How do you keep sales and profits increasing?
Do you focus on the here and now or do you focus on the future?
The answer is you need to do both.
The here and now focus consists of your traditional sales force. Meeting with as many customers as possible each day. They are making sales right now, but also learning from these daily interactions potential threats and opportunities that will have a direct result on sales and therefore profit.
Thinking of your sales teams in terms of a traditional sales force and a non-traditional sales force is doing something different in order to achieve a better result.
The non-traditional sales force analyzes these threats and opportunities. They cultivate plans to address the future changes in the market and immediately begin to lay the groundwork in order for their plans to go into effect.
Three key elements are essential for the work of the non-traditional sales force to truly have a positive influence on continued sales growth:
- The plans they generate must go into effect as soon as possible.
- The non-traditional sales force must play an integral, hands on role in laying the groundwork that is the heart and soul of the plan.
- The non-traditional sales force must be able to access the resources needed in order to turn their plan into action.
Unfortunately, I rarely see this scenario in the real world. What actually happens is the sales team identifies threats and opportunities that they then report to management. Management either acts on these reports too slowly for a plan to positively impact sales or, they come up with a plan without the input of the “troops on the ground”. The result is the plan doesn’t work.
Management has the best intentions in regards to making the company profitable. They are just falling into the age old trap of doing the same thing over and over, yet expecting different results. Thinking of your sales teams in terms of a traditional sales force and a non-traditional sales force is doing something different in order to achieve a better result. The key point I want to make is as follows:
In order to accomplish this a company DOES NOT have to hire an entire separate sales force. The traditional and non-traditional sales force is actually your current sales team with completely redefined objectives. This allows a company to utilize its current resources in a new way, in order to maximize profits.