5 Steps to Optimize Customer Finding

You know this stuff cold. So many business owners pride themselves on buying sharp and running a tight ship. They know every nickel they save goes directly to the bottom line. But, operational efficiently is only half of the equation required to sustain a profitable enterprise today.

In most cases, when you proportion the top line business development components towards injecting some operational discipline, you will quickly learn that your company is not doing everything it can to boost revenue.

Examine these primary areas to uncover deficiencies:

• Sales analysis – Undertake an analysis of the products or services you are selling and the people who are buying them. (By the way, we don’t sell any more, we now serve buyers.) Of course, many entrepreneurs don’t need a report to know how they did last week. However, once you correlate the factors and analyze the cost/unit of sales you may need to adjust activities to find more buyers in one area or limit your activity in another segment.
• Competitor analysis – Find out what they are doing to communicate with and engage customers. If you haven’t done so already, evaluate their offering and their customer support against yours to compare strengths and vulnerabilities. The objective is not to copy their methods but to learn and anticipate their future actions. If you find something worthy, well, that’s OK. You are a smart player embracing the idea that your competitors are getting smarter by evaluating your offering as well.
• Promotional analysis – Remember message/media/targets. If you are like most small businesses you have probably embraced social media. But using social media is not a strategy in itself, social media is just what is says it is, media – a platform for a message. Your task here is to evaluate your message to assure it is consistent with your brand. Then determine appropriate media based upon your targets’ activities.
• Sales management – If you’re satisfied with your sales team just skip the section. Direct sales is an area where business owners have the most challenges. Bad hires, compliancy, lack of oversight, training, or team-wide reluctance; every sales environment has challenges. Don't compromise here; any one of these problems is a critical barrier to success. Think like a sales manager with a commodity-like product like copy machines, sugar or vinyl siding. Selling is a “block and tackle” business in almost every segment. It’s where “what have you done for me lately” is a monthly challenge. You simply must manage it from that perspective.
• Attitude – Are you engineering a customer experience using this equation: Satisfaction = Expectation – Reality? If you can produce what you promised or what your client envisioned at the start of the project, you win… raving fans.