Establish A Mechanism for Home Based Business Sales

Are you struggling to generate a steady significant stream of home based business sales? Are you tired of not having enough home based business sales to offset your costs?

What I’ve realized learned from some of the best retailers of home based business sales products is that you need to do this one thing really well to boast your revenues. It could be true that you may be an excellent one-to-one salesman and can probably sell ice to an eskimo. However, that is a very difficult skill to duplicate down an organization. Let’s face it: super salesman do not grow on trees, and very few amounts of people that you will come across will actively and passionately go out and sell for the sheer love of it.

The truth is that most people are deftly frightened of sales.

They don’t like it, they secretly feel embarrassed of the products they have to offer, and they feel sleazy for selling to people. So as a team leader, you must find a resolution that will take the individual pressure off of them but still be able to tap in to their networks. And what do the top retailers do?

The best home based business sales retailers run events!

OK… maybe that’s not a well-kept secret, but there’s a science to how you run events that determine whether or not you leave with a sale or empty-handed. Here is what separates a typical event from a selling event:

1) You must provide value -

Our most effective home based business sales events occur when we dispense valuable information to our target customer base. Case and point, my wife is a great retailer. She specializes in cosmetics, and as a company trainer, she is also a certified makeup trainer. She invested in herself to make herself in to a makeup expert and uses her expertise to boost her sales. She conducts general education classes and makeup workshops that target ladies who are interested in learning professional-grade makeup techniques that are simplified for everyday use.

By providing this value, she is able to attract a larger volume of guests, which increases her chances of completing a sale, a powerful form of attraction marketing.

2) Product Demos -

If you’ve never done a product demo for your home based business sales events, you are losing valuable sales opportunities. One of the lessons that I’ve learned being in network marketing and seeing so many affiliate products, mine and others, is that most products are top-notch. Very few network marketing companies carry inferior products, but the downside is that they also don’t invest in mass market advertising, which is why you are involved in your home based business franchise. You are the marketing mechanism for them.

Think about it: if demonstrations weren’t powerful, why would infomercials, Costco, department stores, and kiosks at the mall all utilize this strategy to draw you in?

When you host your events, you should always focus on doing some sort of demonstration of your product after the general information has been covered. Make sure you pick products that have symmetry with the topic that you are covering at the event, else it loses its value.

When doing your demonstration, be sure that if you are promoting a health and nutrition product, have a control piece as well. What that means is that you should have a demo without using your product to demonstrate to the audience the difference of using your product, and what it means to not use your product. For my website company, we have programmers sit down with the prospect and show them the capabilities of the website via live webinar to demonstrate the ease of use of our platform website builder.

3) Have Roles -

A well-run home based business sales event needs to have team unity where each team member knows their role in the sales process.

- You always have a presenter who gives out the information. That person also does the demonstration.

- Another team member sets up the demonstration while the speaker is engaging the audience.

- A team member needs to greet the guests as they come in and help them get situated by filling out a questionnaire to extract extra information (i.e. “What question do you wish to address in terms of health and nutrition?”)

- You need to designate a sales person. That person should be the “closer” that collects the payment and is responsible for upselling packages and promotional items.

If you have a team that is well-versed in these tasks, then you will watch your sales revenues spike because it’s not reliant on one person doing everything.

4) Build Packages and Promotions -

Sales sell in a traditional business, and so too in a home based business sales event. Try to create promotional packages grouping several products together, or run a special on promotional items to entice customers to buy at the event. Make sure you stress that the sale is ONLY for this event so it creates a sense of urgency.

Promotions that work best for us are bundles of several low-end items, as well as offering tiered pricing and incentives for purchasing a certain dollar amount. In comparison to events that don’t have packages, sales for packaged items always increase overall sales by 33-50% at our events.

5) Always Promote the Next Event -

We have a saying in our company: “Who’s the best speaker? The next speaker!”

What that means is that one of the keys to genuinely strong home based business sales teams is that they always promote the next event before the current event is over. It opens up the opportunity for you to book your guests for the next appointment. It also allows your team to provide incentives for guests to invite their friends to the next event, which will organically grow your retail audience and increase potential of sales.

Make simple, effective, and professional flyers for the next event and have them ready to distribute to the attendees. Give them a few extra to give to friends. If you use that incentive suggestion in the previous paragraph, they will no doubt be motivated to promote the event for you. We offer discounts for customer from the current who attend our next event.

Conclusion: At the end of the day, it’s all about teamwork and commitment. When you have a group of entrepreneurs that are dedicated to generating significant revenues for yours and their home based business sales events, then you will have the beginnings of a fantastic lasting formula of success. If your speaker does a good job, they will have already done half the sale because they stressed the importance of why the product is needed. The demo moves the customer to want to buy, and the closer comes in and finishes the job. It’s a fluid sales process.

Now that you have learned an effective mechanism to boost offline home based business sales, let me introduce you to a way to leverage the internet sales aspect too. Would you rather have only one channel of distribution, or two? Multiple streams of revenue are always a plus, especially if they work in unison.

There are a lot more tips that we can share for running events, but to go on and on would take all night. If you can’t wait until our next piece for more retailing tips, then reach out to me via my blog and I will be glad to help.

How to Whitewash Your BIMBO, A Business Sale Phrase Book – 2 – Grooming to Yield

As with any type of work, how to value a business and how to manage a business sale have their own professional jargon. This pair of articles are designed to give brief plain English and practical explanations for some of the common terms used, from Grooming to Yield.

Grooming – the process of preparing a business for sale to make it attractive to a purchaser. Can take up to two years.

Heads of Agreement – the document that sets out the price that has been agreed for the sale and the key terms, subject to due diligence and contract.

Heads of Terms – see heads of agreement.

Information Memorandum – see sales pack.

Insolvency – being unable to pay debts as they fall due or liabilities exceeding assets. The Insolvency Act sets out a number of tests including failure to deal with a statutory demand or to pay a judgement debt which will be taken by a court as proof of insolvency.

IPR Intellectual Property Rights – includes everything from patents and proprietary information to brands and trademarks.

IRR Internal Rate of Return – the discount rate at which a net present value calculation gives a zero result, which in turn means that the discount rate equates to the return generated by the project or investment.

IPO Initial Public Offering – the American terms for a flotation; taking and listing a company for the first time on a stock exchange.

Letter of Intent – see heads of agreement.

Listing – floating a company on a public stock exchange.

NPV Net Present Value – the value of a discounted cash flow, less the amount of money you have to pay to acquire it.

Non-embarrassment Clause – the right to share in any increased sales proceeds if your buyer sells your business on again within a specified time.

OFEX – the ‘over the counter market’ which is a privately traded listing where shares are dealt in on the basis of individual trades. Often used by small companies to obtain speculative money as an alternative to venture capital, but is significantly less liquid than other stock market listing as there are no active market makers trading the shares.

Open Market Value – also known as fair market value, how much an asset will fetch if sold in the open market. See also ERP.

PBIT – see EBIT.

P/E Ratio Price/Earnings Ratio – a measure of how many times the current level of earnings someone is prepared to pay to acquire an interest in a company. A high P/E multiple usually indicates an expectation of high growth (as then E is expected to grow significantly reducing the P/E ratio down to a more normal level). The inverse of the business’s yield.

Payback Period – how long it will take to recover an investment at current level of earnings.

Phoenix – a buy-out of a business from insolvency by the existing management.

Post Acquisition Integration – the process of change planned by a buyer in order to absorb the purchased business into their existing organisation.

Preference – putting one creditor in a better position than others. In the event of insolvency a liquidator will review transactions leading up to the liquidation and if certain conditions are met will seek to set aside any preferential transactions.

Prospectus – a package of information prepared for provision to potentially interested investors in a flotation.

Sales Pack – a package of information prepared for provision to potentially interested parties.

Sales Mandate – an instruction to a corporate finance advisor to act to sell your business.

SAV Stock At Value – stock to be purchased at the value on the day of sale. Valuation will normally be determined by GAAP.

Secondary Buy-out – the sale of an interest in a company by one VC to another. Generally unpopular with VCs as it is sometimes seen as a sign of ‘failure’ by the first investing VC.

Section 320 – provision in the Companies Act that prevents a director purchasing substantial assets (broadly anything worth more than £100,000 or 10% of the net assets of the company) without first obtaining the consent of the shareholders.

Stock – 1 a company’s equity or share capital, colloquially: shares. 2 A company’s trading stock comprising raw materials, work in progress, and finished goods stock.

Target – a company to be acquired.

Trade Purchaser – an industrial buyer of companies (as opposed to a financial purchaser such as a VC).

Transaction at Undervalue – selling an asset at less than its fair value. In the event of an insolvency, a liquidator will review significant transactions preceding the insolvency and can act to set aside transactions at undervalue.

TUPE Transfer of Undertakings Protection of Employment Regulations – the rules which govern the treatment of employees on the sale of a business and which will broadly make a purchaser responsible for taking on all the employees of the business being acquired (whether by sale of shares or business and assets) on the existing terms and conditions of service. Also provides that if employees have been made redundant in anticipation of, or in an attempt to avoid the purchaser having to take this responsibility, the purchaser will in any event be liable. There is a limited exemption to this rule in buying businesses from some forms of insolvency proceedings.

VC – Venture Capital or Venture Capitalist.

Venture Capitalists – a firm set up to hold investors money and to invest it in high growth opportunities. Generally look to achieve a return of 30% per annum and hold investments for three to five years before selling. Generally tend not to be interested in deals below say, £1.0million investment. (See equity gap; business angel)

Whitewash Agreement – Section 161 of the Companies Act is designed to prevent asset stripping, by prohibiting the pledging or use of the company’s own assets for the purchase of the company’s shares (so the purchaser cannot promise to pay the seller out of the proceeds of selling the company’s assets once he has control of it, or borrow the money for the purchase by offering the company’s assets as security). In many private company sales however, the only way that purchasers are able to raise funds to buy the company is by borrowing against the assets to be bought. An exception is therefore allowed to the 161 rule involving the preparation of a report by the company’s auditors, known as a whitewash agreement.

Yield – the amount of return received (E for earnings) for the price

Towards More Reliable B2B Sales Forecasting And A Better Business to Business Sales Strategy

Why do so many B2B sales forecasts bear a closer resemblance to great works of fiction than to reality? Why do “top opportunities” regularly slip and slide from month to month and then often disappear altogether? Erratic sales forecasting is a joint symptom of superficial qualification and an inadequate business to business sales strategy resulting in a failure to get close enough to the key influencers or decision makers that can actually make things happen.

The more business critical the solution or service being offered, the more complex the sales forecasting challenge as people making or influencing the choice of supplier will have more to lose if a bad decision is made. There are however proven ways to progress towards more reliable sales forecasts and the good news is that in doing so you will develop a stronger sales strategy that will serve to improve sales performance over time.

Eliminate Superficial Sales Qualification to Improve Sales Performance

What many salespeople refer to as qualification is nothing more than a superficial attempt to garner some information which is perhaps more self-serving than it is customer focussed. Is it any wonder that senior influencers and decision makers might see little value in engaging with them? What value do such salespeople really add for the busy executive with a significant business challenge to overcome and perhaps a business case to build in support of addressing it?

Too many salespeople assail prospects and customers with their own objectives (targets, pressure from boss, commission payments, etc.) foremost in their minds and then talk too much! The need to qualify an opportunity fully is often over-ridden by a salesperson’s strong desire to “lay out their stall”. Presenting, proposing and demonstrating often come more easily to them than intelligent questioning and listening. Carefully selected sales coaching can help salespeople engage in an intelligent “probe and listen” mode that builds bridges rather than barriers.

Multi-layer sales qualification is key to winning strategic clients, getting inside their heads to understand their thinking and gaining mind-share in an often politically complex environment. Superficial qualification is a sign of a weak business to business sales strategy and approach and is at the root of the issues that plague sales forecasting reliability whilst defying attempts to improve sales performance. All is not lost however as many salespeople can up their game provided they have the right coaching and guidance on effective strategies for complex sales scenarios.

Getting close to the “powerbase” (key influencers and decision makers) is crucial for business to business sales of a value-add or business critical nature. These people are making vendor selection decisions on which their careers may depend. They look for potential suppliers that support and contribute to their business case rather than those that seek to pitch and shoehorn the prospects problem into whatever solution they may have to sell. Professional salespeople tend to engage “top-down” and qualify deeply to simultaneously build their knowledge and credibility at senior level. These behaviours support more reliable sales forecasting and perhaps more importantly their consistent application can significantly help to improve sales performance over time.

The Foundations for An Effective Sales Forecast Dashboard

Trying to drive sales opportunities from the top-level forecast down is a common and seriously flawed approach. Sales forecasts should be a dashboard, but they will never be effective in isolation. The foundations for reliable sales forecasting are good account planning combined with deep qualification, ability to engage and converse at senior level and adept negotiation skills. Sales opportunities should be driven from these solid foundations upwards. Effective sales coaching can help salespeople win client mind-share to drive more consistent sales performance and thus more reliable forecasting.

The account planning required to underpin more reliable sales forecasting needs to take a realistic up to date read on each major sales opportunity, highlighting vulnerabilities and exposures to be addressed to secure your company’s position. Any account plan is only as good as the level of intelligence and credibility gained through qualification and senior engagement. It’s important that salespeople are constructively challenged on a regular basis to ensure that they consistently work to develop quality “trusted advisor” business relationships that put them more in control of the sale. There are significant benefits to using an external facilitator for these account reviews.

Salespeople tend to be naturally optimistic and this often works against them when it comes to pragmatically determining where they are with any given sales opportunity. Too often they may hope for the best, failing to qualify deeply enough. It’s important that they learn to ask the hard questions early on as genuine prospects are likely to respect them for it, whilst those with a hidden agenda may well get irritated (often a good acid test). The true value of multi-layered sales qualification lies in its ability to establish early on whether an opportunity is real or not and what is needed to move towards deal closure. Approached with the right mind-set, multi-level sales qualification is an effective tool to establish senior level credibility and build trusted advisor relationships.

A Note on CRM:

Beware the flawed belief that CRM is the answer. Whilst it may provide easier data retrieval, filtering, management reporting, etc., a CRM system is only ever as good as the data it contains. If the sales qualification and business to business sales strategy are lacking then so will the CRM system be. For sales forecasting software or CRM to be effective, they must sit on the foundations of good account planning and effective sales strategy and approach and this is where the primary focus should be.

And the Bottom Line on Reliable B2B Sales Forecasting Methods….

Too often what prospects get is an eager salesperson pushing their wares rather than taking time to fully understand their needs. Fix this and more reliable forecasting becomes possible (along with increased actual sales). Fail to address it and even the best sales forecasting methods won’t help you. The business reality is that intelligent prospects and customers do not want to be sold to; they want “contributor providers” or trusted advisors that will bring them solutions to the business pain they are suffering (“the pain behind the project spend”).

Of course sales forecasting accuracy can never be 100% as there will always be factors beyond a salesperson’s control – spending freeze due to merger or acquisition, abrupt disappearance of a key player, etc. However it can be greatly improved across the sales team with the aid of consistent and pragmatic sales coaching from someone with the relevant actual experience.

My views may sound slightly harsh at times, especially to some hardworking salespeople. However this is the reality as I see it after ten years as a successful sales individual followed by another ten years leading B2B sales teams selling business critical solutions and services at CXO level across Europe. The good news is that significant improvement is possible in many cases, the bad news is that not all salespeople have the calibre to make the grade. Effective sales coaching can identify those worth investment and those whose development is unlikely to yield sufficient return on that investment.

How to Improve Sales: Top Sales Strategy Tips From a Business to Business Sales Coach

If you sell value-add or business critical solutions or services B2B, these top sales strategy tips could be the catalyst to help improve sales performance. Find out how a coach that constructively challenges your strategy and approach could be a key factor for success.

Sales Coach Tip #1

Eliminate Comfort Zone Selling to Improve Sales Performance

Many salespeople and often the companies they work for are slaves of comfort zone selling. They go through the same old “hit and hope” sales routine, hoping for the best but winning too little profitable business. This is the best place to start looking when considering ways to improve sales performance.

A prospective customer requests a presentation, proposal, demonstration or trial and most salespeople are keen to oblige. That’s a lot of commitment from a supplier. Effective salespeople qualify well and work to ensure they gain enough commitment in return, before they agree to dedicate time and effort.

Few companies stop to calculate the cost of each failed sales attempt, whether a formal tender or a less formal proposal. Consider the total hours lost in meetings and response preparation for a bid that fails. A skilled sales coach will ensure valuable time is spent wisely and only on winnable opportunities.

Sales Coach Tip #2

Profit is Sanity So Keep the Focus on a Margin Rich Sales Strategy

Now think how many of the bids you win are “margin compromised” as opposed to margin rich? Being the price leader in an attempt to improve sales performance may work for the budget shop, but it’s a very poor sales strategy if you sell value-add or critical solutions or services business to business.

Business critical purchases tend to be far less price sensitive than prospective customers would ever like to admit. The risk of a poor buying decision is too high for false economies. Yet supplier nerves often trigger unnecessary discount just to get the deal done and thus the margin is often compromised.

Before you weigh up the merits of using an external coach, think just how much you might be losing by pandering to false price pressures. A good sales coach is a catalyst for the behaviour changes needed to improve margin rich sales performance and any investment here should produce healthy returns.

Sales Coach Tip #3

Why Let Purchasing Departments Determine Your Sales Strategy?

The market too often expects suppliers to jump at any opportunity to bid. Many suppliers conform without really considering how well positioned they are to win or the business viability if they did. Suppliers that professionally hold their ground can gain significant credibility with prospective customers.

Too many salespeople just look for a solution match. Ticking the boxes against a specification, RFP or ITT is only one aspect to consider. Any good sales coach will ensure that the primary focus is on access to the key influencers and decision makers – the people who can make things happen.

Assuming the project is real and they will actually spend money with someone soon, there is always a danger you may only be making up the numbers. A smarter B2B sales strategy helps you weed out the false opportunities from the real ones to avoid situations where the odds are stacked against you.

Left to their own devices, most salespeople can become habitual and even if they work hard, they may not work smart. A skilled external sales coach will help them identify and avoid the false opportunities they might otherwise chase, whilst honing their ability to qualify, develop and win the true ones.

Sales Coach Tip #4

Serious Buying Decisions Demand Deep Consideration

Imagine your career relied on selecting the right supplier of a business critical service. How much would you be influenced by a likable salesperson and how much by their ability to correctly set and meet your expectations? Suppliers failing to grasp this will find it hard to improve sales performance.

We often hear that “people buy from people they like.” This is just too simplistic when it comes to value-add or business critical solutions or services. In such situations people will buy from people they hold credible to deliver to expectations. Anything else would put their careers seriously at risk.

And if people make serious buying decisions based on how confident they feel in a company’s ability to meet expectations, then why do so many suppliers waste time pitching their solutions instead of asking constructive questions and listening well in order to build strong relationships with the key players?

If you lack confidence it’s often tempting to slip into pitching mode rather than really engage your prospective customer. You may feel on safe ground talking about the features and benefits of a solution you know like the back of your hand. Your prospective customer may well be more bored than engaged.

If you can convince a genuine prospect they are in safe hands with your company, that you clearly understand their requirements and will deliver to the expectations that you set, then why would they not select you? Ironically, many salespeople only scrape the surface of sales opportunities and thus fail.

Sales Coach Tip #5

Specialist Niche Player Supplier or Large Generalist Supplier?

Small companies often have an inferiority complex, however with the right B2B sales strategy, a specialist niche player can often beat larger well known bidders. The key is to determine early on whether a prospect is prepared to break from the herd to go with a lesser known company with a better offering.

Prospective customers may operate within their own comfort zones and some will turn away from the better solution in order to ensure the safety of their own derriere. A good sales coach will help you separate prospects that will only ever play safe from those that are prepared to back the best solution.

And Finally, Back to Sales Coach Tip #1

When you think about it, comfort zone selling is in many ways at the root of all of the above issues. It is habitual, even self-satisfying in the short-term to be working so hard on so many opportunities. However it is far less rewarding in the medium to long-term when too little of any real value comes to fruit.

To eradicate comfort zone selling means raising the bar across the board. A business to business sales strategy evolution is more viable than a potentially disruptive revolution. It can be a mistake to try to change too much too soon. An experienced sales coach can help you move towards your goal step by step.

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