photo from despair.com

This is the story of Joe Bob and Dirk, two business owners with remarkably similar businesses selling only the finest widgets.  Joe Bob and Dirk are direct competitors and they are selling exactly the same product!

In fact Joe Bob and Dirk have been in business the same amount of time and both have 3 salespeople that are performing exactly the same.

Both are fortunate to be in an industry with good growth and there came a time when they needed to start hiring additional new employees to help sell widgets. Read More…

  photo by JennyHuang

You established a great rapport with your prospect.

You didn’t dwell on your product’s features or benefits, instead you asked what the prospect needed – you even got into the detailed pain they are feeling.

You clearly established their need and how your product addresses their need.

The customer said “Sign me up”!  Delivery is scheduled for 2 weeks out.  You run back to your office to celebrate another successful sale!  Woohoo!  (insert your favorite celebration sound here…).

But hold on…your delivery team is telling you that the client isn’t returning their calls to setup the installation.  You play phone tag for 2 days and finally drive over to find out what’s going on.

Confronted, your prospect sheepishly admits that they’ve changed their mind, your competitor (the incumbent provider) made a better offer and they decided they don’t want to switch providers.

Frustrating and unavoidable?  Frustrating yes, but there are some things you can do to minimize this situation. Read More…

           Photo by .Bala 

You are a fantastic small business owner!

You’ve got a great product that people need.  You know how to deliver the product, you know the industry, you know how to help people solve problems – ultimately you deliver value.

You’ve been to training, maybe you’re certified, you know your product or service inside and out.  If anything you get distracted by all of the great things you could do!

Read More…

photo by Drawings of Light – Paul

As a business owner you get lots of sales letters.  I could probably wallpaper a large room with the number of Credit Card offers I’ve gotten in the past year.  Most of them go directly in the trash (often unread) but I will occasionally get something that catches my eye.

Not always in a good way!

Over the weekend I got a letter from Web Listings Inc.  It was a single piece of paper printed front and back that looked like an invoice.  Since I had never heard of this company I reviewed it pretty closely and found the following quote about 1/2 way down the page:

“This is not a bill.  This is a solicitation.  You are under no obligation to pay the amount stated above unless you accept this offer.”

A good rule of thumb is that if you have to clarify that your ‘solicitation’ is in fact not a bill – you’re doing something wrong. Read More…

A few months ago I did an entry on using a simplified financial break-even calculation that a business owner could use for high level strategic planning based on what they’d like to make.  You can see the details here.

As a quick summary, the revenue you need to reach a financial break-even point is your Fixed Costs divided by your Profit Margin.

Read More…