7 Strategies to Sell Successfully against a

Price Increase….

The following Sales Presentation tips are the best practices to employ when executing a price increase:

1.                            Give the customer lead-time.  Provide the customer with enough notice to allow them to make adjustments in their information systems and to exercise at least one more order at the existing price.

2.                             Avoid showing favorites.  Pricing integrity is always essential, but especially so during a price change.  Do not treat particular customers more favorably than others in pricing during an increase.  Different pricing levels are fine as long as they can be logically defended so that a customer who is not receiving the price break can understand and accept the price change.

3.                            Do not allow your customer to find out about a price increase from your invoice.  Any changes in pricing must come from the account executive or a person of high position within the company. Information regarding a price change should only appear on an invoice after every person involved has been personally notified.  (Sufficient time should occur in the price increase timeline to allow at least one invoice to contain a note of the pending increase in price.)

 

4.                            Make sure each customer service representative and anyone else who comes in contact with the customer is fully aware of when the price increase is going to be communicated.  One of the most significant possibilities for confusion is when the customer hears conflicting information from different departments.  Everyone in customer service needs to be fully aware of the price increase, the reasoning behind it, and the logistics for implementation. They should also be provided with a FAQ guide to ensure that when customers do ask them about elements of the pricing increase, they are able to share accurate information.

5.               .             Believe in the price increase.  In order to be paid what you are worth, you must charge what you are worth.  Although this is not something that can be explicitly communicated to the customer, this general sense is what sets apart the best practice companies and high-performing sales professionals.

6.                            Instill an open-phone/open-door policy.  Any time a price increase takes place, it is important for all senior executives to be willing to answer a phone call from a customer or to make phone calls to key customers.  For successful consultative selling, nothing sends a stronger signal to a sales organization than seeing their senior executives on the front-line when dealing with a price increase.

7.                           Before and after the price increase, monitor the sales patterns of your individual customers.  It is important to quickly catch any changes that occur as a result of the price increase.

Copyright  2014 Mark Hunter, The Sales Hunter.

Sincerely,  

Chris Wilkinson.

Certified Business Behaviour & Attitudes Analyst.

Business Coach.

Tel: (905) 275-2907 (Mississauga-Canada).

                  E-mail: buspilot@bell.net

WAYS TO INCREASE YOUR BUSINESS PRODUCTIVITY……..

Would your business be interested in a 30 percent boost in productivity? That’s right, being able to do 30 percent more of whatever your business does – from building widgets to treating patients – with the same people, equipment, space, and so on? And, as a bonus, you’d be able to do this work in less time, from start to finish?

I suspect the answer to this question is a resounding “yes”— as I can’t imagine any business that isn’t trying to increase productivity and output, while  lowering the cost of providing their product or service. So what does it take to capture 30 percent more productivity? Let’s take a look at two important ways to make this happen.

Eliminate tasks and work that offer low returns or no value to your business.

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Your business is constantly evolving. Customers come and go. New products and services are added. People are hired and fired. There are countless changes like this that take place almost every day. In response to our changing environment, we are constantly adding to and modifying our daily work. We create new reports, have more meetings, develop new projects, handle new information to add to new systems, and so on. Unfortunately, we rarely apply the same energy to getting rid of obsolete work that adds little or no value to the business. The result: probably 10 to 30 percent of what we do every day at work adds very little value and could potentially be eliminated, with no ill-effect to the business or to our customers.

Of course, less time spent doing the non-value adding work will allow for more time to be applied to the things that really matter, which will improve productivity and output.

Finding non-value adding activities requires a hard look at the day-to-day processes of the business.  From start to finish, each process task needs to be reviewed, and the question asked “does this step add value?” Much like sorting through a garage full of “stuff” we have accumulated over the years, this process requires a mindset that challenges the status quo and is willing to “let go” of the practices and tasks that we’ve become comfortable with, but no longer add any real value.

Synchronize work to achieve a smooth and steady flow.

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The last time you took a flight for work or vacation, I bet the experience was something like this … line-up at the check-in kiosk. Print your boarding passes, then line-up to drop off your bag. Line-up at Security, go through, then line-up at Starbucks for a coffee. Wait at the gate until it’s time to board and line-up again to get on the plane. In other words, the hurry up and wait process is repeated over and over.

Many of our daily work processes are very similar to this analogy. There’s lots of stopping and starting, and waiting as certain steps in the process must be done in sequence. Not only does this slow down the overall process, but it destroys productivity. What’s the point of being as efficient as possible at, say, dispensing boarding passes and baggage tags when the passenger is just going to wait in the bottleneck called security?  However, if the rate at which passengers move through the boarding pass kiosk and the rate at which they are processed through security are designed to be synchronized, then the result is that both activities run at a high level of efficiency. In this situation, if a queue of passengers forms in front of either activity, then this is taken as a sign that something is out of synch and needs attention, rather than being considered just another typical day.

In business, we need to build processes so that work flows continuously. Indeed, almost every time work stops and people are in a holding pattern, this is a sign that the people involved in doing the work are out-of-synch. And, just like our trip through an airport, being out-of-synch reduces productivity and increases lead-times.

Achieving synchronization requires a hard look at our day-to-day work processes, with particular focus on the path that the work follows, and the capacities of the various work activities. A process is  only efficient if it is productive and has no bottlenecks. To ensure activities flow work capacity both up and down-stream must be balanced.

These two tactics have a long track record of success in the manufacturing sector where they were developed (from Henry Ford and the Model-T assembly line to Dell and their almost inventory-free supply chain).  Now, it’s time to apply these proven tactics across all businesses.

Sincerely,  

Chris Wilkinson.

Certified Business Behaviour & Attitudes Analyst.

Business Coach.

Tel: (905) 275-2907 (Mississauga-Canada).

                  E-mail: buspilot@bell.net

Mr. Sales Manager:

12 Questions your sales person should be asking:

Before each sales call, your sales person MUST have the answer to every one of these questions….

• What is the REAL purpose of this call?
• What is the value of the account?
• Who is the key decision maker?---- Not necessarily the purchasing agent?
• What is his or her highest value need?
• What is the customer's market share?
• Who are the customer's competitors?
• Am I positioned to take over the account? If so, how?
• What is standing in my way? 

• Who are my top three competitors for this business?
• What type, piece or share of business do we have?
• What are the three biggest obstacles to getting more business?
• What assistance do I need back at my corporate office?

Working with you.

Chris Wilkinson.        

Certified Business Behaviour & Attitudes Analyst.

Business Coach.

Tel: (905) 275-2907 (Mississauga).

E-mail: buspilot@bell.net

Employee Retention – How to Retain Employees

Hiring employees is just a start to creating a strong work force. Next, you have to keep them. High employee turnover costs business owners in time and productivity. Try these tactics to retain your employees.

–       Offer a competitive benefits package that fits your employees’ needs. Providing health insurance, life insurance and a retirement-savings plan is essential in retaining employees. But other perks, such as flextime and the option of telecommuting, go a long way to show employees you are willing to accommodate their outside lives.

– Provide some small perks. Free bagels on Fridays and dry-cleaning pickup and delivery may seem insignificant to you, but if they help employees better manage their lives, they’ll appreciate it and may be more likely to stick around.

– Use contests and incentives to help keep workers motivated and feeling rewarded. Done right, these kinds of programs can keep employees focused and excited about their jobs.

– Conduct “stay” interviews. In addition to performing exit interviews to learn why employees are leaving, consider asking longer-tenured employees why they stay. Ask questions such as: Why did you come to work here? Why have you stayed? What would make you leave? And what are your nonnegotiable issues? What about your managers? What would you change or improve? Then use that information to strengthen your employee-retention strategies.

– Promote from within whenever possible. And give employees a clear path of advancement. Employees will become frustrated and may stop trying if they see no clear future for themselves at your company.

– Foster employee development. This could be training to learn a new job skill or tuition reimbursement to help further your employee’s education.

– Create open communication between employees and management. Hold regular meetings in which employees can offer ideas and ask questions. Have an open-door policy that encourages employees to speak frankly with their managers without fear of repercussion.

– Get managers involved. Require your managers to spend time coaching employees, helping good performers move to new positions and minimizing poor performance.

– Communicate your business’s mission. Feeling connected to the organization’s goals is one way to keep employees mentally and emotionally tied to your company.

– Offer financial rewards. Consider offering stock options or other financial awards for employees who meet performance goals and stay for a predetermined time period, say, three or five years. Also, provide meaningful annual raises. Nothing dashes employee enthusiasm more than a paltry raise. If you can afford it, give more to your top performers. Or, if you don’t want to be stuck with large permanent increases, create a bonus structure where employees can earn an annual bonus if they meet prespecified performance goals.

– Make sure employees know what you expect of them. It may seem basic, but often in small companies, employees have a wide breadth of responsibilities. If they don’t know exactly what their jobs entail and what you need from them, they can’t perform up to standard, and morale can begin to dip.

– Hire a human-resources professional. If your company is nearing 100 employees, consider hiring a human-resources director to oversee and streamline your employee structure and processes. Putting one person in charge of managing employee benefits, perks, reviews and related tasks takes a huge load off of you and makes sure employees are treated fairly. HR managers are also more up to date on employment laws and trends. They can set up various programs and perks you may not have known existed

Chris Wilkinson.

Certified Business Behaviour & Attitudes Analyst.

Business Coach.

Tel: (905) 275-2907 (Mississauga- Canada).

                  E-mail: buspilot@bell.net

Sincerely,  

Chris Wilkinson.

Certified Business Behaviour & Attitudes Analyst.

Business Coach.

Tel: (905) 275-2907 (Mississauga).

                  E-mail: buspilot@bell.net