Nothing Happens Until Someone Sells Something…
“You don’t build a business —you build people— and then people build the business.” – Zig Ziglar
A Sales Management Primer…
Here is pretty much the big picture of Sales Success in 3 minutes flat!
Simply take a moment to stop the endless chatter around you — especially in your head — and focus your thoughts on the images and words set to music in the above video.
The music is there to set the pace.
The images are there to set emotional tone and to flood your subconscious with positive examples to encourage and excite you to action.
The words are there to inspire, inform, remind, reinforce, and trigger an “Aha” moment — a thought laying just below the surface of your too busy mind… going through your too frenzied day.
Now, how a Master Business Strategist thinks about Sales Management…
According to the American Marketing Association (AMA), Sales Management is defined as “The planning, direction, and control of personal selling… including recruiting, selecting, equipping, assigning, routing, supervising, paying and motivating as these tasks apply to personal sales force.”
Sales management is essential to the attainment of an organization’s revenue goals in an effective & efficient manner through planning, staffing, training, leading & controlling organizational resources. Managing your salesforce includes motivating sales professionals so that they help your customers choose YOU more frequently rather than a competitor. Remember, SALES fuel your organization and the management of the sales process is a vital function in your business.
Sales planning and management involves predicting demand for your products and services… and the demands upon your sales assets. Failure to plan always means lost sales. Planning insures that when a consumer wishes to purchase your product, the product is available, but it also means opportunities for additional sales are presented and your sales assets are available to fully exploit these opportunities. Planning should allow for meeting increasing customer demand for more products, services and/or customization as the business is growing, but also react quickly when demand decreases.
Exceptional Sales Management improves efficiency and decreases unfocused and uncoordinated activity within the sales process.
Ultimately, Sales Management is all about making it EASY for people to do business with you and to give you MONEY. It is about successfully managing and traversing whatever Sales Cycle (long or short, strategic or simple) that transforms interested prospects into dedicated customers/evangelists.
Focused on customer needs, you have developed great products and services that people will naturally want to buy from you… once they know WHO you are… WHERE you are located… HOW to find you… WHAT you stand for… what you won’t stand for… your terms of service… your payment arrangements… your brand’s reputation… your people’s professionalism… and a million other details that stand between you and your client’s money… or their desire to freely give it to you… simply because it is the logical thing for them to DO to GET what you have to offer.
Think about this question today.
Do you have a real Sales STRATEGY… or do you wing it most of the time?
How to tell?
Business is just a lot tougher than it needs to be:
- Sales problems = cash flow problems…
- Sales problems = employee turnover problems…
- Sales problems = loss of hope…
- Sales problems ultimately lead to the death and destruction of your business.
However, with the right strategy, you solve these problems before they cause you massive pain.
Smart business is having a constantly-evolving strategy to WIN… not just “hope and work hard”… but to actually PLAN to WIN… then PLAY to WIN.
If you need help, get with the program and join our next MasterMind Session.
E. R. Haas, CEO The TQ Smart Family of Companies
Street-Smarts Now On Sale!
Category: Business Growth
