I don’t know where my next sale is coming from

17 October 2022

The Problem

Many businesses do not have a handle on where their next sale is coming from.

Instead, they rely on a combination of existing customer relationships and gut instinct when it comes to investing in sales and marketing activity to generate new business.

This is all well and good when there is strong demand for their goods or services. Enquiries come in and the sales function becomes an order taking function, with (expensive) salespeople responding to and processing quotes from existing customers.

But it only takes a change in market conditions (such as Covid-19), a new competitor, or a desire by the business to grow and this very reactive approach to sales is not only unprofitable but also puts the business at risk.

The Consequence

Not knowing where new business is coming from is a big knowledge gap and one that limits the ability for growth.

If you do not know your best sales channels or your most effective salespeople, then there is no way you can profitability scale your business.  In fact, there is a very good chance you will waste any investment in sales and marketing because you won’t direct it in the right areas to maximise  return on investment.

This will make the business less profitable and more difficult to run.

The Solution

The first thing to do is to look at historic sales and use this information to make future sales and marketing activity more effective.

In our business we grouped our existing sales into five distinct categories based on the sales channel it came through.  These were:

1. Existing customers
2. Referrals
3. Networking & events
4. Marketing
5. Prospecting

We then recorded the time and investment we allocated towards these activities to get a cost of acquisition.

Armed with this information it was then a case of refining our efforts across each of the channels to improve the volume of new enquiries and the conversation rate.

To do this we needed a system to record and track the information and a business process to review and implement appropriate changes. In our case we used our own configurable software platform – Flight.

The impact was instant. After 90 days we increased the number of sales by 25% and reduced the cost per acquisition by more than 30%.  Making our business more profitable and easier to run.

Summary

Would you like some help getting started with improving your sales and marketing process?

If so we can provide a FREE process mapping session to help you get started on the journey to more money and less stress..

Contact Us