Financial Strategies To Increase Sales

Have you just about run out of ideas to increase your sales? How about some financial strategies!  Here are some I use:

1. Work with the CEO/owner to increase the amount of time they are spending on sales.  The CEO has more punch with customers and potential customers than anyone else in the firm.  If we can help the CEO increase time spent on sales from say, 10% to 20%, what would be the resulting increase in sales, and how much would flow to the bottom line? This simple concept is often overlooked and can bring more to the bottom line than many other activities, including cost cutting.  It is not difficult – we can show you how.
2. Strategic Pricing
   • Understand your costs in-side out.
   • Understand your true overhead rates (service firms too).
   • Understand your variable and fixed costs and breakeven.
   • Have a robust quoting program to accurately estimate the cost of your product/services/jobs.
   • Understand the bottom line benefit to the company of winning the quoted business, including net contribution and cash.
   • Identify minimum margins and products/services that are not meeting these margins.  Determine how to increase those margins (reduced costs or increased prices).
   • Use this information to develop “strategic pricing strategies” to win the business you want.
3. Identify and Increase Good Customers:
   • Calculate true customer profitability.
   • Understand the soft side of good vs. bad customers.
   • Rank customers by profitability and the soft aspects.  You will quickly identify the attributes of a good customer (e.g. size, industry, geography, etc.) and can then target additional potential clients with similar attributes.
   • Aggressively seek out these good customers.
   • Weed out bad customers.  Remember the 80/20 rule – your bad customers are actually hurting the bottom line.
4. Build an ROI (return on investment) model around your products or services to help your customers understand the financial benefits of using your products or services. Work directly with them to fill out the ROI worksheet.
5. Calculate the ROI of your advertising and other marketing activities and employ only those that meet a specified benchmark.
6. Create and implement sales incentive plans to properly reward sales staff for achieving the goals you set out, increasing sales to “good customers” and following the other items laid out above.

Financial strategies can have a great impact on increasing sales.  If you are not employing these 6 strategies, you are missing out on incremental sales that could have huge bottom line impact. These should be included in your overall sales and marketing strategies and annual plans.

If you don’t know how to address these strategies on your own, don’t hesitate to contact me.