Sales Bible, Playbook, SOP – Sales Operational Manual – call it what you want, but you can’t scale your sales function without one.I’m often quoted as saying ‘Brand is a promise of consistency’, but that also applies to how well you codify and deliver a consistent end-to-end customer journey in your business. If someone’s experience …
Your Sales Engine is broken and here’s why… Occasionally at a networking event you’ll hear a bunch of old sales hands (myself included) reminiscing about the days when we simply drove around the country with the precision of a co-ordinated army, visiting our customers and drumming up new business. Our Fords and B’mers stuffed full …
One of the biggest decisions you will need to make as your sales team begins to grow is how to structure it across your entire customer base. Unless you want your people stealing the best leads from one another, selecting which are their ‘best’ clients and mismanaging the rest, or increasing the cost by overlapping …
How many times have you heard one of your employees tell you about yet another App or piece of software that will help with some minutiae part of your sales process? But if you’re not careful you can end up adding unnecessary complexity…
...One of the most popular parts of my live keynote is the explanation of the different types of buyers, their different motivations and the different types of Sales Engines a business must build in order to serve these differing customer journeys. It’s a mistake to assume because you’ve cracked one route to market, that you …
If like most ambitious business owners your focus is on growth, have you formulated a plan on how to achieve that growth in 2019? Will you increase your market share, your Average Order Value, or entice your customers to purchase more frequently? Ultimately every sales plan boils down to one or more of these three …
Guy Rigby is the Head of Entrepreneurs at Smith & Williamson, and we were lucky enough for him to attend one of our Club dinners. Guy shared some amazing nuggets of wisdom about his own experience and entrepreneurial journey, along with those he’s helped. Below are some of the highlights… GR: Demand is what makes …
Are you ready? Making a budget – It’s that time of the year again when you should be digging out your budget planner template and planning your next financial year. Regardless of the timing of your financial year-end, there is something about the half-year mark or the close of a calendar year that signals the end of …
… and no I’m not talking equity rather your role? I heard a great nugget recently from Anthony Fletcher, the CEO of fast-growing business Graze. “If you plan to grow your business by 30% you have to find someone to do 30% of your own job” The inability to consistently prune your own role (and then everyone else’s) is …
Here’s our list of Growth Gems … what else would you add? If habits maketh the man … what habits make a truly outstanding sales professional? One to download and stick on your office wall perhaps and ask your team to add to. 40 #GrowthGems guaranteed to improve sales performance Get in front of the …
Andrew Bailey speaks about his top 10 negotiating rules that he has personally tried and tested. Negotiating and deal making can be fraught with issues and danger, to overcome these challenges some simple, tried and tested ‘rules’ will help. We discuss 10 Negotiating Rules in this piece, of course there are more, however mastering these will make …
There’s a reason why at Company Shortcuts, we keep banging on about the importance of creating ‘Your Sales Process Map’, so you better understand the flow and the variables of your customer buying experience… …because, amongst other things, it supports the building of your brand. But how? I hear you shout, “what has sales …
Commission schemes. Do you have one? Does it work – i.e. does it drive the team behaviours you want? And do you need a PhD in pure Maths to understand it? This is a topic that was discussed very recently with our current BAPs cohort, so here are 4 quick headlines to think about if …
We’re used to seeing people walking down the street randomly talking into thin air – until you see the little white wire and realise they are engaged in a ‘usually’ very loud conversation with another person on the other end of their mobile phone. Today whilst travelling down the escalator at Kings Cross onto the …
So – how much of your team’s resources last week was focused on income generating activities? 100% perfect, 50% or I know in some cases it may even be as low as 25-30%. Even those members of your team employed in full-time sales roles, how much of their valuable time was spent on the right …
Kick Start your business’ new year with a full pipeline. Lou Johnson, CEO of Blue Sky Revenue Generation is a great friend of Company Shortcuts and many of you will have met her at one of our live events. We’ve asked Lou to share her perspective on how business leaders can start the New Year …
If like me you have watched Dragon’s Den you will be familiar with the phrase “this is a lifestyle business and therefore not an investable proposition”. So what is it that you can do to move your business from a lifestyle to a business that is attractive to investors and other buyers? Making this move …
Travel specialists, Experience Travel Group, who design bespoke holidays to Asia, share how their business performance shifted with the introduction of fresh insights transforming it’s sales strategy. “My MD made me do it!” proclaimed Nick Clark, Sales Director at Experience Travel Group (ETG), when asked what motivated him to join Company Shortcuts’ 6 month Business Accelerator Leadership …
Lara Morgan shares the system of reward she established in her business to motivate her sales team to accelerate the growth of her business. She explores how effective sales targets combined with really understanding what motivates an individual are crucial to developing the team culture focused on profit priorities for growth. Reward mechanisms, the generosity to some extent and …
After closing, what at the time, was the biggest deal personally in our business Company Shortcuts, I celebrated in such a way that my Chairman responded with: “But surely you must have had deals of this size before, in your corporate career when you were working for Gucci or P&G” …and of course I have, so why …