Get Ready
The last newsletter focused on getting the sales to increase market share. Now let's look at what to do with the new sales and the importance of your people to "Get Ready". Because now is the time to attack and market share is up for grabs you must be able to capitalize on the business when you get it. Your competition is struggling and worried about the future and many companies are reducing head count and making cuts. What a terrible position to be in but not you. Now is the time for attack mode and increasing not cutting. Now is ...
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Get the Sales
The last newsletter focused on cash management and the importance of getting cash so you can use it to maintain operations. Now let's look at getting back to business and the importance of your people "Getting the Sales". Now is the time to attack because market share is up for grabs and those that work to take it will get it. Your competition is asleep because they are worried. You need to be in attack mode and go get the sales. Your competition is not making sales calls because they do not think people are talking. But this is more mental ...
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Get the Cash
This is a perfect time to look at the impact CASH has on your business. The three most important rules of finance are 1) Get the Cash, 2) Get the Cash and 3) Get the Cash. Knowing where the cash will come from and how you are going to manage the cash should be a top priority that you address every day. There are five sources of cash: Your cash ("hopefully" you have a lot of it) Your Bank/Investors (Lines of Credit and Loans) Your Customers Your Vendors Your Inventory How do you manage your cash to get it when you need it so you can put ...
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How Am I Going To Change?
By Bill Phillips, Strategen, Inc. What a time to be a business owner! Your world has changed and no matter what business you are in, things are different today than you forecasted and planned for just a few months ago at the start of the year. As we move forward, your world is going to continue to change and nobody can tell you exactly what it will look like or be like for your business, your employees and your customers. What a challenge. But you are not in business because it is easy or safe. You are in business to make money ...
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Setting SMART Goals
With the new year just around the corner, many are working on developing goals and objectives for next year making this a great time to review this process. When developing your goals, is it best to have company goals and department goals that align with the direction you need to head as a company. At the core should be your company Vision and Strategic Plan with Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) that define the direction you want to head. With these in hand, you can develop supporting goals with objectives to drive the direction ...
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Managing your Opportunities
The last newsletter discussed the third component of managing the Opportunity Log, knowing the probability that you will get the order when it is placed for each opportunity so you can manage your opportunities and close enough sales to meet your quota. Now that you have an up-to-date Opportunity Log with estimated close dates, status, and probability defined, you and your sales team can plan and execute to maximize results. The key is to be in the right place at the right time and you can use the Opportunity Log to plan where you need to be and who you need to call ...
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Do Your Sales People Have Enough Opportunities?
The last newsletter discussed how having and making the sales quota is critical to the success of the organization and individual sales person. The "Individual Sales Plan" we discussed will define the quota that the sales person needs to meet and the way to meet this quota is to close opportunities. The sales persons opportunities will be listed in their Opportunity Log that we discussed last month with a realistic estimated close date, the status of the opportunity within the customer's system and the probability that you will get the order when ...
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