Small Business, Big Lessons® — Build a Factory

Are you constantly struggling with sales? Is it extremely difficult to hit your sales targets?  Ask yourself one question – “am I building a car or a factory?”. Think about what Henry Ford did in building a factory to mass produce cars. Prior to that, each car was custom built. All the pieces carefully fitted and no two were the same. It was costly and slow to make. You may be in a hand-crafted business where this makes sense. But in most cases, hitting sales targets is about scale. This includes leveraging everyone on your team, redefining what your team looks like, and having them bring their strengths to the business.

Even if you are a team of “one” – you have a much larger team than you may think. It could include suppliers, customers, people in your network, and adjacent businesses. Consider what you want to accomplish – your sales goal – and let’s explore the “how” to get there.

Three areas when combined will help you experience growth like you’ve never thought possible:

1)    Your Role & Strength – What is the strength you bring to the sales position? Not everyone is good at everything, and we all lean toward what we are good at. Are you a hunter or a farmer? Does the thrill of meeting new prospects bring you energy or do you avoid it at all costs? Are you a closer or hate asking for the order? Understand what you are good at and brings you energy. Find people in your “ecosystem” to fill the gaps and leverage their strengths. Should “you” even be in sales or better suited in running operations?

2)    Ecosystem – Your ecosystem can be inside the business or external. Some common functions within sales are Billing, Customer Success, Support, Presales, and Marketing. These functions can be part of your business or hired as an extension. Almost any function can be added externally. I am seeing a trend of “fractional” CxO and other similar roles. Need a marketing expert but not full-time, this could be an option. Not good at setting appointments, hire a team that will call and schedule appointments. Dislike paperwork, hire people to quote and handle billing. You get the idea – play to your strengths and find others that can fill the gaps you are not good at. If they enjoy what you don’t, you’re off to a great start!

Don’t forget about customers, suppliers, and adjacent businesses. Can you establish a referral network. Do you fill a gap for an adjacent business or them for you? Even a company as large as Microsoft has a network of partners and solutions to close gaps they have in their portfolio.

3)    Role Clarity – Equally important is role clarity. What is expected of everyone and what can they expect of you and each other. Without that – you will have more work and lower sales than if you went it alone! Getting expectations agreed to and measurements in place where possible, will prevent countless hours of finger pointing and blame. Worse yet, broken personal relationships and lost business.

Think through

Do you wake up every day enjoying what you do? Or are you procrastinating since what you feel you need to do – is important – but you don’t like to do it. Are you working on what gives you energy? Is your ecosystem working on what gives them energy? Did you find the correct people to work on the “important”? Anyone working on things that drain them, even if good at it, and will detract from the customer experience, least to attrition, and lower overall sales results.

I’d love to hear if you are building a factory or a car. Feel free to post comments or email them to me. Small Business, Big Lessons® – Remember, Build a Factory – if you’re not, it is a hobby!