Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

It’s Only Common Sense: Five Proven Steps to Boost Sales

Let’s face it, it’s much too easy to blame the sales team for lack of sales. So often I hear frustrations from the operations team, blaming the sales team for the lack of adequate bookings. If the bookings are down, regardless of the reasons, they will blame the salespeople. Sales often shoulders most of the responsibility for the bottom line.

Ironically, if the sales team increases their bookings, the company leadership will say that their sales team just got lucky and that they didn’t have much to do with it.

So, let me see if I understand this: The salespeople are fully responsible when the numbers are down, but they are not responsible when the numbers are up? How does that work?

Here’s what I know: Sales is a team effort. Those proverbial light bulbs must work if you want to sell them successfully. You must deliver on time, every time if your customers are going to keep buying from you.

And from the sales team’s point of view, if the product is not reliable, if the company’s motto happens to be “we’re not worse than anyone else,” then the salespeople will have a pretty hard time making those sales go up.

Let me share a true story with you. When I was a much younger and “smarter” salesperson, I was in a sales meeting where the owner of the company was beating the heck out of us because we kept bringing in opportunities for products the shop could not build.

He ranted, pounded his fists, and yelled, “From now on, you guys get out there and find some business that we can do!” After he was done, I answered, “Oh, you mean poor quality boards that we can’t deliver on time?” It’s a good thing this guy had a sense of humor because after looking at me like he was going to kill me, he sat down, laughed, pointed his finger at me, and said, “Okay, that’s funny.”

But I had made my point, and from that day on we started working together as a team. We dumped that counterproductive “them vs. us” mentality and all started rowing in the same direction.

Here’s what we did:

1. We developed our ideal customer profile. We discussed who our best customers were, why they liked working with us, and why we liked working with them. We took into consideration what their end product was, the technology they required from us, and why it all worked. We even reached out, asking them why they liked working with our company.
2. After gathering that information, we created a strategic sales plan targeting companies that were like the customers we preferred working with and, more importantly, who liked working with us. We developed sales tactics, including target accounts and step-by-step plans to go after those target accounts.
3. We also developed and implemented a marketing plan focused on attracting the right customer to work with our company. Remember, a good marketing plan is designed to let potential customers know what your company does, and what you can do for them. A good marketing plan will go a long way to making your potential customers want to meet with your salespeople.
4. Most importantly, we developed a system to measure our progress. We made a list of our target accounts including the amount of business we could expect from them. We took this information and developed an account by account, month by month forecast that we tracked daily by using a simple one-page dashboard so that by the end of each day everyone in the company knew where we were with each customer for that month and the year. It was a valuable tool to let the salespeople know how they were doing against their forecast and could do something about it if their numbers went down. It provided visibility to the ops team in terms of being able to control the production, including head count, special equipment, and other adjustments they might need to make.
5. The best part is that we were all working together. We were all in sync, operating as one unit, and best of all, instead of being us and them, we became just us; we had one another’s back.

The thing is to find and work the plan. Then do it together. To have a successful sales effort, to grow your customer base and your bookings—and your revenue—it’s all hands on deck. The salesperson might be the face of the company, but they’re only the face. It takes the entire body of a company to make a truly successful company.

It’s only common sense.

Dan Beaulieu is president of D.B. Management Group.