Monthly Archives: March 2019

Staying focused can be hard work these days…

‘I try to stay focused on my creativity,’ said Christina Aguilera. Well, what can I say, me too, how about you?

It might have been mentioned before that we live in a very busy world which makes staying focused very difficult. This affects most people and covers all walks of life, making It one of the biggest challenges we face. Now, I cannot really help you if you are a nuclear physicist looking to get more focused but if you are looking at increasing your new business sales, I might be able to offer some advice;

So, what are the specific issues you face regarding focusing your business development?

As I see it there are three key issues:

  1. Short cuts
  2. Silver bullets
  3. Impatience

I do apologise if this sound a bit like a Haiku but it can be further explained with the following example:

Bob is a Business Development Director who has been tasked with increasing new business sales for his company. Bob has a very busy job and is bombarded with communications about how he could take his company to the next level using the latest trick every day. Bob, like many people, likes to use tried and tested tools, preferably ones he feels comfortable with. What will he do now then? Here are some options:

  1. Bob could look at previous marketing campaigns which may have worked in the past and look to re-instate them, praying they still work
  2. Bob could pursue the latest tool promised to solve all his problems
  3. Bob could spend some time reviewing and understanding his target markets and put together a structured strategy to approach them

Will you be surprised if I told you that any of the above options could still land him with no further sales?

This is the problem so many of us come across, no matter how much thought you put into a campaign ensuring your planning is spot on; you still may fail, in THE SHORT TERM. One of the biggest issues with our busy world is that it is full of choice and so we have become dependant on instant solutions that deliver immediately. But, when it comes to selling, particularly expensive stuff, it’s impossible to get immediate results and you really need to apply patience in order to get any meaningful leads.

As patience really is a virtue these days, most people abort business development campaigns too as soon as they feel they have had no results and start again on another old initiative or a different silver bullet and so on and so forth. Now that sort of thing really does not help your focus or your new business sales, does it?

I don’t think there is one answer to this, as it will make me another business person offering silver bullets. All I would say, is that every business has specific needs and details make all the difference. If you want to look into this further, click on this link (preferably on your mobile) to fill in our questionnaire and we can get back to you with some ideas.

 

Why are new business sales a must in 2019?

Many people will be looking at this title and say that developing new business is always a must. Still, many companies don’t necessarily consider this an emergency, especially well-established ones. This is an important area to consider as a matter of course but I felt that there is more of a calling for it currently which is why I am dedicating this Blog to this.

Back in December, I wrote a Blog about common sense where I examined some key reasons to focus on new business development in 2019. One of the reasons, though general, is particularly important in the face of current events:

as Matthew S. Olson and Derek van Bever demonstrate in their book Stall Points, once a company runs up against a major stall in its growth, it has less than a 10% chance of ever fully recovering.

I am not sure about you, but I can certainly see a potential stall point coming up which might affect many companies’ growth. When I wrote my original Blog, many businesses were still treating the situation as one to ignore, thinking that things will get clearer in the New Year. At the time of writing these lines we are 13 business days away from the UK leaving the EU and we have no further clarity.

I have not written this Blog to join the end of the world choir and I am sure that business will prevail after Brexit, in the long term we may even be better off, who knows. Your problem as a business owner, Sales Director or senior manager is the short term. How will you navigate your ship in the stormy water of a ‘short-term economic downturn’?

There’s a lot to be said for applying some planning to this situation, whatever you call rainy day measures in your organisation. That said, many businesses feel that you can hardly plan for a scenario you are unclear about. However, there is one area you could definitely benefit from reviewing which is, your new business sales.

This is particularly important for established companies out there as over reliability on existing business can make them very vulnerable to a market downturn. As we all know, when the economy is showing signs of crisis many companies look to reduce their monthly outgoings and review unnecessary expenses. There is no telling what these might be and whether your company will be affected by it. In this situation, you might agree, there is no harm in developing some new business and growing your pipeline by way of plan B.

I cannot tell you which way you should go in terms of new business without knowing more about your circumstances. However, I can say that whichever way you choose to go, you need to consider two important factors:

  1. Developing new business can take time to mature, anything between 6-12 months.
  2. The longer you leave it the more competition you will have.

This is why I recommend that you look into this urgently to make sure that you can start widening your options and developing your sales pipeline. We have recently developed a new lead generation system we call Big ticket Leads which might provide a possible solution.  Watch this short animation to find our more.