How to Stop Competing On Price and Have More Work Than You Can Handle.
One of the first things business owners tell me is that they need more sales and the second thing is that they are constantly competing on price to win sales. Here’s what I have found …
A young man whose accountant told him he was stupid to go into business attended one of my programs. ‘Steve’ needed more sales. He wanted more leads. One of the lessons was about how to put together a sales process, so Steve not only understood what the steps were that he actually went through for a sale to be made, he was able to track where they were up to and decide the next action to move the sale forward.
Steve followed the action taught to him about how to follow up and converted 40% of his ‘lost’ quotes within the next week. Steve told me that one piece of his advice has increased his business tenfold. The message: they are not lost until they say no. Put together your step by step sales process and follow up.
Another tradesman I work with, ‘Mel,’ was stuck competing on price. Mel was finding he was having to quote so low on jobs he just couldn’t make any money. We addressed what he was talking to people about and found that he was talking about the technical part of the job, not what it really meant to the customer to have the job done. With the right questions in hand, Mel was not only able to achieve the prices he wanted, winning a job 4 weeks ago for TWICE the price of a competitor, he also charges a fee for parts of the initial concepts that he used to do for free. The message: find out what your customers are really looking for and sell them that. Prepare the questions to bring their thoughts and feelings out in your meeting.
The third top tip is to know how much you make on each item, job or hour. Working with a young salesman in January he told me that he was adding 35% to the cost price of products. The problem for young ‘Adam’ was that he was meant to making 35% on the sale price of the items. He was working hard to hit his targets and was doing very well, except the money didn’t seem to be there. Adding 35% to your cost price gives you a 26% profit on your sale price. That difference in gross profit is often the reason businesses don’t make money. Adam changed how he calculated his sale price and has a very happy boss.
Posted in: test marketing |
Posted in: marketing |
The amount of time you have in a week never changes but it’s easy to find extra time to get things done by being smart about how you use the time you have.
Let’s have a quick look at time wasting, or more importantly the benefit of not wasting time. Take 10 minutes of less socialising when you should be working, take another 10 minutes of more effectively managing phone calls, visitors, meetings and procrastination. Start work 5 minutes earlier and finish 5 minutes later. That’s 30 minutes a day. You have just got yourself 2 ½ hours a week of productive work (a day’s worth of just being busy being busy type work). How much more will you make in a year by working like this? Not harder, just more determined and efficient. What difference will that make to your business and your life? It is up to you.
Over many years of working with businesses in my role as a business coach I have discovered some very simple things that business owners can do to take those businesses from going broke to being highly profitable. Usually it's not about doing more work, rather it’s about doing the maths on how you make money. It doesn’t work to be super busy one week only to run out of work the next week. It’s doesn’t work to never collect the money for the work you have already done.
People often talk about working smarter not harder. My job as a business coach is to teach business owners how to do this. I love to see how pleasantly surprised my clients are when they realise the massive results they can achieve by making the smallest changes to what they are already doing.