Do you plan your actions and track your performance to see how well you doing and do you provide feedback to those who are responsible for generating your results?
In order to get to where you want to be it is a good idea to have specific objectives in mind and chart a path to reach them. For example if you want to grow it is advisable to determine how you expect that to happen. How will you for example secure your existing client so that your competition will not take them away? If you plan to penetrate new accounts have you identified them and determined their requirements so that you can better meet them then the vendors serving them now? Will you evaluate your staff to see if they are up to the job? Will you need to hire new people to make this happen or is your existing staff capable of doing the job? Either way will you share your objectives with them and plan a course of action to make your plans a reality? Have you determined if you have the financial and technical resources to achieve your goals and if not how will you deal with this?
Once you have accomplished the above, you will need to identify a series of items so you know if you are on track to make your goals. For winning over new prospects his would include things like: identifying which prospects you are targeting, what is their volume in your line of business, how of much of that volume will you need to capture, what incentive will you provide to your staff to motivate them, what inducements will you need to offer to capture those prospect, how long do you expect this process to happen, do you have the financial and other resources to do this, etc. It is surprising how any companies do not go through these types of details so that they can identify their objects and track their performance on a routine basis to know if they are course to achieve them or they need to change tactics.
Once the above has been accomplished then next task is to provide this information to those with the responsibility to make things happen, this is feedback. For example, your sales reps need to know how they are to bring a new targeted prospect on board such as being given pricing authority. The feedback will be if they offer the prices that they think are needed, is this working as intended? If pricing is not the answer what other options do they have, such as providing a high level of quality and service. When they provide those things are they having the desired affect? If these tactics are put into affect are they achieving the results intended and the increase in sales? If they are great; if not how will things be fine tuned or changed? Without good feedback one may be doing the same thing for a protracted period of time when they should be changing course instead of wasting both time and money on things that are not working.
We welcome your questions as to the challenges you face in order to grow.
To see all articles in this series please go to http://optimal-mgt.com/blog.
