Last week I made my monthly visit to one of my annual retainer accounts.  When we met for dinner, one of the executives said “in the past six months under your guidance, Ron we reduced our sales team by half and increased sales by 10%.”  Now that’s results!

Three sales people left by attrition.  By not replacing them, it gave us the opportunity to look at the company’s overall strategy, markets and sales conversations they were having.  One of their markets was considered a “dead” market – a market that was purely commodity where customers were not interested in paying for value.  While margins in that market continue to be low, we did breathe life into the market by opening up key customers to new concepts of how to produce their products more competitively.

So, how did we increase sales by 10% and half the sales team?  Here are the answers:

• Strategic Plan – Created a strategic plan (only two pages long) with a vision of what my client wanted to be known for in the industry and what they wanted to look like.  We tested every decision to see if it supported this vision.
• Sales Team Assessment – We assessed each member of the sales team and positioned people with the accounts they were naturally meant to handle.
• Sales Process – We totally revamped the entire sales process which was backwards.  My client usually gave prices before doing trials.  Closing rate of trials was only 10-15%, which is very low.  We reduced the amount of trials (making better use of time and saving money) by qualifying the accounts better and then implementing the trials before giving prices.  This process enhanced my clients value and helped close some competitive deals.
• Sales Conversation – We implemented the sales conversation outlined in CEO Bestselling Book Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way.  This conversation helps establish value, uncover opportunities and helps create client value propositions that differentiate them from the competition.
• Purpose vs Task – My client went from doing busy work to doing purposeful work.  Every action was in support of the vision.  This transformation all started with the President.  He went beyond hiring a consultant and looking for a pill or a quick fix.  He was committed to changing his ways, bringing in a new process and going through the painful steps of sticking with the process and being disciplined to doing what he needed to do to support this new process. This step is the key to making an dynamic impact in your organization!

Bottom line is the President and his executive team are only seeing the tip of the amazing results they are about to realize.

If you are interested in achieving similar results, call Ron Karr today at 201.666.7599 to discuss ideas on how to transform your goals into reality.