Avoiding The Sales Rollercoaster
Saturday, July 18, 2009 8:45
Sales rollercoaster…what the heck am I talking about? Well the extreme HIGH’S and LOWS, which are both emotional and sales sold driven that take on that up and down affect much like a rollercoaster.
We spend most of our time strategizing to get sales, and then when we manage the ‘sell’ we tend to move away from this strategizing sales cycle, this being a ‘PEAK’.
What happens though is an inevitable ‘LOW’ looking for sales, so once the ‘sell’ is managed through your back at square one looking for that next sale. This is the rollercoaster effect.
The hardest thing about the rollercoaster effect is how it hits emotionally since normally your emotions go with the extreme highs and lows of your sales cycles. I have been able to avoid the extreme rollercoaster but with no success have I avoided this all together.
I do have a few tips on how to lessen the blow, and keep your cycle going on a more consistent level.
#1: Never Stop Networking
No matter how busy you are, whether you think this is worth your time or not, or if you think you have all the business you need. Keep adding groups to the mix, keep going to events, keep mingling and making new introductions while keeping the older ones going because you WILL need this. When you’re busy even better, talk about how busy you are and get busier.
#2: Set a Weekly Schedule
Decide what day you are going to call clients, what day your going to read news, what day your going out of the office to have lunch and coffee with clients and what day your going to figure out a way to propose new business. This way, even when your busy you will still have time scheduled to do this stuff, so book yourself!
#3: Be Prepared To Get Some Help
For me, and other small and large businesses this can be a hard and not so easy decision to make. If I do more, I make more. If I hire someone, say a Project Manager I will lose out on additional personal revenue if I did it myself. It does however give me more time to do more sales, gives me the opportunity to support the client and team and will allow me to keep networking to make more connections and sales.
#4: Look At A Sale As Business Development, Not Just A Sale
If you look at a sale with a client as a BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY not just a single PROJECT it will be more profitable for you. You would have the ability to build a larger project for the client, which will take more time and cost more. Focus on the business of the client needs and propose how you can build everything in stages to help them grow and sustain growth. This means consistent cash while you build a stronger relationship which I can guarantee will carry you through the large dips in the rollercoaster while bringing in more profit to the company and to you.
Template sites with not much to offer the client in means of longevity, marketing and customization, in the end will offer you the same. This being a non-repeat client and less revenue where you will be hustling and challenging that rollercoaster affect yet again.
Brock Gunter-Smith says:
September 9th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
What I tend to do is create a backlog of additional requests, wishes and ideas that get mentioned during meetings that become on-going talking points throughout the current project’s life-cycle and help lead to a “Well, what shall we tackle next on this big list of things you want to do…” conversation. These are things that are outside the scope of your current engagement, but you showing an interest by recording, organizing and adding a few notes/ideas on how you might be of assistance is a great way to show you were listening actively, concerned about their other needs and pro-actively offering to help them get it all done.
By quickly estimating each item you can also help them prioritize. I don’t assign hours, day, weeks or dollars to these estimates, more just things like t-shirt sizes, so you can say, “Hey, these 5 items are extra-smalls shall we get these banged out next week for you?” …or if they start talking about one of them you can say, “Yup, that looks like a medium project…although there was something else you wanted to do that was similar to that and only a small…that could probably get done quicker and offer more immediate value, what do you think?”.
There is a whole art to agile estimation and backlog planning and grooming like this that no matter how you actually do it, when you figure out YOUR process it will make striking up a conversation about on-going work really easy, and you more confident about it.