07 June 2007
This is something that I heard from Peter Thompson a few years ago and forsm the basic part of what to look for when wanting to increase sales. In order to increase profits there are a number of other things to do in tersm of pricing and costs but thta is the subject of another tip sheet...
First of all profit does not necessarily come from boosting sales as that well known saying “sales are vanity, profit is sanity and cash in the bank is reality”, so what we want is profitable sales and that can come in many forms. Boosting sales for an existing companies with existing customers and ongoing sales is based on three different variances.. unit price per sale, the quantity that is sold per sale and the number of times the sale is achieved per year. Assuming that there are no new products the trick is therefore to boost all of the three variances if possible or at least one of them. By the way it is a good thing to remember that the challenge with new products is that they don’t always boost profits immediately, due to the lead time to get volumes up, sort out niggling pre-production difficulties and control costs.
Returning to our three variances lets deal with each one separately. Unit cost per sale is invariably a Marketing responsibility in terms of increasing the unit price of the product by somehow creating additional value with an enhanced benefit that appears due to changing economic or social pressures. For example Waitrose is marketing itself as the supermarket that is supplied locally to provide their customers with fresher produce and not clog up the roads with lorries travelling long distances. This provides them with an offer of added value to their customers and local producers have the benefit of adding value to their food sales. This marketing strategy is a classic process of keeping your marketing strategy in line with emerging economical and social pressures and is one that every company could do well to emulate with their own offer… local supply, local service, quick reply, friendly customer treatment, reduced pollution, etc. The thing about added value is that we all have real problem t recognizing those great attributes that we offer because they are what and who we are. It is called unconscious competence and one way to boost sales is to brainstorm the unconscious competences of your product, service, company and you will find some added value that you have taken for granted. If you can’t call on BEW http://www.businessenterpriseworks.org/ and we will find it for you.
The second point is to boost the quantity of units sold and that again is partly a marketing strategy working closely with sales. We see it all over the place different pack sizes or an offer of two for one on volumes over a specific quantity. The idea is to make use of having a larger order with the same delivery costs and cost of having a sales representative there calling either in person or on the phone. The challenge with this strategy is that one is often taking sales from the future at a higher price and bringing them into the present. This strategy depends upon growing your market volume. A good example of this is the large pharmaceutical companies are increasing the minimum size of their orders and only selling in full pallet loads and letting other companies do the costly operation of breaking the pallets down into smaller unit sizes to all the small shops and chemists.
The third point is to increase the number of times the sales are made each year or month often by becoming the only supplier. This is pretty much squarely on the shoulders of the sales team to ensure that regular contact and visits are made to keep really close to the pulse of the customer, know their every whim and desire so that you are there immediately they want you. This is down to Customer Relations which obviously includes personal rapport but backed up with excellent customer information, helped by good database information, regular visits and telephone calls that keep you in touch with everything that is going on.
If all three of these processes are followed you will boost sales and increase profits.
William Barron
Creating Insight
william@creatinginsight.co.uk
June 7th 2007
16 June 2007
Learning at Oxford Brooks about how people really use the GROW model in coaching and mentoring, as it is not as simple as it seems. It appears that one moves around flexing the Goals as more information becomes apparant.
I was at a conference at Oxford Brooks University that covered six research papers on Coaching and Mentoring. It would have been helpful if I had read all the small print, especially the bit on the screen that seems to wrap itself around out of sight. The thing was that I though it was Oxford Brooks main campus but it wasn’t http://www.brookes.ac.uk/studying/courses/postgraduate/2007/coachmentor
Still I criss-crossed most of Oxford, very nice and got there eventually. I missed what sounded like an interesting paper on cross-culture coaching, an area that I have lots of personal experience in, having lived so long in Brasil. The papers were excellent and now I know that there is a host of good material on coaching in the quarterly journal published by Oxford Brooks http://www.brookes.ac.uk/about/publications/research
One of the things that I learnt there is that although I thought I used the T-GROW model in my coaching and mentoring, I do in fact use the acronym T-GROGA, which stands for practically the same words but in a different order. It must be said that there is always an implicit understanding that the client goes away with an action plan as a goal for the session
First comes “The subject” area to be covered in the session and then there is always an implicit understanding that the overall “Goal” for the session is for the client to go away with an action plan.
We then get into discovering the “Reality” of the situation and as much as possible that the client knows about it, helped by questions from the coach or mentor. The thing is that what seems to happen at coaching and mentoring sessions is that the client comes in requiring a cure for an “effect”, when invariably the “effect” is not really what the cure is for. It often turns out that there are a number of other “causes” involved, which still need to be uncovered and discussed.
The session then tends to criss-cross between “Reality” and “Options” by which time both the client and myself have got a much better idea of what is being dealt with. Only then can the STREAM “Goal” be set and the “Action” plan be formulated.
By the way STREAM goals are just like SMART goals but with the crucial E added to cover ecology, energy, emotion and the environmental impact of the goal .. have a look at my article on STREAM goals that gives more details http://www.creatinginsight.co.uk/?q=node/73
Very useful day, and oh yes I have also learnt once again from our amazing Universe that I need to read the detail and not skim quite so much.
Keep smiling as living, loving and learning comes so much easier…
©William Barron
Creating Insight
June 16 2007
william@creatinginsight.co.uk
16 June 2007
EI Conference June 11 – 12th 2007 London
I was at an amazing two day international conference on Monday and Tuesday about Emotional Intelligence (EI). There were about 150 people there from 22 countries, so very international almost global.
The thing is that research work has been going on into EI for about twenty years, which gathered huge pace after the publication by Daniel Golman in the late 1990's of his book called Emotional Intelligence - why it can matter more than IQ. Daniel was looking into how all the research fitted together and wrote this block buster of a book, putting in all of the available knowledge - see more on Daniel Golman on http://www.danielgoleman.info/blog/biography
Back to the conference. The main highlights started with a great keynote speech from Peter Salovey, who looks a bit like Groucho Marx with a huge bushy moustache. More info can be found on http://www.yale.edu/psychology/FacInfo/Salovey.html He is hugely knowledgable and intelligent, well you don't get to be Dean of Yale College if you are not. He was very relaxed, amusing, witty, moving around the stage with lots of hand movement. He started his talk with a picture of him and his wife with Bill Clinton, who whilst he shook hands with Salovey had his other hand on Salovey's wife's shoulder..... what a start to a great talk...
There were a lot of talks around Reuven Bar-on's EQi profile that is able to quantify one's individual EI http://eqi.org/reuven.htm . This profile assesses five areas:
- Intrapersonal (awareness)
- Interpersonal (relationships)
- Stress Management (problem solving)
- Adaptability (stress tolerance)
- General Mood (happiness) and is considered to be one of the best http://www.eqtoday.com/02/emotional.php
The best talk for me was by Martyn Newman, on how to use EQi to identify the most important five competences found in leaders. http://www.rochemartin.com/index.php?pageID=7
He has written this excellent book called Emotional Capitalists http://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Capitalists-Leaders-Martyn-Newman/dp/0975829009 which comes highly recommended. His talk was pure gold, solid, funny, great examples, lots of anecdotes .. great pity it was only one hour long.
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