Building a selling program
Focus on sales every day.
This oft-touted advice is cliché but imperative to business success.
Read the first few chapters of Ready, Fire, Aim by Michael Masterson and you’ll get the urge to start selling. You should dedicate some level of effort to selling, every single day.
Most businesses don’t have the proper systems in place or resources for driving sales. That means someone needs to wake up every morning thinking about where the next $1 of revenue is going to come from. That person is likely you (the owner).
If your business is too small for a full blown marketing team with sales reps, inbound callers, outbound callers, etc.; then you may want to consider a simple 2-pronged sales program of automatic and experimental sales efforts.
Sure, you’ll still need to build some content for the automatic selling effort, but at least you know it will be executing in the background.
Automatic – Your automatic sales bucket should happen on autopilot. These are recurring items that happen every day, week, month, year, etc. The goal is minimal time or attention needed to execute. Here are some examples:
Social posts to all social media channels every day
Email newsletter to subscribers every week
Automatic emails for sign-ups, incomplete checkouts, etc.
Paid ads on Google, Facebook, other mediums running daily and reviewed weekly
Calling a handful of customers (past and present) every week
Affiliate programs or manufacturers reps
Product catalogs or other mailers sent every quarter or every 6 months
Experimental – This is the “test” bucket to see if you can find something that works to attract and convert new customers. Ideally, once you have success with an experimental channel, then it can be added to your automatic bucket! Examples here could be: product collaborations, sponsorships, participating at events or shows, hosting webinars, targeted cold email, going to trade shows, billboards, etc.
There are tons more examples of automatic and experimental marketing efforts beyond these, and they vary depending on your business model. (Send me some examples of if you have any good ones!)
Takeaway – Everyday is a new day to be selling your product or services. Who in your company is waking up every morning thinking about where the next $1 of sales will come from? Try to frame your sales and marketing efforts in 2 buckets, one "autopilot" and one "experimental," this will keep your overall activity levels up where they need to be.
Homework
Write down all of the sales and marketing initiatives you took over the last 12 months. Was it enough? Or is there more you could be doing? Start with some easy autopilot programs before taking on the harder efforts.
Starts on Tuesday
Quick reminder, we're starting a cash flow workshop next Tuesday. It's a 2-parter covering:
Reading cash flow statements
Building a fast and easy cash flow model
The Cash Acceleration Method (CAM) for improving cash flow
Plenty of case studies to review
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