Please excuse the title, I’m writing this just after Halloween... Most companies have lots of old customers – not they are actually ‘old’, but simply companies that haven’t done business with you for a very long time. Why they stopped doing business with you is in most cases a mystery. Perhaps a sales rep annoyed them at some [point, or an order wa...
Read MoreAlmost everyone is familiar with the question – “Would you like Fries with that?” Apart from being a well worn meme, it’s also one of the most profitable questions ever asked. To get your client to a purchase commitment, a finite expense has been incurred so any gross margin from the sale created by Up-selling goes right to the bottom line.
Read MoreWhen I ran Bell’s Eastern region cell phone sales and marketing business, we created a new verb. We called it Frito-Laying. Frito-Lay sells snack food to just about every point of sale you can image. Many of these are Mom and Pop operations where the purchase decision is made on the spot. Frito-Lay had established delivery routes and visited every...
Read MoreIf you want to increase your revenue, increase your prices. Stunninglyobvious but so few do it. We often don’t raise our prices because we believe we are already at the limit of our pricing ... ... and perhaps it was a few years ago when your service level was lower, when your product quality wasn’t as good, when your competition was different, or...
Read MoreClick image to play The way bees operate in their hive can provide an useful lesson that we should think about in our businesses. And while we are talking about bees: World Bee Day is celebrated on 20 May each year (since 2017) in honour of Anton Jansa who was born on that date in 1734 and who is recognized as a pioneering beekeeper. World Bee Day...
Read MoreAn area that people get wrong all the time is pricing. Some people price high based on the profits they hope to achieve. Some base it on some sort of average industry “cost plus” rule. Some are afraid to charge too much. Still others simply add a few percent to last year’s price. So before you set your next price or quote your next deal here are A...
Read MoreGlobalization doesn’t mean (necessarily) that you have to sell globally but it does mean you are now competing with companies from all over the world. So, how are you going to stand up against competition that’s coming in from Germany or Turkey or China or Chile or anywhere else in the world? Many of these companies are competing globally with a si...
Read MoreFor this instalment of the accelerator we are going video. Let us know what you think. Bottom Line: If you find ways to help your clients reduce their labour needs, you can charge more, differentiate yourselves and create deeper customer relationships.
Read MoreAcceleration is all about going faster, and then going even faster, and then faster still. If you look at a graph of acceleration – it shows that over time, your speed, or size, or revenue doesn't just get larger in a nice straight line, but it’s a line that curves upwards. Now the thing is with acceleration, as opposed to a nice steady linear g...
Read MoreI ask all our clients for a report on sales by customer for the last 2 or sometimes 3 years; but even a single year (as the example below shows) provides great insights. And, with multiple years you also get trends. Next, I do something that is incredibly simple but provides huge insights. I load the data into a spread-sheet, sort by revenue (lar...
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