My Sales Are Down. What Can I Do?

There are a lot of reasons why your sales may be down. Your job is to determine why. What factors are causing your sales to be down? It may be that more than one factor is causing the problem. To find the answers you will need to dig into the potential problem areas.

When you analyze these numbers, are there any obvious areas where sales are down more than others? Are there certain sales people not performing as well? Are there certain products/services where sales have fallen? Where sales are down for customers, are there any common traits to these customers, i.e. they are in the same industry, are the same size, bought similar product features, etc.?

Your sales people will tell you a lot of reasons why a particular customer left but their answers may not be correct. We’re not suggesting that your sales team is lying to you. That may be true but probably not. There are several reasons why they may not know the real reasons behind customers leaving.

First, most salespeople try to build personal relationships with their customers. This helps them get to know what the customer wants and helps retain the customer. But customers don’t always tell the salesperson about problems. Here is an example to help illustrate our point.

You go in to a nice restaurant with your spouse. The waiter does a good job of taking your order and making you feel welcomed. You order the meals and the waiter is prompt in delivering your food. But the food is awful! What do most people do? Do you tell the waiter? Do you tell the Manager who asks you how everything was as you leave? No. Most people don’t say a word and instead stop coming to the restaurant. Worse still, studies show that the dissatisfied customer will tell 27 other people about their dissatisfaction (but not the business).

Talk to your vendors. What is the word on the street about your products/services and company? If a competitor has gained an advantage over you, they are likely to know. If you have a quality issue and your business’ reputation is being damaged, they will know. Remember, it’s in their best interest to have you selling more. Work with them. In fact they may be able to help you improve.

Are your sales people hungry? Are they compensated more to get new business or just to retain existing business? Are they keeping up their skills? What training are they taking? Is it effective? What are their close rates? Defection rates? How well do they know their customers? How well do they know your products/services?

Marketing efforts can sometime go counter to sales efforts. Your marketing efforts can be saying one thing and your sales efforts another. For example, marketing may be attracting customers based upon on attribute such as low cost while sales is pushing high cost features.

The market of business is always changing. Your competitors are continuously trying to win over your customers. You need to keep an eye on them so you can react to changes they make that might hurt your sales.

Your entire industry may be experiencing a slow down. Maybe it’s a recession in the economy that is the cause. Maybe your industry is maturing or declining.

By working ON your business, growth almost becomes inevitable. Relying on these Steps to Growth can revitalize your company and help you rediscover the energy you need to sustain growth year after year. If you need help, we will be glad to help you get to the Next Level.

What You Will Need:

• Slow sales should draw the attention of those individuals in top management, sales and in marketing functions. Make sure to allocate time to work on the issues.
• You will need hard data on customers, purchases, products/services, etc.
• You will need a strong champion to in top management to make sure the initiatives get the support they need and to ensure the company doesn’t get distracted by the latest crisis or that it returns to the status quo.
• You will need patience. Getting more revenue in the door won’t happen over night. It can but that is not the norm. You must have faith that the ideas you execute will payoff.

1. Top Management Champion
2. Allocated Time and People Resources
3. Good Data On Customers, Markets, Products/Services & Company Expertise
4. Broad Involvement & Buy-In By Those Involved in Sales & Marketing
5. Creative Thinkers
6. Execution & Measurement Systems

Background
We have a client that had a very good business making labels and panels for appliances and equipment. The business had been steady for many years but over the last five years sales were starting to slip. The new V.P. of Sales & Marketing wanted to know why and hired us to find out.

Analysis
We conducted an Operations Review of the company which included the steps listed above. What we discovered was that the company had good products that were priced correctly. Their customers loved them. So why the declining sales? What we discovered was that the compensation plan of the Sales Manager discouraged prospecting and highly favored retaining customers.

Basically, the Sales Manager was financially rewarded to keep existing customers happy and had no reason to go after new customers. Since no new business was coming in the door, each lost customer over time resulted in declining sales for the company.

Solution
We readjusted the compensation structure to encourage prospecting for new customers. We moved responsibility for many long time customers (house accounts) away from the Sales Manager by redesigning the role of a customer service representative to that of inside sales. This freed up the time the Sales Manager needed to prospect.

The following list of resources is by no means all inclusive of what you need but do represent resources that have helped our firm get to the Next Level.

• Let’s get Real or Let’s Not Play by Mahan Khalsa
• Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury
• Customers for Life by Carl Sewell