Systems and Strategy Before Sales

When a business needs to perform better only too often do management turn to sales without looking at what is truly beneficial and right for the business. You feel a need for more money. There are a few things to consider first before you invest energy, resources and money into getting more sales.

Why do I say look at sales last?

Firstly, your bottom line profit is a result of revenue less expenses. So in simple terms there are two ways to improve it, to increase sales or to decrease expenses.

If you look immediately at increasing sales, do you know if you're servicing these efficiently? And effectively? Will more sales tie up resources in a somewhat less productive manner? Or mean your quality of service drops? Or are there challenges in making the sales as successfully as possible?

Sort your market position, strategy and message

If making sales has been difficult and a reason you are seeing some struggles, don't just keep pushing the cart uphill. Look at the reasons behind it... how you present your offering, if you have a clear market position, a brand statement that let's your target market know why you're the choice for them. Get your strategy and message right before you think of aiming for sales. Then your efforts will be more effective and achieve far greater results.

Be aware of the impact more sales may have on your operation. Do you have systems in place, processes that can manage this increase and maintain quality of service for your customers or might things be set to fail and cause more damage to your business and it's reputation? Ensure those are all covered before you focus on getting more sales.

Address your workflow and the value-chain

Look at your workflow, the value-chain process your product and service travels through before it's provided to your customer. Also the post-sales service that follows. Efficient and effective workflow minimises costs and speeds up process through reducing bottle-necks. It removes any steps that don't add some form of value to your output. Give this attention first to operate in a more profitable manner, improve your capacity and the quality and level of service you provide. Then you will have a more scalable and sustainable business operation.

Have the ability to scale whilst maintaining quality

Bring all of this together to establish your Growth Management Strategy. Getting this planned right, getting all the pieces fitting together in the right way will have you operating more profitably, with fewer problems and market challenges and places you in a position for growth

Lastly, you could well find you're spending in areas that don't add value. Subscribing to software that's not put to use or not best suited to your needs. There may be other ways of improving your cash situation. You might see unnecessary capital items, under-utilised resources you don't need and can be sold.

A more scalable and sustainable business will get it's systems right, spend only in areas that add value, and have a strategy in place that is understood and executed before focusing on the sales.