Sales training alone won’t increase sales

Customer service and sales always seem to hold the top two spots of popular training workshops. And for good reason because at the end of the day, businesses ultimately only fail or succeed for one reason… customers.

According to Michael Simmons, a serial entrepreneur who has built one of the biggest online learning communities:

1. If you understand your customers, you will create better marketing and products. This will then lead to more customers who stay longer, and who get better results.

2. If you don’t understand your customers, you will create beautiful marketing, products, and financial models, but have no customers.

3. And, finally, if you only partially understand your customers, your whole business will be an uphill battle. You might have paying customers, but you will have to pay more to acquire them and they won’t renew or buy repeatedly from you.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur or employee at a startup, in a growing company, or in a mature company – the number one skill you need is to continuously focus on your customer and develop systems for attracting and retaining them.

It’s simple. It’s obvious. Yet, very few people do not focus on the customer nor do they have a sales, marketing or hiring process in place to ensure that they are only attracting those customers best suited to their business.

Self-made billionaire Charlie Munger says, “Take one simple idea and take it seriously.”

This is why selling effectively alone won’t increase your sales.

• It’s impossible to have strong revenue growth without a properly defined sales process.

• It is impossible to have strong revenue growth if no one is ensuring that the process is being followed properly.

• It is impossible to have strong revenue growth if you or your sales team are not being coached against that process

• It is impossible to have strong revenue growth if everyone on your team has a different sales process or if you’re asking new hires to come up with a sales process for you.

• It's impossible to have a customer-centric culture if you haven't taken the time to develop your customer service procedures

• It’s impossible to have a world-class customer experience if you haven’t actually mapped out the entire customer experience.

• It’s impossible to increase revenue growth if you don’t have a hiring system for determining whether those persons you interview will behave in the way you need them to behave. You know that what people say they will do during an interview process and what actually happens in real life is often far apart. Think about this: The average bad hire costs a company $60,000 yet most hiring decisions are made from an hour-long interview.

If your approach has been anything like what I’ve just described then I guarantee that you will get poor results.

Efficient industrial heating systems use less fuel and energy than their inefficient counterparts. Similarly when you have an efficient sales, marketing and hiring system in place you will use a lot less energy and focus only on those important and results-getting profitable activities.

According to Chet Holmes, there are basics that you can do over and over again until every aspect of your sales organisation runs like a machine.

Wouldn’t it be great if you can have:

• Every person in every department know how to handle any circumstance that arises?

• Your salespeople have answers and perfect follow-up letters for every possible situation?

• Your customer service people know how to respond to any complaint or special order or return situation that comes their way without having to consult their manager?

Stress levels will be lower because every employee will have the information, training and tools to do their jobs confidently and effectively.

What will it take to get you there?

Pig headed discipline to design, create and follow your own customised system containing the how-to instructions to create your unique and profitable sales machine.

What will it mean if you were to finally end self-sabotage, reclaim your power and design a future that pulls you toward what you want? To get the book Become a Well-Paid Professional! send an email to possibility2profit@gmail.com