Caitlin Doemner of Sales Map was recently published in Forbes “How smart companies are preparing to reopen.”
We build sales systems that include three things: process, technology and a person. We create a customized process, put our clients into our technological matching tracking system, and place them with one of our certified sales pros. In the end, they have an entire system that gets them consistently generating predictable cash flow for their business. Without sales, you don't have a business. What are smart companies are doing to prepare to reopen? Is it time to move forward?Yes, it’s time to move forward. People are actively buying right now. There's a lot of money that's available right now. There's a lot of easy credit that you can apply for, theren are loans available and people are actively investing. We are seeing that they're investing in educational programs and a lot of technology. As we start reopening the doors, both literally and in our minds and hearts figuratively, as we start stepping back into society, what we're going to see is a really strong desire to not let this happen again. What I would suggest is saying in your marketing how you can help create more safety, more security, more predictability. People are looking to have a firmer foundation. When there are boom years, its harvest time. We tend to extend ourselves. We leverage ourselves.s We buy a lot and put ourselves into Jeopardy because there's a lot of money to be made. We are now in a winter season. I don't want to say it's a recession or anything like that, because that has negative connotations. I think it's just a natural contraction. You need spring, but you also need winter. Business winter is a time for you to dig into your own roots. Look at ways you can start prioritizing cash reserves and profit margins. This is an ideal time to pivot. You are able to completely reinvent yourself right now. If you did everything offline, now is an opportunity to offer online. As I argue in the Forbes article, how we buy, how we consume, how we work, and how we produce are going to be permanently changed by what we are going through. We’ve gotten a taste for convenience that we are not going to want to let go. We will see people realize, “I don't have to live in a downtown area,” and/or “I don't have to commute two hours to work.” “I can work from anywhere.” We will have a massive shift into online production and consumption. Think about the implications of that. It will be critical for understanding how business and life will play out moving forward. There are many implications. It's not just in what you're saying. It's not just who you could sell to, but it's how your workforce wants to show up and do the work for you. I've seen opportunities for certain businesses. Businesses who thought they'd never go online suddenly have an online presence. And now an enormous market has just opened up to them. They can open up their storefront again, and they have this ability to generate revenue outside of their local area. People reached the client base locally and can now reach globally. We live in Pennsylvania and signed up for music lessons with Rogers School of Music in Minnesota. As the receptionist signed us up she had to consider the time difference, new zip codes, etc. These are challenges that are exciting to solve. What does this mean in the sales world? How would these current events show up with making or closing a sale or growing a sales team? What's going to be new and different now?Right now, you need to put your listening ears on. Even if you have a sales team, get back into the thick of things and start getting on your own sales conversations. Don't enter a sales conversation with a pre-arranged agenda. Go back to the drawing board. I joke that everybody, except Charmin, is having to reinvent their business model. You need to go deep. But, go deep in your why. What is your mission? Ask, what's really important to your values? Connect with that. Become anchored in you. What I think we're going to see is that the people who were mission focused are going to surge right now because they never lost momentum. They're committed to getting their mission out into the world, people who were just doing it because it was easy money, they shrank in March and April 2020. It will take them longer to rebuild momentum because of the picture that they generated. Always stay close to your mission. What that translates to is listening to your tribe. Talk to real people: past clients or future prospects or your current clients. Listen to where they are and what they're looking for. Chances are that has changed. If you assume, “Everything's back up and I'm just gonna sell whatever I used to sell it the price tag I used to sell it for,” you're going to be in for a shock. You’ll see it in effect in your conversion rates. People are going to be looking for safety, for security, for predictability. Business and life are not going to be, “Open the doors and people will flood back in.” So little time has passed and the entire world has changed. What’s the missing piece?The biggest thing is whether you've done online outreach or not, now is a great time to do it. This is what we specialize in at our company and we are seeing it boom more than ever. People are on social media. Even if they weren't active before this they are now. This is a great place to engage with them and find prospects. We advocate a multiple channel approach. We focus on business to business (b2b) and business to consumer (b2c) is a little bit different. Having real conversations with real human beings is always going to be your go to. Learn how to find your ideal clients online. Start a real conversation with genuine curiosity. And then be prepared to love and serve them. Sales is all about love and service. And if you show up, ready to love and serve people, you'll win 100% of the time. There is an uptick in people being on, available and ready for a conversation. It’s not true that you cannot do business in a crisis. People may be overwhelmed or not ready to buy, yet. But there are myths to confront. It’s important to listen and look for opportunities to move forward. 3 Action Steps
Find a time to connect with Caitlin to talk about the sales process in your business at https://www.linkedin.com/in/cscdoemner/ or SalesMap.me I'd love to hear your thoughts.
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How do you do all that needs to be done on a daily basis while still keeping an eye on the BIG stuff that lays ahead?
It's so easy to get stuck in the minutia of today. It doesn't feel like minutia. It often feels like deadlines and fires to put out. It feels like an overflowing inbox and requests for tasks that will move other projects forward. The BIG stuff ahead? That often seems like it has abundant time to accomplish it. It falls in that never accomplished category that Eisenhower identified as important but not urgent. So how do you do both the urgent and the important and stay sane? In a client session yesterday, I went over just this process. It requires a system to address each both the urgent (the daily stuff that has to get done) plus the important (the big stuff that continues to get put off). For the daily stuff, having a checklist of the minimum that MUST be accomplished to complete your day is a huge help. Cat Stancik, Lead Boss, identifies this as your 'Minimum Viable Day'. It could be that you must send 1 prospecting email, make 1 social media post and take 1 item off your to-do list. I like Laura Reis of Crux Organizing's explanation, it's your plan for the day if you were to hit every 'red light'. For the BIG stuff, select 4 areas that you want to move forward on in a month (only 4 and 1 MUST be non-business related). Keep this list with you and review daily. Select one 15 minute task you could complete on at least 1 of those 4 big things on a daily basis. This keeps the ball in motion and helps you to gather momentum. I'd love to hear, how do you keep the balance between the urgent and the important? WHEW! It has been a busy few weeks around here.
If we’ve never worked together before you may not know this about me, but I am the kind of coach who absolutely walks her talk. I teach my clients and students to plan out their marketing and to periodically evaluate their offers, their business structure, and their processes. That’s not just something I teach. I do it myself too, oftentimes right alongside my clients. So as I came out of my Momentum Live event a couple of weeks ago, I did a deep dive into evaluating things in my own business and I decided to make a few shifts and changes. My clients and customers are experts at what they do. They have a deep level of knowledge and they want nothing more than to put that knowledge to work to make a difference for their clients and customers. They’ve been successfully running their business for a while now and they’ve reached a point where they want to continue growing, but they just don’t have any more hours to give. They need to streamline their efforts in order to maximize their results. I realized that the things that were making the biggest difference for my clients were to make sure that they have strategic and well-organized processes and then to provide them with the accountability and support they need to put those plans into action. Things like having a defined process that you can use to bring new people into your business, give them a taste of what working with you is like, and quickly move them into your high-ticket programs or services. A funnel, if you will… but not your typical funnel that most people think of when they hear that word. More like a map for your ideal customer journey.Once you have that process created and can put it into place, not only are you able to earn more income but more importantly, you are able to do so with less time and effort. You are also able to outsource components of the system to support you in your efforts. My superpowers are helping you to plan out that customer map and then to help you create and execute a plan to get it completed and up and running in your business. So here’s what you can expect from me going forward. I want to create an incubator for expert entrepreneurs to gather and support one another. You’ll be seeing some upcoming changes in my Facebook group and community to make that a reality very soon. I will continue to bring you interviews and resources both from experts in the community and from my years of experience. You’ll see me showing up in your inbox to share interviews, resources, and insights that will help you to grow your business without adding extra work to your already busy schedule.Later this year, you’ll also receive an invite to join me in an exciting program designed to help you create and implement your vision for that ideal customer journey. This program is designed to walk you through the implementation process in a way that dramatically increases your likelihood of completing the project in a timely manner… even if your hard drive is filled with half-finished projects you’ve started in the past. But more on that later. For now… just know that I’m committed to bringing you the resources you need to grow your business without additional time, stress, or overwhelm. We’ll talk again soon. |
AuthorBeing an entrepreneur and business owner is hard! Once you have your business up and running it's not uncommon to hit a few snags: scalability, staff retention, launching growth projects, getting enough sleep! Archives
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