Just think how much time and money you can save by choosing the right sales person for your sales force. If you take the time to do it right, if you develop and implement a hiring process that fully vets the candidate before you hire her, it will pay off exponentially. Hiring too fast is […]
Questions To Ask Potential Sales Reps
The problem with finding and hiring the right sales person is that, well they are sales people, they know how to sell, they know how to talk a good game, in fact so good a game that it’s hard to figure out if they are in fact really good or just great talkers! So you […]
How To Beat The Big Guys
Author’s note: while this post is geared towards the Printed Circuit Board industry, most of the ideas are applicable to other industries. There has for some time now been an ever growing gap in annual revenue numbers between the large international board shops and the smaller local board shops. While most of the smaller North […]
When Customers Stop Complaining, You’d Better Start Worrying.
A few years ago, I worked with a client that won and then lost thirty customers all in the span of ten months. The deal was they had bought the customer base of a company that as going out of business. They also hired a few key people from that company to help with the […]
Demanding Customers Driving You Crazy? Good Problem To Have
There is nothing dumber you can do than getting mad at a customer. What is the point? These days when it is harder than ever to get a new customer and even harder to keep that customer amidst the barrage of competition coming for all sides there is nothing more counter-productive than getting mad at […]
The Cost Of Keeping A Customer
Experts estimate that we spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars acquiring new customers. When you think of all the money we spend on marketing, advertising, trade shows, websites, sales people, and their travel and other expenses you know these experts are right. I’ve read that one single sales visit will cost over five hundred […]
The “We’re Behind Quota Already!” Emergency Crash PCB Sales Plan
So the year has started badly. You thought all that start of year pent up demand would have you rocking. But sales are thin and the funnel is pretty darn dry. You’re beating on your outside sales team and they are doing everything they can with their customer base. Or worse yet you don’t even […]
The “We’re Behind Quota Already!” Emergency Crash PCB Sales Plan
So the year has started badly. You thought all that start of year pent up demand would have you rocking. But sales are thin and the funnel is pretty darn dry. You’re beating on your outside sales team and they are doing everything they can with their customer base. Or worse yet you don’t even […]
Taming The Extraordinary Sales Person
We spend a great deal of time talking about how to handle poor performing sales people, those who are not making their numbers. Those who just can’t seem to get out there and visit customers, those who just cannot seem to be able to get an appointment or close a sale. There are been hundreds […]
No Trust? No Customers!
Building trust with your customers will make them customers for life. No matter what else you do for your customers, you have to build trust. If you can get your customers to trust you they will stay with you for life…yes, even if you change companies. Over the years and in many columns, we have […]