Sales Growth Breakfast Session: Event Recap

Sales Growth Breakfast Session: Event Recap

Recently we hosted an event with The Entourage, Australia’s Largest and Leading Training and Education Institute of Entrepreneurs. This event was led by Petar Lackovic, Director of Sales and Entrepreneurial Development – at The Entourage. The event was SOLD OUT and the feedback we received was amazing. Here is a summary of the key learnings. If you are a business owner keep reading as there are some great tips on how to make more sales and grow your business!

Key Learnings

  • Avoid key person dependency to enhance your businesses Growth and Profit
  • Turning IC into IP (Intellectual Capital/Content into Intellectual Property)
  • Have a business tailored ‘Business Growth System’ rather than an old school business plan
  • Revenue is Vanity, Profit is Sanity, Cash is Reality

6 key elements to growing a business

  1. Marketing – This should be like a tap of leads that you control and is able to be turned off and on when needed. Our goal is high quality and quantity…focusing on high quality first.
  2. Sales – Is all about turning leads into paying customers.  We must obsess about having a Replicable Sales Process that leads to consistency of high conversions no matter who is doing the sale. An effective sales process should lead to increased conversion rates, at a Higher average dollar per sale, in a Shortened sales cycle. These all equal greater Profit!
  3. Product Development and Delivery – Making sure your product delivery isn’t key person dependant.  Productise your service. We need to be constantly iterating and innovating what customers want to stay with you for high retention. Conduct a survey to find out your net promotor score. This is simply asking your customers how likely they would recommend your business on a scale of 1 to10. 9/10 =1.  Under 6 = -1.
  4. Operations – This is critical to support growth. Need to know your KPI’s and you should have a score board/ dashboard to track and monitor each of the 6 Elements of Business Growth.
  5. Finance – Numbers give control. Control in making decisions. Finance forces conversation.
  6. People – Leadership. Culture. Recruitment. Vision. Mission. Values.  Culture is branding internal. Branding is external.

4 levels which you and your team can operate at:

  1. Technician – You the Business owner spends most of the time doing and delivering the work
  2. Manager – Overseeing and contributing to the work that needs to be done. Manage the process. Process managers people.
  3. Leader – Transforming strategy into action.
  4. Entrepreneur – Setting the vision. Look into the future. What it needs to look like to have future success.

*Aim: move towards Leader and Entrepreneur

2 critical factors responsible for business growth: All businesses are only ever doing 2 major tasks:

  1. Driving Growth – An average business up to the $1.5M mark should be spending 80% of their time on revenue generating activities. Most growth is stifled because we are spending time on low ROI areas! Focus needs to be mostly on Marketing, Sales and exceptional Product and Product Delivery
  2. Enable growth – Operationalising the business.  Better understanding of financials and forecasting. Being an amazing leader: People. Leadership. Process.

Top 7 barriers to increasing sales for all business owners (Revenue is vanity, Profit is sanity, Cash is reality):

  1. Too much time in the day-to-day doing! Wearing the technician hat too much.
  2. Lack of sales passion. Mind-set vs Skill-set. Models, systems and processes to bring out your authenticity and company flavour. Understand the mindset of the customer before calling. What they think and feel. Not what to say. Understand WHY you need to say something. Focus on Lowering buyers resistance 1st not Winning them over and Gaining Buyers acceptance…this leads to old school selling that seems pushy
  3. A lack of understanding of a systemised ‘sales conversion model’.
  4. Struggle to elicit ‘real’ buying motivators. 2 buying motivators are: to avoid or move away from something they don’t want OR Moving towards something they do (away from and toward motivators). We need to be able to articulate our customers buying motivators back to them better than they can themselves…this creates a buying mindset in your customer and NOT a selling mindset on you or your team!
  5. Being Solution based too early: Our strength of knowing our product or service is often our enemy in our sales process. We become too logical and feature based which slows the decision making process in our potential customers.
  6. Lack of personalised sales strategy: Your customers are craving a tailored and personalised solution. We no longer live in a ‘one-size fits all world
  7. Too ‘back-end’ focused (objections and closing). Use elimination strategies.  Eliminate objections before they come up

Other key points to note:

  • People buy emotionally. They justify logically.
  • Typical sales funnel:
  • Free value
  • Lead magnet – add value. Give information
  • Conversion tool
  • Core offer. Core product.
  • Get clear on what customers want. Provide compelling content. Add value.
  • The only way to have success is to take the first step before you think you’re ready!
  • Give yourself the gift of saying YES and find out how to do it later 
  • There’s no right. There’s no wrong. There just IS

Some Positive Feedback From Clients

  • “Thank You! So much to think about. #Inspired”
  • “Very interesting – very thought provoking”
  • “Great work & content”
Strategic Partnership with The Entourage

Imagine Accounting are excited to announce a new a strategic partnership with The Entourage – with the aim to deliver more value to our business clients. Following the success of our Sales Growth Session, in 2019 we will be running more events and exciting workshops with The Entourage.

We will also be announcing FREE access to a limited number of Entourage Business Training Memberships valued at $1200 to Imagine Accounting clients each month, so Watch this Space!

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