value about their product or service.
   • How their customers make their purchase decision and whether or not their sales method matches how customers buy.
   • How their own sales effort could be improved.
   • What needs to change for the company's current sales effort to produce better results.

All of these facts point to a need for Okanagan companies to take their sales efforts more seriously. However, you may be the Okanagan business owner that, despite the problems, is perfectly fine with where your business' sales efforts are. Perhaps you consider your business to be more of a lifestyle business and know that you could sell more and grow more but if it means sacrificing some of your lifestyle it really isn't worth it. While this may be somewhat true, it is also true that if you ever plan to sell your business, you need to build the discipline of effective sales management into your business' processes now. It will mean that your business is worth more whenever you decide to sell it.

The question really isn't how Okanagan companies are doing in the sales area but rather how your company is performing in this area and what can be done to significantly and radically improve your sales effort. If you see a mirror of your company's sales performance in any one of these questions or answers, your organization needs a sales overhaul.

In working with a diverse range of entrepreneurial clients in numerous industries, I know how "real" the sales problem can be. Let's face the fact that if your sales effort is off, it directly impacts your profitability, reduces your cash flow and restricts the growth of your company. While some entrepreneurs say "Cash is King", I say "Sales is King".

While I would love to think that reading my articles is a great way to spend your free time, my research from Okanagan entrepreneurs tells me different. Did you know that the #1 outcome that Okanagan entrepreneurs want from my column is Actionable Ideas that help them build their businesses? They want to be able to read my column, identify an issue in their business and learn how to take action to improve it.

Over the next few weeks we will examine more closely how to overhaul your sales efforts. We will look at all aspects of the issue, including how it integrates with your marketing efforts. My hope is that the key outcome will be your customized Sales Overhaul Action Plan that implements change in your sales efforts and the delivers results you are looking for.

"A sale is what happens to you while you are immersed in serving your customer." Tom Peters

Steve Burns, CA, CMC, CFP is the President and CEO of Burns Innovation Group Inc. and Steve Burns Inc. Chartered Accountant, which provide innovative consulting and accounting services to Okanagan entrepreneurs. Steve can be reached at 763-4716, via email at steve@burnsinnovation.com or steve@steveburns.ca

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