Sales And Marketing Tips For Small Business Owners - Improving Your Sales Performance

Here's a meaty question for you - how much improvement would you have to make to your own sales performance and those of your sales people, if you have them, to double your sales revenue over the next year?

Your brain is probably working overtime at this point - you're thinking how can I find the time to make so many more calls, we'd need more people and the budget won't stretch to them, how can I get more out of my existing people? Well, take a deep breath and calm down because the good news is that actually just a small increase in your sales performance will lead to a staggering improvement in your sales results, provided you focus on the key areas.

Consider the professional golfer who comes 10th in a 4 day tournament. His total score of 288 puts him 10 shots behind the winner, who's on 278. The truth is that just a 3.9% improvement in his performance over the course of the tournament would have given him the winning score of 277. In other words, the difference between winning the big prize and finishing nowhere is less than 4%.

The next critical task for that golfer is to analyse his performance in the tournament and work out how he can make some small percentage improvements in his game. Perhaps more putts on target or chip shots to the green or straighter drives to fairway. For a tennis player it might be working on more 1st serves on target, volleys at the net or greater stamina and speed. The point is that the same principle applies to everything we do; small incremental improvements make a positive difference that leads to exponential growth in results.

So, what are the key areas in sales where you can make small improvements? There are 7 critical components in the sales process to think about:

1, Time Management: making best use of your time to maximise your own sales effectiveness.

2, Prospecting: keeping your sales funnel full of qualified MAD prospects. (A MAD prospect is one with the Money, Authority and Need to buy from you.)

3, Contacting: the ability to get appointments or situations where you put yourself and your company in front of the key decision maker - not the number two person or the assistant.

4, Identifying: that means clearly identifying the prospect's needs, issues, problems and wants that you can help with.

5, Presenting: that involves demonstrating effectively to you prospect that your product or service provides the right solution to his problems.

6, Handling objections: thoroughly resolving any concerns or reluctance on the part of the prospect to make the purchasing decision.

7, Closing: finalising the deal and confirming the order.

Just small, even tiny improvements in any of these 7 critical areas could easily add up to 5 or even 10% improvement in your performance over a 12 month period. What would a 5 to 10% improvement in your sales performance do for your small business profits over the next month and the next year?

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