3 Reasons Your Sales May Be Flat

3 Reasons Your Sales May Be Flat

by | Aug 22, 2023 | Sales

Unlocking Growth for Entrepreneurial Businesses by Overcoming Sales Barriers

Sales is a barrier to growth for a lot of entrepreneurial businesses. Understanding how to break through that barrier can be very challenging. How can you do it? Some common thoughts that go through your mind might be:

  • Do I have the right people in place? 
  • Are we taking the right approach? 
  • Do I need to document my processes?
  • Do I need to improve my scorecard?

Many of these things can be helpful, but acting on these questions may lead you down the wrong road because you may not be addressing the root cause of the problem. Many times, the challenges are more foundational.

Three questions you should ask yourself before acting on one of those questions are:

  • Do I clearly understand my ideal client and the outcomes they want from their business?
  • Are my uniques/differentiators/value proposition aligned with the outcomes that my ideal clients want?
  • Is the path to realizing our value clear for my ideal clients?

Let’s explore these questions in more depth so that you can have a better understanding of what the root cause of your challenge might be.

Do I have a clear understanding of what my Ideal Clients want?

If your ideal client profile is too broad, it can weaken your message and make it challenging to reach your entire market. Honing your Ideal Client Profile (ICP) has two huge benefits:

  1. It strengthens your message – a tighter ICP makes it easier to create a message that resonates.
  2. It allows you to be more effective with your limited sales and marketing budget – simply stated, investing the same amount on a smaller pool of more qualified prospects that your business is more optimized to serve yields better results.

Your ICP should include the high-level outcomes that Ideal Clients want from their business. This helps you align your offerings and also create messaging that hits the mark.

Are my differentiators/uniques aligned with the outcomes that my ideal clients want?

The ideal state is that you have some uniques or differentiators that directly align with your Ideal Clients’ desired outcomes. In its purest sense, if you uniquely position your services to satisfy your ideal clients’ desired outcomes, sales, and marketing can be like shooting fish in a barrel.

This is a lot harder in businesses that operate in a competitive market. The EOS™ 3 Uniques concept states that, while some companies might share a unique or two, the ideal state is that no other business offers all three. 

If you are in a market that is challenging to differentiate, then clearly connecting your services to your Ideal Client’s desired outcomes might be the best thing you can do to differentiate.

Is the path to value clear for my ideal clients?

The path to value has a lot of interchangeable terms:

  • Client Journey
  • Proven Process in the EOS world
  • Client Experience

Regardless of what you call it, the keys to leveraging the concept to win more are the same:

  • Tightly integrate your uniques into the journey
  • Make it clear how your Ideal Clients navigate their path to value
  • Brand your Client Journey and use it as a tool to connect with your Ideal Clients

As Donald Miller says, “… if you confuse, you lose.” Clearly communicating your Ideal Client’s path to value will not only help you speak to prospects and clients, it will also help you align your team to deliver the journey that you desire.

Conclusion

This should help you better understand the root cause of your barrier to sales. If you are able to resolve these questions with good answers, then the next step is to look at your systems and people and build your growth assets.

Read more on how to identify your ideal client profile.
Make sure to download your “5 Steps for Scaling Sales and Growing Revenue” ebook.

#entrepreneurialbusiness #salesbarriers #idealclient

3 Challenges You May Be Having With Your Scorecard

3 Challenges You May Be Having With Your Scorecard

by | Mar 20, 2023 | Strategy

Developing the scorecard that works for your business is a journey.  There are some common challenges that entrepreneurs face along the way.  This blog is written to help you take action to improve your scorecard and shorten the journey.

We will look at three common challenges that entrepreneurs face with the scorecard by providing:

  • The symptom
  • The likely cause
  • Suggested actions for improvement.

 

Symptom: Team members are not accountable to their numbers

Likely Cause Suggest action
Setting the wrong tone for your scorecard.  The purpose of the scorecard is not to punish but to enable your team to hit their numbers through skills development or process improvement.    Implement a culture of coaching. If team members understand that leadership is there to coach and help them, they will feel more personally accountable.   
The goals may be unrealistic. If you set your goals with the superstar in mind,  you are setting up your team’s mid and lower performers for ongoing failure.   Ensure the goals are realistic and all team members can hit their numbers.

 

Symptom: We are hitting our activity numbers, not business goals. 

Likely Cause Suggest action
Activity and leading metrics are not aligned with the Business Plan / V/TO®   Leverage your client journey as the path to connect activity metrics to your business goals and ensure you are gathering your client’s perspective along the way.
You may track the right metrics, but the goals are not high enough.   If your activity metrics are aligned with your business goals, then keep the metrics, raise the goals, and give team members what they need to succeed.
Not enough time – if you have just recently input your metrics,  they may  not have had time to affect the high-level business goals.  Make sure you have given your activity metrics enough time to affect your business goals, and keep an eye on how your activity metrics are connected to the leading metrics to meet your goals.

 

Symptom: Long streaks of red or green on your scorecard or metrics that never prompt action.

Likely Cause Suggest action
You are tracking things that can’t be controlled weekly.  The big idea with using a scorecard in your leadership and departmental meetings is to track metrics that prompt action every week. For example, tracking lagging metrics for individuals is not a great idea. If you’re not taking action on those metrics, could you remove them from your scorecard and track the activity or leading metrics that will prompt action weekly.

 

Remember that your scorecard is a journey.  Ensure that you are getting to the root cause before you make changes to keep your scorecard moving in the right direction.

DOWNLOAD THE SCORECARD CHECKLIST