As the economy shows some early signs of improvement, it’s a great time to review your  sales performance data and focus on the aspects which continue to lag behind our expectations. Implementing a sales turnaround plan for your company is actually quite straightforward.  Here’s how…

The first task is to analyze and discuss the sales data and the sales processes with each key manager in your company, and not just from the sales and marketing department.

• What specific strategies can we do to improve our sales?
• Are there customer segments or marketing segments that we are overlooking?
• How can we focus the entire company around implementing sales improvements?
• What are the easiest and most rewarding opportunities that we have (the ‘low hanging fruit’)?
• What are the obstacles that currently confront our sales team which need to be eliminated or removed?
• Are there sales territories or customer / market segments that are underserved or overlooked?
• Where are our best opportunities and how profitable are they?
• How are our sales teams aligned to best capitalize on those opportunities?
• What is the individual performance of each of our sales people?
• What corrective action are we taking with sales people who are not meeting established sales expectations or quota?

Effective sales and opportunity management is the key to improving results. A lot of companies struggle with identifying and prioritizing the best sales and marketing opportunities for them. Best in class companies do a great job at sales opportunity management by continually analyzing their pipeline, analyzing each customer opportunity, and prioritizing the allocation of resources to focus on the best opportunities.

A quick way to organize your best sales prospects is to consistently maintain and update a top ten opportunity list for each of your sales reps.  A simple spreadsheet which is updated once a week by your sales reps and reviewed by management is a great way for you to do a top ten account review. Have your reps focus on those ten accounts every week.

Make sure that you’re consistently and regularly holding your sales team accountable for achieving progress with each of their top ten accounts. They need to quickly articulate the sales plan and goals for each of their top ten accounts.

Get each sales reps to realize that they need to focus their time and energy on the best opportunities, as opposed to just churning out the sales activity. Many sales reps can get overwhelmed by the volume of activity that they need to generate in order to do their jobs effectively and achieve the necessary results. They quickly get lost in the volume of activity and soon begin equating activity with productivity. Being productive in sales means being able to qualify your best opportunities and focus your time and attention on moving those opportunities forward.

I remember the conversation vividly. An entrepreneurial couple came to me for help because of a chronic problem with late payments from clients and the impact was, of course, their own financial struggle. I listened to what was happening and suggested they change their business model to require payment up front.

They said “Oh we couldn’t do that – no-one would pay us up front. No-one in our field does that.” I asked why and they didn’t really have a good reason other than being afraid that they would lose business if they asked for payment up front.

What I suggested next, however, brought on an immediate gasp and even more fear. But in fact, when they got past that fear and implemented this strategy, they easily got payment up front AND converted more prospects to paying clients.

The answer was to require payment up front AND include a guarantee. The word “guarantee” for some reason, makes a lot of entrepreneurs fearful. They are deathly afraid that if they offer an guarantee, they will end up refunding money to client after client.

But in fact, that’s just a fear. If you are 100% confident in the product or service you provide as a small business owner, offering a guarantee should be a no-brainer. Here’s how:

Guarantee the results:

If you have a track record of proven results in business, and you are confident in your ability to help your client achieve the result, then there’s no reason you couldn’t guarantee that result. One of my clients is a makeup artist. Having done hundreds of brides, she was confident in guaranteeing natural, flawless makeup application that lasts throughout their wedding day. That’s a result her clients are always looking to achieve, so it was a brilliant focus for her in converting prospects to clients.

Guarantee the service:

If service is of high importance to your client, it could very well be the thing to focus on in your guarantees. It can be the level of service you provide. For example, you can guarantee that your client will always get a response from you within a certain time frame.

Guarantee the experience:

Depending on the type of product or service you offer, you can also guarantee the experience your client would have. It’s similar to the service guarantee, but focused on what your client would experience after having done business with you. For example, if your clients tend to be afraid of the hassles in your industry, you can guarantee them a hassle-free experience.

Guarantee that they’ll be fully equipped:

For some services that depend on the client’s commitment to taking action, it may not be possible to guarantee the results. That’s because you have no control over how much action they take. However, you can certainly guarantee that they will walk away with everything they need to achieve the precise result they were seeking. For example, when I do a live workshop, I guarantee that my attendees will walk away with the exact formula for attracting a steady stream of clients like a magnet to their businesses.

So what’s your guarantee? Overall, it is important to pay close attention to the key objections or hesitations your prospects may have and insert some powerful guarantees around those objections so that you can easily convert prospects into paying clients.

And now I’d like to offer you the FREE one-hour audio seminar for solo entrepreneurs on “How to Create a Steady Stream of Clients And Cash For Your Small Business” at: http://www.greatsmallbusinessadvice.com. From Allison Babb.