Thoughtful Thursdays - Making the first half

Holy *#?! the first half of the year is just around the corner.

There are approximately 5 billing, weeks to the end of the first half of 2010. How are your sales numbers? This is a good time to look at actual sales and compare them to your forecasts.

At the same time you will want to review your cash flow projections to determine if your expenses are in check.

If you find that sales have been slower than anticipated, there is time to take steps to achieve projected first half profit figures and make the first half.

That is of course if you have financial forecasts to measure performance against... and you do, don't you?

From a new sales point of view focus on identified potential you feel will close within the month. Call your existing customer base and find out if any orders can be expected. This information will give you a good idea if you have a sales gap to bridge.

You do not want to be discovering at the end of June that forecasts would have been achieved if only some financial analysis was conducted a month earlier.

Good selling,

Richard

A Social Media Story - Twitter

It will be one year in June 2010 since Toronto Business Development Centre entered the world of social media on Twitter.

During the first year we learned how to link tweets to our blog, facebook and Linkedin pages.

Recently we tweeted from the TBDC Awards Gala, learned why we should use hash tags, and that using a separate twitter page might not be the way to go - live and learn. We are neophytes to social media but are committed to these channels of communication.

Back to the story. It was not very long before we started to follow tweeters of information related to business, small business and entrepreneurship. We have followed, unfollowed and blocked.

One of the businesses we chose to follow was Distility Branding @1day1brand. Shortly thereafter we received a direct message thanking us for the follow. Follow up communication revealed that Axel Davids, CEO of Distility, graduated from Toronto Business Development Centre 10 years ago.

This led to the renewal of the business relationship that had been lost some time ago and Axel accepted an opportunity to be the featured speaker at our most recent TBDC Entrepreneur Forum.

Subsequently Distility Branding participated in the nomination process for the 2010 TBDC Awards and Axel Davids was announced as an award finalist. On May 5, 2010 at the Toronto Granite Club Axel was presented the Excellence in Innovation Award at the second annual TBDC Awards Gala.

None of these events would have likely unfolded if not for social media, Twitter in this case.

How has social media impacted your business?

Richard

Thoughful Thursdays - Time flies

If you are the sales team for your business you will know that scheduling time can be problematic from time to time. If you are a one person business that is growing, "from time to time" may be quickly become all the time.

No matter what the situation, planning your activities will help you make the best use of your time. How you plan those activities is also important to effective time management.

If you think about it time is easy to measure. A second is a second, 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day and so on and so on. Yet we are always running out of it., whether it is due to cramming too many activities into a specific amount of time or unforeseen events causing it to take longer to accomplish the activities.

Here are a few planning tips you may find useful:

• Schedule appointments at minimum of one week in advance and allow for the worst case in travel time.
  
• Avoid back to back meetings without a break between.
  
• Use the time between calls to write your meeting reports and check and respond to voicemail and email.
  
• Stick to your meeting agenda - that means have a meeting agenda.
  
• Commit to your schedule, if a customer calls and needs to see you urgently, qualify the urgency before cancelling any meetings.
  
• If you are running late or must cancel read this great article from Mark Suster titled The Right Way to Cancel a Meeting.

Good selling,
Richard

Thoughtful Thursdays - Resistance isn't futile

Today's thought is about the realization that your sales cycle may be longer than expected or that you may have to talk to more people than you thought to make a sale.


This realization can be very discouraging and often results in the decision to change marketing and sales strategies that may not be best for the long term sustainability of the business.


One of the easiest ways to sell is on price. Note that the operative word is easiest, not most profitable. Although it may feel like it, your target market is not a Borg-like collective of people or businesses driven to assimilate you into their way of thinking and drive your prices down and resistance is not futile.


Persistence and ongoing commitment to your business will help make it happen. Belief in the value that your product and/or service brings to the table combined with the appropriate promotional and sales activities are also essential components. Getting discouraged is not uncommon. It is how you deal with it that will help determine how successful you will be.

Resist the temptation to lower your prices or offer discounts that will only result in one time sales. If you are giving something up, then set a measurable expectation for a level of return in exchange for your investment.

There are times when it will make sense to offer price incentives, but this must be part of your overall business strategy, not a temporary action that goes against your business plan.

If your activities are producing quality opportunities, the targets have been quantified into real dollar potential and the probability of closing has been determined, then it should only be a matter of time before your efforts begin to pay off. Stick with the plan.

Good selling,
Richard

Thoughtful Thursdays - Looking back on it

Today's thought comes in the form of a question for business owners. It comes as a result of working with many businesses over an extended period of time and really getting to know the owners and their businesses.

The subject of why they wanted to start their own business does come up from time to time. My follow up question comes several months and sometimes years later.

Given what you know now, would you do it again and why or why not?

In some cases the notion of starting a business came as a result of not being able to find an alternate form of work. In others it was a life long ambition to be a business owner. The answer to the question of doing it again does not seem to be dependent on how why the business was started in the first place.

So why or why wouldn't you do it again?

Good selling,

Richard