Longtime PIA Affiliate President Bob Lindgren and Leslie Groene, sales coaching superstar, have put together a series of newsletters to help printing companies restart (and jump start) their businesses. This is another installment of their thoughts we will be sharing to help you along the way.
This is Part 2 of the previous post.
Sales Opportunities…
Enlist your team to help.
You'll need to find a balance on billable vs. non-billable work. . . but if client volume is down, use the time to support self-marketing. For example:
- Your strategists and other subject matter experts (SMEs) can support content marketing and other initiatives.
- Your project managers can help you stay on track.
- Your operations team can provide additional support and structure in your sales efforts.
Ask for help—even self-starter employees can't read your mind.
Find ways to take breaks.
If you don't pause occasionally for self-care, you'll burn out. You'll need to find the right approach to handling sales during the pandemic but working 100 hours a week likely won't help.
Why? Because you'll see diminishing returns as you become exhausted. . . and you'll make mistakes that actively hurt your results.
Recognize that you will likely survive this.
If you get through this, you can handle almost anything. You - personally - will likely survive. And if your company doesn't make it, you will likely manage the setback. It will be sad and difficult and expensive. But you will likely emerge again, to pursue new opportunities. Good luck! – Leslie
Management Opportunities…
Don’t accept failure. We’ve called on a prospect and they’ve given us the specs for a job for which they want a quote. We go away happy and we deliver the quote. We don’t get the order and we’re sad, but we’re used to it. What’s wrong with this story? The problem is that we’re used to it and we just go on to the next prospect. As a result, we’re feeding a cycle of spending sales and estimating resources but not building sales while making the competition look good at the same time. The solution is to see the object of the quote as getting the order, not as an exercise of delivering the number from our estimating software. That means that we need to understand that we’ll get the order at a number that is acceptable to the prospect, not a number that works for our estimator. Our focus must be on the value of the project to the prospect and their view of alternative choices, not on our “costs.” Of course it may be that we can’t live with the prospect’s numbers— if that’s the case, it’s a signal to stop calling on them. But, if they have work that fits us and could build our volume, we have to get into their ballpark. - Bob
If you would like more information from the Restart Team, Contact
Leslie Groene - Sales and Marketing
(657) 464-9199
Bob Lindgren - Business and Financial
(818) 219-3855
