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6 Ways to Improve Your Sales Projections

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Measure sales carefully to be profitable.

Measure sales carefully to be profitable.

Your sales projection formula is key to more accurate financial projections and to the success of your business.

Sales projection formulas are always wrong. Here are six ways to improve them.

Sales projections are wrong because…

  1. Sales projections are not supposed to be right. They need to be relevant.
    They’re a snapshot. They are a specific point in time, based on relevant data and criteria and are defensible within limits. They give you an idea of what to expect each week or month or year. Improve your sales projections by making sure you don’t accept the projected sales numbers without question — including your own numbers. The answers you get from salespeople in terms of what they think will close have to be reasonable and with some sort of basis not just hype and hope. [Read more…]

Stakeholders Gone Wild

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Stakeholders can be useful to you but can go wild as well. Photo by cone_dnm

Stakeholders can be useful to you but can go wild as well. Photo by cone_dnm

Stakeholders: can’t live without them and sometimes can’t live with them.

They are customers, providers, allies, employees, colleagues, the government, the media, competitors, influencers and many, many others. After reviewing a stakeholder map example that had 105 entries, I came up with at least 50 more. [Read more…]

What’s better for growth: a partner or a strategic alliance?

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Partner or Strategic Business Alliance? Photo by Giorgio Montersino.

Partner or Strategic Business Alliance? Photo by Giorgio Montersino.

Get a partner or set up a strategic alliance — which is better for your business growth? Many business owners want a “partner” to  share the load. Partners exert a lot of control no matter how little of the business they own. Use a strategic alliance instead to grow your business and  keep more control.

What is a Strategic Alliance?

“If we are together, nothing is impossible. If we are divided all will fail.” Winston Churchill

The most accepted definition of a strategic alliance is that it’s “a formal or informal agreement between two or more individuals or entities to achieve a common goal”.

In 2005, companies reported that 18% of their revenue was generated through strategic alliances. The economy has changed but there are still thousands of alliances formed each year and are critical as we re-think business post COVID-19.

According to Ard-Pieter de Man and Dave Luvison, authors of Collaborative Business Models: Aligning and Operationalizing Alliances (from Business Horizons Volume 62, Issue 4, July–August 2019, Pages 473-482), “the big challenge is to align company interests with alliance interests”. This peer-reviewed article is definitely worth reading and thinking about especially for larger organizations.

It pays to know more and think more before deciding that a strategic alliance is right for you.

[Read more…]

4 Parts to a Platinum Customer Profile System™

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There are 7 potential customer types you could have — Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze, Lead, Concrete, and RAW (Radio Active Waste). But you should have only the best, the Platinum Customer. They give you money and a lot more.

If you aren’t satisfied with the value of your current customers, make better choices by setting up a Platinum Customer Profile™ identification system. This is more than just “target” or “niche” marketing. The four parts of a Platinum Customer Profile™ are demographics, psychographics, behaviors, and geography. [Read more…]

Leveraging Existing Customers in Contract Negotiations

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Rabbit vs. penguin. Who do you think would win in a negotiation? Image by Daniel Voyager3.

Rabbit vs. penguin. Who do you think would win in a negotiation? Image by Daniel Voyager3.

Contract negotiations and re-negotiations can be risky business. Both parties go into it with the assumption of the potential for conflict. If you are the provider, you do have a secret weapon: your existing customers and their contracts.

These existing contracts give you precedent that you can use in the negotiations. This is especially true if you do business with a government entity. As my colleague Sandra Stenzel, founder of the Bid Resource Centers in Texas that became the model throughout the US has often said to clients, “the government wants the lowest responsive, responsible bid”. That translates in contract negotation to “we want the best deal” — unspoken is “than you give anyone else”.

In our case, our client was faced with a customer who wanted the same terms as the government got and not an increase in price from the last contract. Reasonable, but not in line with the contracts of their other clients. Our client’s goal was to provide parity with his other non-government contracts for the same work. Also reasonable and necessary for his growth in order to simplify his pricing structure which was definitely not standardized. [Read more…]

Ghost Competitors Are Out to Get Your Sales

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Photo by Adam Kusmierz from flickr.com

Photo by Adam Kusmierz from flickr.com

Ghost competitors. They come out at night. They come out during the day. They come when you are awake. They come when you are asleep. They come when you are at work or at play. They are always there. Lurking.

There are four of them; like the four horsemen of the apocalypse. They ride down on you. You can’t fight them so you need to be vigilant and get out of the way. They seem harmless or well meaning. But, beware!

Who are they?

Your worst nightmares:

  1. Government
  2. Non-profit and tax exempts
  3. DIYers
  4. DNAAs [Read more…]

Repositioning Makes Old Products New Again

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Dogs have slept with humans for years. Now it's used as a repositioning reality™ for Serta. Photo from Commons at flickr.com

Dogs have slept with humans for years. Now it’s used as a repositioning reality™ for Serta. Photo from Commons at flickr.com

Repositioning helps customers think of your product or service in a new way.

Sometimes it works. I grew up with $10 tennis shoes. Nike told younger generations they were “training tools” (with appropriate tool and endorsers  names) not just shoes. Nike got it right and made big profits. [Read more…]

Generating Sales Through a SPIFF Program

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Are SPIFF Incentives a sign for hard times or for all times? Photo by Simon Blackley.

Are SPIFF Incentives a sign for hard times or for all times? Photo by Simon Blackley.

Can SPIFFS generate sales? Yes, but. They may be somewhat questionable ethically since it can appear to a potential customer that a salesperson is unbiased in their recommendation when they really are not.

SPIFF or SPIF or SPIV refers to the practice of paying a small, immediate bonus for a sale to a salesperson. It’s a way to encourage a salesperson to push one product more often than a non-SPIFF paid product. It’s usually paid to the employee by the manufacturer whose products are recommended or by their employer. [Read more…]

Business Owners Hierarchy of Needs

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What motivates business owners? It depends on where they are in the owners' hierarchy of needs.

What motivates business owners? It depends on where they are in the owners’ hierarchy of needs.

You’ve probably heard of Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs”. He identified how a person’s needs dominate motivation and behavior and that there is a specific order in which they should be met.

His theory suggested that the basic needs (physiological, safety, love and belonging) had to be met before the individual will desire and pursue higher levels of needs (esteem, self actualization, and self transcendence).

If a need is not met, the individual will feel tense and anxious. Although people may have several needs at any time, one will dominate their actions. [Read more…]