Video: 3 Things You Must Do When Sales are Flat and Sad :(
Transcript:
We’re going to talk about how to get your sales and marketing back on track if sales have been flat, and leads aren’t coming in the way they used to.
Step 1: Look at Your Own Data
The first thing is going back into your own data set.
A lot of business owners are so concerned about acquiring new business that they don’t go back and analyze the rich data that they already have.
If you’ve been in business for more than 18 months, then you have a lot of data and information about your customers.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What are they buying?
- When are they buying?
- How did we acquire our customers?
For example, a friend of mine who owns a software company did this type of analysis for himself because he wanted to know where his best customers were coming from.
When he did the analysis, he found that his biggest customers, that is, his top 20%, came from partner referrals.
This was enlightening because he was spending his time, energy, and resources going directly to the end user.
He then made a strategic shift in his strategy to focus his marketing efforts on key partnerships to help acquire his business.
And it was really successful!
Step 2: Look at Your Marketing Message
The second thing you must do is to take another look at your marketing message.
Ask yourself these questions:
- Is your value proposition well-stated and understood by your employees? Your employees are the ones who will help to communicate why customers should do business with you versus the competition.
- Do your customers understand your value proposition?
- Can your customers easily recognize your brand?
- Is your marketing message aligned with your value proposition?
- Or has your marketing message wandered away from the value proposition.
It’s not uncommon for your marketing message to drift over time and become convoluted.
This is very likely to happen if you don’t have an internal person who is responsible for managing the marketing message for the organization and/or the brand for the products/services that you offer.
Step 3: Complete a Market Analysis
The third thing you want to do is your market analysis.
Now that you understand what and why your customers buy from you; and you double-check that your marketing message aligns with your value proposition and core competencies, now is the time to complete your market analysis.
Ask yourself these questions:
- Are there new market forces that have eroded your current value proposition? For example, newer technologies have entered the market and/or customer tastes have changed.
- Are you meeting your customers where they are? In other words, when was the last time you attended a trade show or industry conference?
- Have you made time to assess the current market conditions for your industry and capitalize on current trends or are you too busy working in the business to notice these changes?
- Have you done a competitive analysis in the past 12 to 24 months?
Once you have done the above three tasks, I promise you will see a trend. This is vital information from which you can create a strategy to help you course correct and get your revenue engine going again!
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