If you don’t yet have a sales process, I hope this will help you create one. If you don’t have one that you fully believe in, I hope this will help you examine yours. If you do have a good process in place, I’m hopeful that if you hold your process up to this month’s column, it may help you refine it.
I’m currently helping a friend of mine grow his carpet cleaning company, and guess what… he needs a sales process too. Fortunately, I’ve built them before, but I’m finding out in hit-me-in-the-mouth fashion that carpet cleaning ain’t exactly motorcycles! This month I simply wanna share what I’ve been battling – with no help – what I’ve been helping dealers do for years; build a sales process.
We’ve been teaching our sales process in dealerships for about ten years now. I’ve said it on many occasions; it ain’t a new sales process, it’s just our take on what all successful sales processes have in common. So in this month’s rant, hopefully I’ve captured what took me years to learn in one simple five minute read... the secret to creating your own sales process… wish me luck.
Measure everything. Yup! That’s it… the secret, the whole secret, and nothing but the secret. If you don’t start measuring something – anything – how can you ever expect to accomplish your goals?
Start by measuring what you wanna accomplish. Define it in as high a degree of detail as you can and then hold it up as a measuring stick. Examine your results against you new measuring stick and see where you landed at the end of the day.
Then ask yourself the following questions. And ask them every day until you can answer them.
Did you get there today? If so, how did you get there? What did you do? Can you do it again tomorrow? How do you know? What will you do to do it again tomorrow? What has to change to do better tomorrow? What has to change to fall off the pace tomorrow? Can you control any of those factors? Which ones? How do you control them? What happens if you don’t control those factors? Which is the most sensitive factor? Which is the least sensitive? Can you do anything to make the most sensitive factor less likely to have a negative impact on your day? If you didn’t reach your goals today, why didn’t you? What didn’t you do that you usually do? Did you do anything out of the norm that screwed up your results? What can you adjust to avoid similar results tomorrow?
Now for the second tear of questions; the ones you ask after you have a, understanding of the first batch. What are the human elements of any negative results? Can you help control those human factors with training, discussion, attitude adjustment, reading or instructional tools and videos, etc? Do you need more staff? How do you know? What are you measuring so that you’re absolutely certain that more staff will pay for themselves? How much is at risk if they don’t pay for themselves right away? How long will it take for a salesperson to generate enough revenue to justify adding them to the team? When will your floor traffic increase to the extent that you can float that added expense? If you’re wrong about the increased floor traffic, how much money do you have at risk?
What we’re measuring at the carpet cleaning service is the same basic things that we measure in the bike biz; opportunities, activities, and results. The first thing I did was to design a simple form for the sales guys to fill out that captures how many people they spoke with, how many jobs they quoted, how many deals they closed, and how many jobs they completed. Is there more? Of course, those four metrics are only the beginning. From there, we’ll eventually measure much deeper; how each salesperson does at each metric, why one guy may do it better than another, the difference between business and residential sales calls, how much per square foot between business and residential, etc. etc. etc.
Where will we be able to take this little $150K per year carpet cleaning venture? We’re just barely out of the gate so I have no idea. I don’t even know if we’re doing anything the right way and probably won’t until we get at least a few months under our belts. But that’s the point, isn’t it? Just get started selling on purpose so you’re not selling… well… by accident.
I heard once that the secret to finishing any venture is about not sitting at a traffic light waiting for all the lights on the street to turn green before you step on the throttle.
Don’t wait. Do it now! Start measuring something… NOW! I dare ya!
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