Sales can be a challenge for any size company. However, organizations in early stages of growth or those growing too quickly may also experience lagging sales. This lag in sales can often be the result of a lack of vision, an absence of commitment, or a failure to plan for the future.

Sales in Early Stage Growth Companies

The CEO or founder typically wears the sales hat. The leader has the passion, enthusiasm and the knowledge of his/her products and services. This trilogy often drives sales as the leader has the ability to convey enthusiasm and passion to customers. In addition, the personal touch and the ability to connect with the person at the helm are intoxicating for some customers.

Sales in Later Stage Growth Companies

As organizations grow, the founder or CEO cannot wear all the hats all the time. At some point, hiring sales teams and sales managers is essential to growth. However, leadership must always understand what drives sales, why sales lag and why customers buy from their organization. Leadership executives involved in problem solving are more successful. Moreover, it is even more important to visit top customers quarterly.

Anyone who follows these blogs, (thank you if you do!) knows that I am not a marking expert. However, this blog post may help you to see your marketing efforts in a different way. Your marketing team may be larger than you think. This is because, marketing is not an isolated function of any one department or organization and the CEO and the leadership team play an integral role in marketing. For example, can your leadership team answer these two questions?

1. Which products or services provide our largest margins?
2. Why or how are we better than our competition?

There are three important ideas that help you be better than your competition.

Three Ideas to Help Marketing Efforts

1. It is essential to establish a culture of innovation and to reward employees for being innovative.
2. Establish a process of continuous customer reconnaissance. This means visiting with the top 20% of your customer base that is making you successful. This may mean getting on a plane, but the idea is it’s all about that important face-to-face contact.
3. Conduct a SWOT exercise that examines the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to your organization. Typically most organizations limit this to a once a year event (or less) and only include the top executives. Rather a SWOT should be conducted more often and include input from employees in every corner of the company. Each department should conduct its own SWOT. This allows those on the front line to provide critical input. Then the department head or an elected employee should present the findings and participate in an organizational wide SWOT analysis. The leaders should then share the findings and next steps with the entire organization so the employee can see that they had a direct impact on the marketing and other company initiatives.

Critical Questions

1. What is the company’s growth strategy? This is critical because as a company grows and adds layers of hierarchy and bureaucracy, it is more difficult to stay agile in order to respond quickly to new opportunities. Decision-making becomes slower and leadership may feel an overwhelming desire to play it safe.
2. How do your products/services solve your customer’s problems? Isn’t this what you went into business for in the first place? This may mean getting back to your core business.
3. How do marketing, sales and product development integrate and effectively work together? A lack of collaboration and cooperation from these can be the cause of slow product development and delivery ultimately leading to poor customer service.

Look at your “marketing team” from this new prospective. Then establish the culture and customer reconnaissance outlined in this blog. That will keep the company’s products and services differentiated in the marketplace, your marketing efforts on the cutting edge, your customer service second to none and your entire marketing team fully engaged.

Graphic Credit: Big Stock.com

We often here the phrase be proactive, not reactive when it comes to handling risk. However, seldom are we given succinct points on just how to have a more proactive approach. To be more proactive, we must always have three elements under control. These are

1.Confronting the risk

Too many CEOS bury their heads in the sand thinking that ignoring a risk will make it go away. What might have happened if Queen Elizabeth 1^st (1533-1603), had ignored warnings about the Spanish Armada? Rather, the smaller British ships met the huge Spanish Armada head on, conquered them and England went on to become the dominant world power for years to come.

2.Preparing to handle risk

Understanding and acquiring knowledge of a risk greatly enhances our ability to prepare for risk. Both of these activities can be helpful in deciding what actions to take. There are two types of action. One is protection. Protection comes in the form of diminishing the possibility and the size of any loss that might occur from a risk. An example of this would be good economic forecasting. This is especially helpful in times such as the recession we just experienced. Therefore, it is imperative to stay ahead of the game by being in tune with changing economic conditions and the consequences those changes might bring.

Is your company losing its edge because products and services are slow getting to your customers? On the other hand, maybe not developing leading edge products to keep up with purchasing habits and market trends is the issue. Either way this is a major survival concern for organizations in the early stages of growth and a profitability concern for more mature organizations. In addition, other contributing factors can help bog down this process.

Communication:

• Is leadership sending a clear, concise and consistent message that product and process improvements are part of your organization’s culture?
• Is it clear that problem solving is everyone’s problem?
• Do teams have sufficient training in how to communicate within their teams, with vendors and customers?
• How do you share success stories?
• Do your employees understand the sense of urgency it requires to get products and services delivered in a timely fashion while maintaining quality?
• What quality control measures are in place?
• Are there reward systems in place to encourage such improvements?
• Are performance programs in place to hold employees accountable?
• Well-functioning processes and systems are essential for product/service delivery. These processes include physical, financial and operating systems.
• How often do leaders evaluate processes and system to ensure they are still working?