Keep your sales activity and relationship building activity high
As you grow your business you are constantly balancing demand and supply. When you have generated strong demand and are struggling to keep up with supply, the focus goes on building your capacity to deliver. Focus goes into investment in machinery, systems and employees to build capacity.
A pattern I see often is that whilst the leadership focus of the business is on building capacity, the eye is taken off building a future sales pipeline. I have seen on many occasions that the focus on improving capacity has led to a significant increase in capacity only to then realise that the sales pipeline has shrunk and sales have fallen off. You have built a better mouse trap but the world is not beating a path to your door.
Whenever sales fall off I look to the level of sales activity and invariably find a drop in sales activity. Less calls to customers (past and present), prospects. Not showing up at events where potential customers or business introducers are going to be. A drop in marketing activity in terms of educating and adding value to your market place. In short, the energy being put into creating, building and nurturing relationships has been (inadvertently) reduced. The focus of the business has turned inwards in building capacity at the expense of looking outwards to building relationships thereby nurturing latent demand.
In contrast whenever effort is put into getting on the phone to your contacts, attending events where there is the opportunity to build relationships with people that are in the market for your product or service or can introduce you to people that are, spending time with customers ensuring they feel valued and putting value added information into the market place sales, opportunities follow.
Keep your sales activity high.
Invest in an ‘A Grade Player’ to lead your sales activities. Ensure that people involved in sales have clear targets and are held accountable at weekly sales meetings on progress. Keep the focus on developing new relationships, nurturing leads and building the sales pipeline.
What are you doing to continually create, build and nurture relationships in your business and market?
