Performance Measures for Sales

Selling

Improving your business performance is vital for the continued success of your business. Above all else you must consider yourself to be a salesperson, not a fast talking (do you wanna buy a watch!) salesperson, but someone who can genuinely and passionately sell their products and/or services, this may seen scary to some people in small business, but if you cannot sell your product or service then who is going to?

When I teach small business start up classes the first question I ask is ... "Hands up who does not think right now they are a salesperson?" This gives me something to focus on!

Let's face it, your sales ability will make or break your business so it pays to be the best you can be at this. See also Sales Tips

Getting the Price Right

Price is always important to fickle customers. Even if you try to concentrate on meeting their needs, they will always be trying to get a better deal than they got from you last time.

Eventually, if you persist in trying to sell to them, they will grind your price (and profit margin) down with threats and comparisons with the competitors until you just simply cannot go any lower. They will eventually move on to a business who's cheaper, and there will always be someone else who will be willing to give away a little more margin for a little more business.

If you persist in dealing with customers like this, you will end up attracting more of them because your whole style of business will become focused on offering the lowest prices, which means small profits on each sale.

When things are as tight as that, the only thing keeping you afloat will be the huge volume of trade that you need now to do to cover your overheads with those ridiculously low margins. Lose one big customer are you are gone! See also pricing strategies