NFIB

Five Keys to Increasing Your Company's Sales
04/ 02/ 2002


Every company depends on sales. Therefore, it is vital to consider ways in which your sales can be increased. In today's Workshop, Jeffrey Moses offers five key ways to boost your sales profitability.

1. Hire sales people on the basis of their sales ability, not on their knowledge of your product. Ideally, your sales staff should have both sales ability and product knowledge - but of the two, innate sales ability is more important. Stated simply, a good sales person can almost always learn about your product; but a person who knows your product may not be able to become a good sales person.

2. Always keep channels open between your sales staff and top management. Don't put too many layers of bureaucracy between the individuals who are dealing day-to-day with your customers and with managers who can implement any new company policies that might help sales.

3. Sales people will almost always offer the greatest discount they are allowed to make in order to assure the sale. For this reason, consider basing your sales staff's commissions on margin of profit, not solely on sales volume. And establish firm guidelines with your sales staff for how much of a discount they can offer.

4. Make sure that your company's operations are set up to effectively and quickly support all sales activities. When sales personnel need quotes, the quotes should be forthcoming quickly (this means in a matter of hours or days, not weeks). When sales staff needs to speak with technical experts to get answers for customers, these experts should be easy to reach. And the experts should be eager to speak with sales staff. Inform your technical people that their input is vital to sales, and they should make every effort to facilitate the gathering of information. When sales staff need approval from management for any special terms or pricing, channels should be available so that the appropriate management can be contacted almost immediately. Almost nothing is more important for management than this function, and working with sales staff should be their highest priority.

5. Always review your sales staffs' "sales to sales-expense ratio." For instance, a sales person may make $10,000 in sales during a month, but use $6,000 in phone calls, travel, dining and other expenses to make that amount. Another sales person may make $7,000 in sales for the month but use only $1,000 in sales expense. Monitor the sales to sales-expense ratio and work with your sales staff to keep it in line. But remember, each sales person will have his or her own sales techniques and style of working. Some sales people will always rack up more sales expense per total sales volume. For this reason, setting general limits to sales expenses may be counterproductive for some of your staff.

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