Valhalla Business Solutions - Business Management Consultants

Sales Management Consulting Specializing In... Sales and service Systems, Managing younger generations, Management protocols Coaching effectiveness


Monday, April 20, 2009

Sales Process (Manager)

Sales Process (Manager)

Establish what each customer interaction looks like...

  • Greeting
  • Profiling
  • Recommendations
  • Exit

To make things simple for a leader to coach, there has to be foundational processes to your customer interactions.

Greeting, solicit your team in your next daily kick start or team to explore what and how a greeting should look from your organization to your customer. How can use the greeting to impact your sales? What would it sound like? How can you use your greeting to transition into a profiling session with your customer?

Profiling, the most important piece of any sales process and far and away the most absent in almost every business I visit. I challenge you and your business to make this a central part of who you are as an organization. Why? If you really care about what your customers need and want, you have to ask them. In almost every business I patron nobody ask or cares. They jump straight to recommendations. How can you assume you know what your customer wants. Its arrogant and condescending.

Recommendations, this is what most sales people think they excel at. "They can talk to anybody!" There is no one good at this unless the profiling step has properly been executed. You as a manager have an obligation to your customers and your employees to help them uncover the needs of your client.

Exit, this can have a lot polishing as well when it comes to business. Again as a manager solicit your team for what this should look like. Probe around referrals, commitments in future contact and elevating yourself from the competition.

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Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Valhalla's Management Expectations -- Team Meetings

Valhalla's Management Expectations -- Team Meetings

Who:
  • Entire team

What:
  • Team builder
  • Share vision
  • Turn in calendar for the week
  • Brain storm around business priorities
  • Review team scoreboard
  • Recognize, recognize, recognize
  • Training
  • Internal customer presentations

Where:
  • Conference room (team should be sitting)

When:
  • Weekly
  • One hour

Why:
  • Stay abreast to internal issues
  • Direct communication with the entire team
  • Create team buy in
  • Better team relationships
  • More educated teams

How:
  • Team builder for the first 5-10 minutes to engage team
  • What does the our vision mean to you?
  • What are the team goals, and how will our priorities get us there?
  • Highlight substantial accomplishments
  • Have team members recognize each other for the last 10 minutes

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Valhalla's Management Expectations -- Daily Exits

Valhalla's Management Expectations -- Daily Exits

Who:
  • Direct reports only

What:
  • Discuss what was accomplished for the day
  • Discuss the days learning
  • Review high impact priorities
  • Review scorecard
  • Follow up on Daily Kick Start commitments
  • Recognize specific behaviors

Where:
  • Area large enough to have all your direct reports

When:
  • Daily
  • 15 minutes

Why:
  • Team learns from each other
  • Increased accountability
  • More urgency from your team
  • Develops consistency which transfers to your customers
  • Reinforces the importance of the day's activities

How:
  • Ask
    • Based on your learning today what changes would you make?
  • Follow up
    • i.e., you talked about scheduling three appointments this morning. How did that go? What did you learn?
    • i.e., Paul you mentioned you needed three more presentations for next week. Where are you with your goal?
  • Celebrate
    • i.e., Kelly you surpassed your goals again for the third day in a row! What is working so well for you?

NOTE: The daily exit is critical to the management process, but cannot be the only activity. The Daily Kick Start is critical to making your Daily Exit effective

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Valhalla's Management Expectations -- Daily Kick Start

Valhalla's Management Expectations -- Daily Kick Start

Who:
  • Direct reports, followed by entire team

What:
  • State vision
  • Ask team to review week's business priorities
  • Ask team to review team scorecard
  • Ask individuals to review team goals
  • Ask individuals how they are going to make it happen today?
    • What will it sound like?
    • What will it look like?

Where:
  • Room large enough to have your team standing up

When:
  • Daily
  • 15 minutes with direct reports
  • 15 minutes with the entire team

Why:
  • Set tone for the day
  • Have the entire team on the same page
  • Reinforces team goals
  • Reinforces vision for the team

How:
  • Deliver vision
    • i.e., "Our focus is growing and developing as a team. We believe we are only as strong as our weakest team member. We also believe we have a moral obligation to help our customers succeed, by always doing what is right for the customer."
  • Ask
    • What does our vision mean to you?
    • What are the business priorities?
    • What are we trying to accomplish as a team?
    • Walk us through how you will help the team meet its goals today?

NOTE: This activity should never be skipped, this is a foundational process to keep your team moving with a sense of urgency. Without this many of the other coaching expectations lose value

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posted by Valhalla Business Solutions at 5:13 PM 0 comments



Valhalla's Management Expectations -- One on One

Valhalla's Management Expectations -- One on One

Who:
  • All direct reports

What:
  • 10 Minutes about them
    • What do you wanna talk about in your 1:1?
    • Recognize specifics
  • 10 Minutes for you
    • Scorecard
    • Specific projects
    • etc.
  • 10 Minutes development
    • Work on specific skill development
    • Career progression

Where:
  • Private place on-site! (never off-site)

When:
  • Weekly (same time if possible)
  • 30 minutes

Why:
  • Removes lack of communication as a reason for failure
  • Prevent reactionary management
    • Solving crisis after the fact
  • Communication forum to keep goals at the forefront
  • Give employees the time they deserve
  • Anticipate unscheduled time off from your employees
  • Acknowledge what motivates your employees
  • Develop strong relationships with your direct reports

How:
  • What is your primary motivation for getting up in the morning?
  • Spiral for each employee
  • Talk about what you have been working on?
  • Talk about your scorecard?
  • What updates do you have....?
  • What insights do you have on the recent changes implemented?
  • What challenges are you facing?

NOTE: The one on one is the primary coaching protocol in Valhalla's process. Without this fundamental coaching expectation the rest of the coaching expectations are not nearly as effective.

www.valhallabizsolutions.com


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Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Setting Revenue Goals-Basic


  • Set appropriate revenue goals (net income should be considered)
  • Establish goals per employee

Set appropriate revenue goals (net income should be considered)

When setting revenue goals you must first look at your revenue for previous year. If you have revenue of one million dollars, this years goal must be larger. A good rule of thumb is to analyze the growth you had between your last two years. If you grew by 10% this should give you an adequate barometer of what might be feasible in the upcoming year, especially if your organization did this by accident. 10% is a great number to start with every year. It means your making a commitment to grow your business at a pace that which will outlive your competition. This does not always guarantee a significant growth in net income, however it speaks volumes about the fiscal health of the business. It also sends a message to investors that growing your business is a priority.
Net income needs to be factored, setting an expense budget is critical. Use last years growth in this category as well. For our organization we always make the gap between revenue growth and expense growth at least 10%. If we have revenue of $1,000,000 and expenses of $500,000 for 2008, our 2009 goals could look like 15% revenue growth and 5% budget growth ($1,150,000 revenue, $525,000 expenses)

Establish goals per employee

Average your expenses per employee. What does each employee cost (salary, health care, retirements, etc.) Set goals appropriately, where can you cut costs, can you add an employee? Adding a resource sometimes can be the fastest way to reach your new revenue goals. However you can run the risk of diluting your work forces effectiveness. This can't be your only strategy.
Break down how much revenue is produced per employee. How much will each revenue producing employee have to produce to make the new goals? Account for added staff. How much revenue will have to be produced per day per employee? Now analyze your most profitable products you offer, which has the highest retention and the greatest opportunity for cross sell.
For example lets take the goal from above ($1,150,000) and pretend its a printing company with 10 sales employees. Their highest profitable product is marketing consulting. The company averages $4000 of revenue for each marketing consulting project and average a cross sell of 3 prints per marketing project. How many marketing projects would each employee have to produce to make the entire revenue goal? (29 projects/year) How many is that a month? (2) Now if you set the cross sell goal of 3.5 what would you average per project? Setting these goals sets your employee to have a foundation to ensure you make your revenue goals.

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posted by Valhalla Business Solutions at 3:50 PM 0 comments



Thursday, February 26, 2009

Make Your International Company Thrive in the United States





Your international company must do the following...
  • Analyze your value to a U.S. company
  • Develop a tele-consulting strategy
  • Hire someone in the U.S.
  • Ensure their experience is the same every time

Truth is more money is spent in the United States by businesses and consumers, compared to every other country. As an international business what can you bring to a U.S. customer? U.S. businesses have value in mind when it comes to any big decision. Most importantly is how convenient and consistent is what they are buying and secondly will they save money. For example if your a printing company in India, how can you save a corporation money? More importantly how can you deliver consistency and simple process to your customer? For a printing company they could do the following...
  • Establish a 800 number
  • Create an exact time line for every product you offer from start to delivery
  • Authenticate a profiling process to know your customer (i.e., their wants, needs, promotions, hobbies, family, etc.)
  • Develop a consistent follow up process (hold your customers hand)

Generate a outbound call strategy to the United States. Most U.S. businesses will do anything to save money, especially during our current economic cycle.
  • Use google to narrow down business genres you will target
  • Identify how you are going to add value to the company before you call
  • Use your authentic profile process
  • Have an effective script
    • Greeting
    • Relationship Connector
    • Transition to profile
    • Profile
    • Recommendation
    • Set Expectations
    • Request a follow up call

When possible hire a sales representative within the United States. They can really act as a liaison for your company. Their is a culture to how we do business in the United States and someone local will add significant results to your business.

Ensure you make the experience the same every time for your U.S. customers.
  • Create order forms
  • Establish response times on inquiries, never deviate
  • Keep your logo the same
  • Use the same sales rep, when possible
  • Encourage your customer to ask questions

These steps may seem simple, but are required for success. Everyone around the world knows the business McDonald's. There is a reason why this business is so successful in the United States. McDonald's provides the same thing every time a customer walks through the door. No confusion, only fulfilled expectations. People don't go there for the great food. Their product is consistency in service, time frames, food taste, cleanliness, order process, ease of payment, speed, etc.




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