You Pick: Sales Creation or Sales Prevention – Part 1
June 11th, 2020 // 1:47 pm @ Scott Manning
One of my mentors, Bill Glazer, use to write an article that gave examples of what he called “The Sales Prevention” Department. It was always intriguing to see just how oblivious people are when it comes to the art of taking care of others in the context of a business.
There is, without question, more money being lost every day in your business through ‘prevention’ tactics than is gained and kept inside.
Three big contributing factors are: sales preventing communication and verbiage, a simple fact of being confused about what the main objective is, and letting made up rules get in the way of people giving you money; then there is just absolute negligence or disorganization around the actions, people, and opportunities that could generate money; and finally, the major culprit, time gets lost in the shuffle of inefficiencies leaving none of it for follow-up and follow-through costing you big.
There are only two other possible reasons that a business would ‘prevent’ sales.
Some, especially the big corporations, are fat and happy. They treat you like a tiny little fraction of some number far to the right side of the decimal point in terms of your revenue contribution to their business.
Then there is the issue with business owners being too disconnected from the operations and employees. It happens more than it should. They are purposely driving away customers because they don’t want to exert the effort on the additional work or they might even be doing it to get back at the company they resent for actually giving them a job.
In good times, you don’t see it or feel it as much. When everything is going well, you might be catching dollars but losing coins (we hope it isn’t the other way around).
… but …
Then we fall into times like these – challenging ones with lots of chaos and uncertainty going on. While most any business that has opened back up has done incredibly well and (considering their limited capacities) are filling up to the brim week by week by week.
Then you begin to notice it – everywhere. The sales prevention department is back with a new excuse of blaming the CDC.
I’m sure you feel the same way, tired of hearing about the CDC guidelines. We are expected to trust the people that botched it all in the first place. Projections were wrong, means of transmission changed (and then changed back), and safety precautions flip flop.
Now, it’s worse than employees running the Sales Prevention Department, you’ve got the owners of businesses letting the Government run it.
The bottom line is: you want to be creative and look for ways to make doing business with you easier not harder if you want to open the flood gates to opportunity and prosperity.
Of course, my Doctors (a breed all their own at the very peak of the profession) are built to be self-reliant and resourceful people who find ways to make things happen even when the majority of the industry does the opposite.
They are using the virus as an excuse too – an excuse in their favor. They are re-engineering their business to overcome and prosper now by turning ‘recommended’ guidelines into business builders, not business inhibitors.
That is how you should be thinking about your business. That is how you make the most of every circumstance.
Whether you can afford to or not, don’t be wasteful with opportunity – not ever but especially not now.
Make sure that everything in your business is moving your customers (and therefore the money) in the right direction. The more barriers you remove on the path to doing business with you, the more business you’ll do. You can start by shutting down the Sales Prevention Department.
The interesting thing is when stop sabotaging your customers’ experience, you can actually exert a lot more control over them once they are there. You can still decide and choose who gets in and who stays out but not if you are fighting against yourself in the first place.
My advice, as you are working on this great comeback opportunity, is to monitor the 3 key areas that inflect the most damage…
Communication and Verbiage
Made up Protocols and Rules
Inefficiencies and Lack of Organization
Sit your team down and really dive deep into the ways you might be putting your foot – through your mask – in your mouth.
People are excited to come back into businesses, to start spending money again, and enjoying life – help them do that.
Let’s ENCOURAGE and not DISCOURAGE with everything thing you do, everything you say, and every way you interact with your customers.
Next week, I’m going to share some specific examples. They will either make you cringe, laugh, or, if you are like me, incredibly irate. Stay tuned.
Category : Blog
