Sales Growth Checkup

Are you treating your business the way you would treat a loved one? Make sure to do a regular health checkup on your business for continued sales growth. Just because a process you implemented was working great three years ago, doesn’t mean it’s still functioning as intended today.

As the year comes to a close, you are likely reflecting on the goals you set for your business previously. Did you achieve or exceed them all? How do you know if you are focusing on the right areas as you make New Years resolutions for your business?

Hopefully you have begun sitting down with your business partners, managers and employees. While you should certainly take their feedback into account, an outside perspective can bring new things to light. 

When you look at your sales for the past year and set your targets for the year ahead, consider the following:

What are your sales numbers based on?

• Did you select a number you thought sounded good or did you select a percentage of growth? Sales growth targets should not be arbitrary numbers. They need to be based on historical data and future predictions. If you haven’t been tracking metrics historically for your business, start doing that now so your future numbers can be based on real data. 
• Does that number take into account any expected increase in expenses? There are many factors to consider when setting your sales growth targets for the upcoming year. Increased expenditure whether it will be due to additional staffing to support the influx of leads or additional marketing spend to generate better leads is a great place to start.   
• Did you determine certain aspects of your products or services that will see greater increase than others this year and build out your new goals accordingly? Setting a blanket sales goal when you offer multiple services or products will make it challenging to predict and track your progress throughout the year. Drill down on those numbers a bit more clearly. Say you are looking for 20% sales growth over the next year, this may come from a 10% increase in service A and a 30% increase in service B. 

How do you plan to achieve these targets?

Let’s say your goal is to increase revenue in next year by 15%. What does that look like? If your response is to tell your sales people to sell 15% more, then we definitely need to talk. You need to take a look at your sales process and see what inefficiencies exist that can be addressed, where your sales leakages are occurring and what strategies or technologies you can put into place to resolve them.

Does your team need additional coaching, training or management to keep them on track?

If you have been managing your sales team for the past year, you may not have seen as much growth as you had wanted. On the flip-side, perhaps you saw the growth, but spent so much time on it, you were stretched thin and unable to spend enough time on the other aspects of your business. Hiring a part-time sales manager who can coach your team on how to sell with increased efficiency and overcoming objections, someone who can train them on the new technology you will be implementing and manage them regularly to ensure they have everything they need to succeed will help grow your business and their careers.

While this can be done by your team internally, it’s a good idea to get an outside advisor to assist you with this process. Sometimes, you are just too close to the work to see everything that needs to be addressed. Perhaps you’ve been following a particular process for years and you have just accepted that is just the way it is. It doesn’t have to be, and an advisor with specific knowledge of sales processes and technology can help you through this.