I’m an action-oriented person: I like to get things done. I’ve managed over a dozen of business units from 5 to 150+ people during my career at SKF, leader in the manufacturing of rolling bearings. I’ve had many successes by implementing very effective and easy to understand activities. As a result, companies have seen their revenues and profits grown within a year. I’m presently helping Small to Medium Enterprises that outperform all their statistics.

3 simple steps to grow your sales and profit

The tipping point in a company when structural challenges start to appear, is when the number of employees reaches 15 to 20 people. It is very hard for most of the business leaders to manage directly and effectively more than 15 people in a flat organisation.

Quite often, the culture of a company starts getting forged right after its creation. If well managed, it quickly becomes the main element which fuels innovation and employee engagement that are critical for growth. However, if the transition from being a one man show with a bunch of subordinates to becoming a more complex and professional organisation is not handled properly, the consequences could seriously jeopardise the company’s health. Unfortunately, at this stage, leaders are often blinded by routine tasks and business development and sometimes fail to notice the rising problems around them. The risk is to gradually lose the best employees and damage customer loyalty leading to an inevitable decline in financial results.

To avoid falling into traps that those companies often experience, it is essential that employees evolve in a structured environment with clear, short and long-term company objectives supported by work processes.

Firstly, I recommend describing why the company exists and what you would like it to become in the future. You can call it Vision or Mission or name it as you wish but people should almost be able to visualise how the company will look like say in 5 to 10 years. It motivates employees and shapes the culture of a company. Moreover, you will attract the right people for your organisation, all sharing the same goal. Within this process, all employees must have a clear understanding of how their roles fit into the system that will lead to the defined future picture.

Next, a reachable Business Plan, even short, must be outlined and presented to all. The plan should be articulated around finance, sales and marketing, customer portfolio, business process and more if needed, depending on the size of the company. Here are some important questions that should be answered when building the business plan:

• How do we keep people engaged and motivated?

• How do we create an environment where people feel free to take risks and innovate?

• What are our sales strategy and sales process?

• How are our income statement and balance sheet managed?

• Does our stock match customer needs?

We all know that the devil is in the details; so, the third aspect to ensure business continuity is to translate the long-term goals into workable short-term activities. The activities must be specific, measurable and achievable with deadlines and target owners. They should help reach the company objectives within a set time frame and be linked to individual objectives of employees to ensure that everyone moves towards the same direction. This is the best way to keep employees engaged.

All the above actions are very simple to put in place; however, I’ve seen many good businesses fail because management had no time to build a foundation to implement the company’s strategy.

I have practical and easy to use tools. Get in touch with me if you or a company that you know would need my assistance. I excel in organising businesses and I achieve results.

“Why should customers purchase from you”

Needless to say, “Sales” is one of the most critical aspects of your business. Organisations which significantly increased their revenues have done so, because they have put resources into their sales process.

20 years ago, the role of a salesperson was very different from today, especially in the industrial B2B sector. With limited competition, market leaders used to milk customers in desperate need of engineered products and services. Salespeople of the top brands used to sit on the bench outside of the customer’s purchasing office, collect their orders and leave. In more remote areas, customers even queued up outside of the manufacturer’s outlet and hoped that there will be enough stock left when their turn came.

Fortunately, the situation has dramatically changed after the entry of Japanese and Chinese firms in the competition. Highly engineered products delivering excellent performance are now much easier to find. However, sales methods have not evolved at the same pace. Today, still too many businesses handle sales just like before: they promote product features and often ignore customers’ needs.

High level Purchasing Managers have academic degrees in their discipline and regularly follow professional trainings to get the maximum value for their employers.

Unfortunately, on the other side of the negotiation table, salespeople are often poorly trained. This leads inevitably to a high turnover in the sales team blamed for the lack of results with no precise information on why there’s limited success. As Ian Altman explains in his excellent book “Same Side Selling”, it is imperative to determine if your solution matches what the customer wants to solve. If it does, price is almost never a problem. He underlines that it is critical for salespeople to understand that the sale isn’t closed when the client signs off the purchase order. In fact, for the purchaser, the finish line is the results. In other words, the seller together with the customer should measure if the service or the product that she delivered actually solved the client’s problem or achieved the customer’s expected outcome. Ian Altman adds that salespeople should ask customers more often the following question: “What can we measure together to make sure we get the right results?”

How do we then organise and train a sales team to become the most effective department in your company delivering consistently better results?

• Set targets with the sales team that are mutually agreed upon

• Ensure frequent dialogue with the salespeople and find out possible issues they face

• Coach the Salespeople to evolve from order-takers to customers’ process partners

• Help to quantify value

• Uncover the needs of the customers

• Coach the sales team on the ground

• Prepare for contract reviews

Get in touch with me if you think you or someone you know need my assistance. I excel in organising businesses with easy to use process tools and I coach sales teams.

I achieve results.

A Plan To Increase Revenue

Companies that have a set plan for increasing revenue for each of their customers are two times as likely to be highly profitable than those that don’t, according to the 2022 2Y3X Scale-up Survey.

It may not seem like it when you’re deep in the pitch process, but winning clients is the easy part. The real work starts with how you retain them and increase their business.

When mentoring companies, I advise them to set up an aftercare process, to ensure their clients remain loyal and profitable. This should be built on two foundations: proving value and asking the right questions.

The case studies below are from my experience in heavy industry but equally apply to any sector, from advertising to finance. 

Proving value

One of the most common client complaints is that their service providers are too expensive. This results in two outcomes – neither of them preferable: 

1. They will try to beat you down on price

2. They will shop elsewhere

These occur because the majority of clients focus on cost rather than value. 

It’s your job to change their perspective. And that involves a consistent approach to client relations, starting with regular, monthly and in-person meetings. 

Your monthly client meetings - the basics

Focus on value, not ops

The main purpose of your regular meeting is to prove to your customer that you are doing one, or preferably all of, the following:

1. Helping them acquire more business 

2. Improving their margins

3. Saving money: more uptime, less downtime

Stay focused! It is easy to get distracted by discussions on the day-to-day running of your project. 

Come armed with facts

Don’t just claim you’re saving time, money or uptime. Calculate what that means for them in Cold. Hard. Cash. 

This requires some digging into their data. To use an example from machinery sales, we’d look at how much a typical outage would cost our clients and calculate how much our services were saving them. 

Initially, your estimate will be based on assumptions and, ironically, the best scenario is if the client disagrees with it. If you claim, for example, that your machine saves them £10,000 a week, they might argue that it’s only £6,000. This is very valuable data straight from the customer that you can now use to calculate and demonstrate accurate savings. 

• Meet with the right person - not necessarily the financial decision maker but an advocate who understands (since you’ve armed them with the facts) the value of your service/product. If the finance department questions the cost of your service, they are there to defend you. 

Case study: mining for value

Our client, an industrial company, constantly asked for a price decrease, claiming they had other suppliers who could ‘do it cheaper’. We called a meeting with the department and showed them in cash terms what we were saving them by preventing the failure of their machinery. They were genuinely amazed. Not only were they willing to keep us on but they advocated for us in sales meetings at the company’s other sites. 

How to increase revenue from each client

You’ve shown your client the value you add. Everyone is happy. Now you need to think about how to increase revenue from that business by cross-selling or upselling. 

Do not rely on your client to tell you that there’s another department or site within their business that needs your help – they might not know and won’t be aware of your entire suite of services. 

It’s your job to find this out through research and discussions with your contact.  

• What does your client’s website say about its vision and upcoming projects? 

• What problems do their clients have?

• What are their biggest production problems? 

This will enable you to delve into their pain points at your monthly meeting. 

Case study - asking the right questions

We had a meeting with a large plant to discuss a machine parts contract. The client spent the first half of the meeting trying to beat us down on price. Things were getting fractious so we decided to take a break. 

On return, we asked them a question: ‘How do you ensure business continuity when your fans fail?’ – exhaust fans are critical to the smooth operation of cement factories. Suddenly the mood changed. We had raised an issue that was really worrying them. We entered into a deep conversation about their technical problems and what we could do to help. The meeting resulted in a long-term service contract – we eventually (and quite happily) dropped the supply contract.

The change in fortunes came about because we were able to show that we understood our client’s business and the challenges it faced. 

Creating a process

Process is the key to the smooth running of a business but is too often lacking when it comes to after-sales. Putting in place a robust structure based on value and customer needs will enable you to benefit from the correlation between customer care and profit.

 What makes you different?

During my 30 years+ experience in the field of industrial and automotive engineering, I have repeatedly come across one crucial question that many businesses struggle to answer:

“What makes you different from your competitors ?”

In a business sector where product aesthetics are literally inexistent, this question is generally answered by sales people with typical statements, such as “good service”, “best quality” or “excellent availability of products”. These generic statements could well be true, but customers perceive them as similar to many competitors and hence, have basically no value.

Instead, companies should concentrate on finding what makes them different from other firms. If there are differences, they should find out if they are relevant to customers. If the differentiation points are not perceived useful and are not bringing quantifiable value to your customers, the money you’ve invested is wasted.

Once companies have identified their true differentiators, they must repeatedly communicate internally and externally a value proposition made of the differentiators that clearly explains why customers should buy from them. I would even say over-communicate internally until it is ingrained in every employee: to move forward you must get everyone pulling in the same direction.

The next step is to train and constantly coach your salespeople to demonstrate how your products and services add value to customers. Sam Walton, Founder of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. once said: “If you don’t listen to your customers, someone else will.” I would even go one step further and say: “If you fail to understand the needs of your customers, someone else will”. As Ian Altman explains in his excellent book “Same Side Selling”, if you can really solve your customer’s problem, price is almost never an issue.

Luckily, there are methods for identifying your differentiators and checking if they are truly relevant to your customers. There are also excellent and simple methods to get sales people engaged in selling benefits instead of product features.

In addition to developing strategies, my uniqueness is that I engage with my clients by transferring my expertise and ensuring that strategies are executed. I accompany my customers throughout the implementation process. I focus on achieving the targets that we’ve defined together with a clear follow up process.

Get in touch with me if you believe that I’m a good fit for you and you’re a good fit for me. I excel in organising businesses and I achieve results.