We all want our businesses to grow as quickly as we can. Some of us have dreams of a big house in the country, some wish for a life in the sun and some just dream of the day when they just didn’t have to work 14 hours a day. Regardless of whether you aspire to grow your business at 20% or faster, it is our opinion that very few businesses are prepared and ready to grow at anywhere near the rate that the owners dream of.
So why is this? Could we be so bold as to suggest that too many business owners simply rely on the strategy of ‘hope’ or could it be a somewhat speculative blend of;
1) being lucky with good sales people
2) landing a couple of marquee clients
3) being in the right place at the right time
This sounds a little attention grabbing but it’s just to reinforce how many times we see businesses that want to grow but have simply not addressed some of the basic limitations to scale. This is why we’ve put together a few basic questions to get our readers as prepared as they can be for the next phase of growth – we hope that you find some of them at least a little thought provoking for your business;
1) Can your Sales people can describe exactly what your company does in less than 20 seconds?
2) Can all of your Sales people describe all of your products and services in the same way?
3) How many Sales people have joined you and left you in the last 12 months?
4) Do all of your Sales staff sell similar quantities and values of your products and services
5) Regardless of which person made the Sale, would the ‘client experience’ still be the same?
6) Do your Sales follow a written or documented sales process?
7) Do your Sales people look after both new and existing clients or are they separate teams?
8) Do you know all of your key metrics, such as:
a) The cost of each new enquiry you get?
b) The cost of acquiring a new client?
c ) The lifetime value of a client?
There are obviously no hard and fast rules for answering these questions but it’s surprising how a few questions can provide an interesting insight into how ready for growth your business really is. Are you curious as to how someone may view your sales team ? If so why not drop us a line to [email protected] or via Twitter @salesprofit. We’ll gladly share our thoughts but we as always, we do reserve the right to ‘say it as we see it’
