Posts Tagged: Sales

by rvdburgt

24 Ways To BOOST Your Sales! (Part 1)

Just when we think we’ve grasped what’s happening in business, something changes to disrupt the precarious balance. It may occur in the economy, an industry, a region, a particular market or technology that alters even the most flexible business plan.

Establishing a strategy, then staying with it, was possible for most businesses until the last decade. Planning a year or more in advance was relatively easy. Ups and downs would occur but with a high degree of predictability. Hitting sales and revenue targets was almost taken for granted.


Now, dramatic changes in technology, international conditions and distribution channels are constantly upsetting the balance. Banks are looking more like insurance agencies and insurance agencies are quickly taking on the characteristics of banks. Wal-Mart had long avoided selling name brand fashions–until the nation’s department store companies were reconfigured and 
downsized. Suddenly, Wal-Mart saw an opportunity to move brand-name clothing lines.

How can a business cope with a marketplace where erratic conditions are–and will be–the norm? What is required is a strategy that takes constant change into account. Even with notable disruption, it is possible to attract new customers, keep present ones and increase sales.

Here are 24 practical, useful, put-them-to-work-now ideas for building business in unpredictable business conditions.

1. Get sharp. 
Yes, how a company presents itself makes a difference. Is the logo appropriate? Is it dated? Does it communicate the right message and the correct image? Is the president the only one who understands it? What about the company colors? Are they reminiscent of the late fifties? Do the 
letterhead, mailing labels and business cards convey a strong, positive message? Or, are they dull and ordinary looking? If you don’t think this is important, your competitors will be thrilled. Corporate identity is the face you put on your company.

2. Target the right person. 
The big job in marketing and sales is getting to the right people inside a company. Addressing mail to “Facilities Manger” or printing a “routing slip” on the outside of the envelope is ineffective. Hitting the target is the challenge. Scoring a bull’s eye means making contact with the right individuals and is the only way to make the sale. Taking time to be highly targeted in business communication is essential.

3. Tell the story one piece at a time. 
There’s a tendency to jam everything about a business into one brochure, ad or newsletter. “What have we left out?” is the most common question. The difficult job is to pull it all apart, break ideas into their component parts and then roll out a continuing, intriguing campaign. Communicating a message over a period of time works best because it allows it to sink in slowly.

4. Focus on what customers care about. 
After listening to the admissions director talk about what should be shown in the school’s new recruiting video, the marketing consultant asked, “Is this what parents and prospective students are interested in knowing?” Suddenly, everyone became less confident. Someone suggested asking the student tour guides what questions the visiting parents and kids asked? Whether creating an ad, a brochure, or a sales presentation, knowing what the customer wants, needs and expects is what works.
 
I strive to bring you the best information to enhance your business plan and its various components like small business development, business marketing and best of all business profits!

James Burgess
Management Consulant, Synergen-X

by bisgovuk

For any business enterprise, the key to success lies in foresight and taking informed decisions at the right time. This becomes possible with the accurate sales data at all distribution levels including Primary, Secondary and Tertiary. Most of the companies, then be it FMCG, Pharma, Electric & Electrical, Home Appliances, Mobile & Cellular, or for that matter any manufacturing body that deals in indirect sales focus on collecting and managing primary data with the help of ERPs. This results in digression of the importance of Secondary and Tertiary level sales data. The paradox however is that the sales data at these two levels (Secondary & Tertiary) is the real goldmine, which can provide significant value for streamlining sales. Let us find out how.

Importance of Secondary and Tertiary Sales Data

Primary level sale is the movement/selling of products from principal manufacturer or C&F agents (carrying and forward agents) to stockists. While this level (primary sales) is important to track the immediate sales, the next levels in the sales distribution channel including movement of goods from stockists to distributors and sub-distributors (secondary sales) are even more important.

Let us study this with the help of an example of apparel manufacturing business. Generally, a line of clothing has a shelf life after manufacturing. It is circulated in the market with the strategy to be sold within a limited period from the manufacturing date. The reason for this is that after a certain time period, a new design will hit the market and the old design will be less in demand. It is crucial to know the demand generated for apparels in the market- how much the dealers, sub-dealers, wholesalers and retailer are purchasing (secondary data) and how much the consumers are buying (tertiary data). If the manufacturer relies only on primary sales data for charting out the manufacturing and distribution strategy, it will fail to become a foolproof methodology. So the primary sales data correlates to the data that floats on secondary and tertiary level sales and measuring these levels very closely becomes critically important.

Shift in Buying and Selling Perspective

The buying and distribution pattern has also witnessed tremendous changes lately. The inclusion of multiple vendors, in-shop demonstrators and super specialty stores like Wal-Mart, Reliance Retail, Big Bazaar and Subhiksha have altered the distribution process from linear to multi-directional. Single end-product may have multiple vendors, distributors and dealers. In such a large and diversified chain, identifying the loopholes with primary sales alone is not possible. If the inventory is slow-moving, stagnant or obsolete, obtaining real-time data, with the help of Customer Sales Management CRM can help you identify and resolve the roadblocks. Hence the Secondary and Tertiary Sales data benefits in following ways:

Better logistics and warehouse management - Absence of secondary and tertiary level data blurs the demand-supply graph. Automation of all supply chains in order to ensure efficient and timely delivery of goods aids in maintaining a demand-supply balance.

In-depth market understanding and consumer behavior - Dealer’s/retailers purchase reflects the buying pattern of end-customers. Tracking secondary sales data with the help of a fully integrated Sales Tracking System helps you to know which segment, region, and product mix have high and low demands.

Formulating and evaluating distribution strategies- Know the distribution channel’s performance and strategize the next distribution cycles accordingly. When you are aware that certain distributors have a good selling capacity, you can increase your product supply to them. On the other hand, you can plan-out lucrative schemes for distributors who are under-performing or who are less motivated to sell your products.

Having explained that there are significant benefits of utilizing Secondary and Tertiary Sales data properly, we also want to reiterate that a good secondary sales system simplifies and streamlines the sales processes and increases sales visibility till your product is finally bought by the end customer. A robust Customer Sales CRM offers seamless visibility across channels and enables you to track sales force activity and gauze their individual performance, thus empowering you to take informed decisions on time, every time.

Rakesh Kumar is a business consultant of Zed Sales™. Zed Sales™ is a leading sales management software in India. Zed Sales™ has lots of innovative features including target management software, payment management software etc. To know more visit our website www.salesmanagementsoftware.in now!

by vancouverfilmschool

“Teach a man to fish and he will never go hungry in his lifetime”

The proverb above can be perfect analogy for Business management. Precisely because, after you learn business management skills you can be certain that you will not be looking back, you will gain enough knowledge and confidence to manage your own business efficiently and effectively.

You will then acquire an insight into the effort and hard work you will have to have to put in your business, business management skills will, as always help you sail through any hardships you may be presented in the world of business management.

Effective business management needs planning and doing various activities at a time, but to do that you need to be fully knowledgeable in your respective field in details. You can also utilize business management books that are widely available online and off-line to help you gain learnings and expertise in this field. A business manager also has to understand business performance, the financial aspects of a business for without which he will bring no good for a business. Effective management needs to have creativity that is, with limited resources, can still extract development.

Creativity Management techniques

There are many strategies for enhancing creativity management. For instance, there are a number of methods of generating novel ideas, several methods of making diverse ideas, various methods of generating large numbers of ideas and several methods of elevating the frequency of idea generation.

But, it is of great significance to realize that techniques–although there may be thousands of them – are only one element of the creativity management process. Inside the scope of the creativity management framework, they fall in the creative thinking against critical thinking domain.

Can creativity be learned and enhanced?

Utilizing the scale of creativity: a)as a number of ideas generated, b) the variations of those ideas, c) the value of those ideas and d) the frequency of their production, we can scale creative output at any point in time.

After that, we can push individuals through a series of learning process, measure them again and find the + or – displacement.

Comprehending mechanisms such as the experience curve, adaptive and generative learning and automisation all show that creativity enhances with practice.

Once you are able to develop these creativity management, surely, you will be able to make good progress in your chosen business.

Sales and Marketing

Sales and marketing are usually used interchangeably, however, these are two different ideas, albeit somewhat similar. But, it is simple to determine between the two. Marketing is the method of attracting and keeping clients while sales is the actual selling of the product or services to the clients. In medium and large sized businesses, people designated for marketing and sales often do not work together, but it is critical to the success of a business for this to be so.

In small businesses, marketing and sales operations are commonly done by the same person, or the business owner. In such a case, there are no communication constrains because only one person is doing the work. The entrepreneur will always make sales and marketing together flawlessly because they are aware of everything that is happening and do not miss out on anything.