In my travels and discussions with distributors, manufacturers and individual salespeople, one question comes up quite often: How’s your business? The most common answer is, “It’s okay.” No one says, “We’re off quite a bit,” and few say, “Business is great — we’re up.”

A lot of gloom and doom is spread each day about layoffs, spending cutbacks, plant closings, budget cuts and so on. Negative news like that can dampen the enthusiasm of anyone, but those of us in the selling profession can’t afford to let that happen. So let’s look at some of the opportunities out there for you and your company.

Ask yourself this question: “How is my business?” If your answer is, “not so great,” or “flat,” you need to figure out how to turn it around.

Here are a few suggestions for getting to the root of the problem.

First, ask yourself how much business is out there that you aren’t getting? What percentage of the total business with each account do you have? What’s your market share in your territory? What’s your company’s market share in your overall market?

As an individual or a firm, there is undoubtedly a big share still open to you. How do you get a bigger piece of that pie? Let’s start with planning and prospecting.

First comes planning — daily, weekly, monthly and yearly, for yourself and your accounts. This planning requires some research of past activities. Review your daily sales calls over the past year. Has this activity been productive? (Be careful not to confuse activity with accomplishments.) By looking back, it sometimes becomes clear that a lot of time was not well spent. Even if they’re planned, some of the activities you’re performing don’t lead to the plan’s completion. Once you have reviewed plan histories, use the information to improve future planning.

Years ago, a sales manager gave me what became the best advice I’ve ever been given: “Plan your work and work your plan.” Each day’s plan should be on paper before that day starts, and should be followed like a pilot follows his flight plan. A true emergency is the only exception.

The next step is to track each call by writing down what you said, what you learned, what the customer said and what commitments you made during the call. This can be done during the call and details can be added right after — not two or three calls later or at the end of the day.

Review your call log at the end of the day. Did you stick with your plan? This log is a step to future planning. Note dates for callbacks, demos and phone and mail follow-up on your calendar. Make sure you do what you told your customer you would do.

Account Planning: This goes hand in hand with call planning. Review each of your accounts, good ones through not-so-good ones. Look at accounts on your list that haven’t been sold in awhile. Look at total sales and gross profit. Look at products sold, and gross profit on all products not sold (opportunity).

What accounts are paying for your time? Which ones should you call on more often? Which ones should you call on less — or not at all?

Make Three Lists: Take your computer-generated account list with all of your accounts, including those “not sold.” (To be meaningful, this information should cover the past 12 months or more.) Break these accounts into three lists:

    List 1: List all accounts that have bought something from you over the time period you chose. Study these accounts looking for opportunities to increase your business by adding products, and/or improving your margins on existing products. Write down your plan for each account and list specific ideas. What strategy will help you achieve your goals? Give yourself a time limit. A friend, Bob Beck in Dallas, gave me a great quote the other day: “An opportunity without a strategy is only a distraction.”

    List 2: List those accounts that you’ve been calling on but haven’t been able to sell. Again, write down your strategy and time limit for getting those accounts active so you can move them to List 1.

    List 3: These are accounts about which you say, “One of these days, I’m going to call on so-and-so.” Make that list and call on them. Do it now. List 3 should disappear and those accounts will end up on List 2 and hopefully on List 1 in the near future.

Prospecting: Right along with planning goes prospecting. New calls, new products and new industries generate new sales and more income.

A great place to start is in the Yellow Pages. The Yellow Pages list every kind of business to which you could sell, from Airports to Zoos. Successful salespeople have an area of expertise. Pick an industry and product line most likely to fit its needs. Focus on that industry and those products. For example, hotels/motels and restaurants have a lot of carpet. Match up your carpet cleaning expertise to that opportunity and go sell.

In about three months, I hope when someone asks you, “How’s business?” you can answer, “It’s terrific and getting better every day.”

Maurice Dixon managed two major Midwest janitorial supply distributors for many years. Currently he operates Dixon & Associates and conducts training and selling skill seminars. He also consults with janitorial supply companies on their sales and marketing plans.

To share your selling ideas, fax: (414) 228-1134, contact Mr. Dixon at (877) 379-3566 or e-mail Seiche Sanders.




POSTED ON: 3/1/2002