Sharing data around your company

I was party to a conversation last week where a 'traditional' salesman said ".... you expect me to share my contacts with everyone in the company? You re bl***y joking!...." This guy worked for a large corporate but I have come across the same attitude in companies of all sizes. Sadly, this view is all to common and can cause big problems if you are the owner of a small business.

It's all to easy for sales people to think that they own the opportunities they are working on. However, in a small company the manager or owner needs to know what is going on - it may be a case of survival when sales are tight. Operations need to know what to plan for, accounts need to be involved if there is a credit issue etc etc.

I don't subscribe to the view that all sales people are prima-donnas, only interested in themselves. If you talk to them about sharing their contacts and opportunities you should do it in a non threatening way - it's amazing how many sales people are a little insecure (the job sometimes demands it). Explain the reasons why you need to know what they are working on and give them an easy way to record information. Remember, you don't want them to be spending all their time on admin.

The 5 magic bullets of marketing

Marketing gurus tell us that we are hit by over 3000 marketing messages in any one day. Most of them seem to tell us allot about what is on offer but little about how it will make our lives better. When it is done well the results can be superb.

The first time I wrote this post, I called it the '5 mistakes of SME marketing' but I think we small business owners are taking enough of a beating already - hence the change of name!

Marketing doesn't seem to come naturally to small business owners so it is fantastic to see it done well. We all welcome marketing that:

1 - focuses on what the customer needs and stays away from what we want to sell,

2 - is a co-ordinated series of events,

3 - is well planned and executed,

4. - is not just an exercise in spending money!

5. - that actually generates opportunities and ultimately revenue.

The key to achieving the above? Successful marketeers understand that they need to plan, measure results and value every opportunity generated.

Handling employee expenses

With all the furore over MPs expenses it seems that many small business owners are looking at what goes on in their organisations. We are getting more and more interest in the expense management tools provided by breatheHR.

In good times, small business owners might be prepared to turn a blind eye but that seems to have changed with the focus on cost saving. Business Link have released a really useful section of their website that covers expense management - tale a look at their website...

Sales pipeline management

Managing your sales pipeline is important at every stage of the economic cycle but is vital when sales are thin on the ground. There is a lot of nonsense written about designing a pipeline that largely comes from big company thinking. It can be a simple process so long as you keep in mind one key fact - you will never get it spot on.

Sales pipeline management requires employees to understand the process, be held accountable and to take activity. The results must be measured so a reporting process needs to be agreed.

I have worked through the process with a number of clients this month. It is a 6 stage process:

1. List the major stages that you go through when working with a sales opportunity. These should not be too detailed. For example:
   1. Initial Communication
   2. Needs Assessment
   3. Presentation / meeting
   4. Negotiation
   5. Commitment to buy
   6. Order received
   7. Sales Fulfilment
   
2. Define what you mean by each stage. It is essential that all of your team understand how to classify an opportunity. For example, what has to happen when you first talk to a prospect to qualify for the 'Initial communication' stage? What has to happen for an order to be classified as 'Order Received' - verbal order or PO Number?
   
3. Attach a probability to each stage. You are trying to understand what the probability is of closing a deal at any stage. For example, you might say that 10% of new opportunities turn into orders. Or that 95% of opportunities where you get a commitment to buy actually turn into an order. This is the place where you don't want to worry too much about being spot on - all you are looking for is an an approximation.
   
4. Introduce a system to manage this whole process. There a many CRM systems that can do this for you but working on a tight budget one of the best is Sage ACT!


5. Keep the results updated. A sales pipeline will only be useful if you keep it up-to-date and regularly reviewed.


6. Refine the process. You will need to give the process some time to settle down but after a while you will want to refine the process.

You should end up with a table like this:

If you follow these steps you will have a measurable way of tracking opportunity progress and one measure for assessing the competency of your sales people.