How to Increase Sales and Profits in Your Business

1. Cut overhead by automating almost everything.

Accounting, reporting, voice mail, ordering, fulfillment, customer service, sales.

2. Cut variable expenses by negotiating with suppliers.

If you're seeking higher profits, you'll need your suppliers to reinvent themselves too! The smart suppliers will be empowered by your request.

3. Cut variable expenses by redesigning (re-engineering) how work gets

done/how the product is produced. This should be a continual process and second nature to you.

4. Increase productivity by expecting 50%-100% more from everyone. (Yes,

really. THAT much more.) And give them the best tools and training needed to produce more, without stress.

5. Leverage your strengths by extending the product/service line.

If you can easily add supplemental products or customized versions at the same profit margin, your overall profit should increase.

6. Each quarter, challenge your assumptions about your industry and your

company. Profit is ALWAYS temporary. What keeps profits increasing long term is staying in touch with an always-changing marketplace/industry.

7. Experiment with new ideas, new types of products and new processes.

Invest 1% of sales into making boo-boos, radical experiments, intuitively-based decisions, think tank getaways -- whatever is beyond the 9 dots.

8. Have and hire only employees who continually impress you with their

initiative and competence. Let everyone else go. Increasing profits come from great employees, not average ones.

9. Turn your customer service department into the R&D Department of your company.

How to Motivate Your Salespeople

1. Expectations: Quotas

2. Threat: Fire the bottom 10% of the sales team each quarter.

3. Pow-wows: Daily or weekly meetings/gatherings of all salespeople rally 'round the flag.

4. Ranking: Posting/displaying the recent results each sales person.

5. Sales conferences off-site.

6. Bonuses: For short-term/special product production.

7. Awards: Salesperson of the month, rookie of the year, etc.

8. A coach: To manage actions, hold to account, keep the focus.

9. Product and sales technique training to improve competencies.

Myths About Sales Techniques

Are you anxious about selling yourself and your services because of a negative view of selling? Let's bust a few myths!

1. A salesperson can sell you something you don't want.

People buy to satisfy needs and wants. A salesperson may help a customer to identify their needs and wants but customers only buy when they believe the product or service they are offered will satisfy them. Selling is not about seducing or coercing the client into buying something for which they have no use or desire.

2. Successful salespeople use a lot of tricks and gimmicks.

Tricks and gimmicks are the tools of the old style salesperson. Today's buyers are too sophisticated to put up with these tactics. Tricks and gimmicks may still be used by some salespeople in some industries but these techniques are not the skills used by today's sales professional.

3. Successful salespeople are aggressive.

The best salespeople are not aggressive, by the usual definition of that word. They are self motivated, enthusiastic and personable. The irritating pushiness that the public tolerates as part of buying is the trademark of the untrained, unprofessional salesperson. Top salespeople in any field are sincere, knowledgeable, considerate, helpful and empathetic.

4. Great salespeople are born, not made.

Great salespeople are not born, they are trained. They resemble star athletes or entertainers in that they may have personality or physical traits which enhance their abilities. However desire, training, practice and experience will enable anyone to reach a successful level of sales performance.

5. Selling is something you do to people.

Selling is something you do with people, not something you do to them. A sales presentation is conversational in style. It should be comfortable, not confronting. The client needs information and looks to the salesperson for guidance and advice. The salesperson is helpful and supportive as the client considers the presentation and makes a decision.

6. Selling a professional service requires a compromise in ethics.

The salesperson is motivated only by a desire to satisfy their customer's needs and wants. Professionals always place their client's best interests ahead of their own. Trust is essential to a successful sales relationship and a professional never compromises his/her integrity to achieve success.

7. The public does not trust or like salespeople.

People do not like or trust poorly trained, poorly informed, ineffective 'salespeople'. They often share stories about unethical and pushy sales service, but in the next breath praise the experience of dealing with their stock broker, real estate agent, or car dealer. They say, "She's different, you can trust her." Today's consumer wants sales service they can trust and rely on, and they will remain loyal to salespeople who provide it.

8. To be effective in sales you must adopt a new personality.

The more open you are with your client, the more you reveal who you are, the less you try to role play an imagined sales personality, the more effective you will be. The more you share your values, feelings and experiences with your clients the more comfortable they become.

9. Marketing is replacing selling.

Selling is part of the marketing process. Sometimes, professionals use the term 'marketing' instead of selling, believing it is more acceptable. There is also a mistaken belief that marketing can replace selling and eliminate the need for direct, one-to-one customer contact. This may be true for some products or services where the salesperson acts simply as an order taker. For most products and services, however, selling is a necessary and valuable part of the marketing strategy.

10. All successful salespeople are hard closers.

Predict Your Future. Do not use a crystal ball to make forecasts of your small business. By carefully assessing the historical
trends of your business enterprise, as shown on your records for the previous five decades, you can forecast for the year ahead.
Your record of sales, your experience with the markets in which you market, and your overall understanding of the economy should
allow you to predict a sales figure for the following year.

When You've Got a Sales prediction figure, make a budget demonstrating your prices as a proportion of the figure. In the next
year, you can compare real P&L amounts to your budgeted figures. Thus, your budget is an important tool for determining the health
of your enterprise.

Make Timely Decisions. Without actions, predictions and conclusions concerning the future aren't worth the paper they're written
on. A decision that does not result in action is a poor one. The pace of business demands timely in addition to informed decision
making. In case the owner-manager would be to stay ahead of competition, you have to move to control your destiny.

Effective Decision making from the small business requires several things. The owner-manager must have as much accurate
information as possible. With these details, you should determine the effects of all possible courses of actions and the time
demands. When you have made the decision, you have set up your company so that the decisions you make can be transmitted into
action.

Control Your Business. To work, the owner-manager needs to be able to motivate key people to get the results planned for within
the cost and time limits allowed. In working to achieve outcomes, the small business owner-manager has an advantage over large
business. You can be fast and flexible while many large businesses need to await committee action before a choice is made. You do
not have to get permission to act. And equally important, bottlenecks to implementing new practices may receive your personal
attention.

One of the Secrets is in deciding what things to control. Even in a small company, the owner-manager shouldn't attempt and be all
things to everybody. You ought to keep close control on people, products, money, and any other resources that you consider
important to keeping your operation geared toward profit.

Manage Your Folks. Most companies find that their biggest expense is labor. Yet because of the close contact with workers, some
owner-manager of small businesses don't pay enough attention to direct and indirect labour costs. They have a tendency to consider
these prices concerning people as opposed to relate them to gain with respect to dollars and pennies.

Listed below are a few Tips concerning personnel management:

Gradually Review each position in your company. Have a glimpse in the job. Is work being duplicated? Is it structured so that it
encourages the employee to become involved? Can the tasks be given to another employee or employees along with a position removed?
Can a part-time person fill the job.

Perform A little private mental game. Imagine you have to eliminate one worker, If you had to let one person go, who would it be?
How would you realign the jobs to make out? You could get a true solution to the imaginary difficulty is possible to your
financial benefit.

Use Compensation for a tool rather than seeing it as a essential evil. Reward Superior work. Investigate the potential for using
raises and bonuses as incentives for greater productivity. For instance, can you envision bonuses as morale boosters through
seasonal slacks or other dull periods?

Remember That there are new means of controlling absenteeism through incentive compensation plans. By way of example, the
owner-manager of a small business eliminated vacations and sick leave. Rather, this owner-manager gave each worker thirty days
annual leave to use as the worker saw fit. In the conclusion of the year, the workers were paid at regular prices for the depart
that they did not use. To make up for the yearlong cover, the worker had to establish that sick leave was shot solely for that
purpose. Non-sick leave needed to be applied for in advance. As a result, unscheduled absences and overtime pay were decreased
significantly. In addition, workers were happier and more effective than they were under the old system.

Control Your Inventory. Don't tie up all your cash in inventory. Utilize a perpetual inventory system for a cost control rather
than a system only for taxation purposes. Establish use patterns or buy patterns on the materials or items which you must stock to
maintain the minimum number required to supply your customers to maintain production. Excessive inventory, whether it is finished
merchandise or raw materials, ties up funds which may be used to better advantage, for example, to open a new sales territory or
to purchase new machinery.

Centralize your Buys and avoid duplications. Be a relative shopper. Confirm orders . Get the purchase price and amount straight
right away.

Check what you Get for condition and quality. Check bills from providers against quotations. You do not want to be the victim of
their mistake.

You should, However, keep 1 fact in mind when you set up your stock control system. Don't invest more on the control system than
it will return in savings.

Control Your Products. From charge of stock to control of products is however a step. Make sure that your sales people recognize
the importance of selling the products which are the most profitable. Align your service policies along with your own markup in
mind. Arrange your goods that low markup items require the cheapest handling.

Control Your Money. It's good policy to handle checks and cash as though they were perishable commodities. They are. Cash in your
safe earns no return; also it Can be stolen. Bank promptly.

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