The List is Limited

There are only five ways to increase a business’ financial performance. They are as follows:
• Reduce expenses without reducing income(cheaper leads)
• Increase activity without reducing effectiveness (more contacts, same close rate)
• Increase conversion efficiency without increasing expenses (raise close rate)
• Increase value of each transaction (raise profit margins)
• Increase volume of each transaction (sell more to each buyer)

As a general rule, the first two paths are the most obvious but also the most difficult to acheive. Reducing lead cost is difficult because the providers of proven methods know what they are worth and the occasional successes found in the creative methods are offset by the more regular failures. If you do find something that works, other marketers will observe and copy your pattern which will erode its effectiveness. In slow economic times, leads are (by the definition of “slow times”) harder to get and will usually cost more in terms of money or effort.

Increasing contacts without decreasing effectiveness is called “motivation” and that is the daily task of management. To expect large gains from an already over-worked salesforce in this area would require the introduction of a new cultural mindset in your organization. If your organization is truly underperforming because of motivation, it is more likely that there is “an elephant in the room” that no one is willing to confront. The business will stagnate until the “elephant” is removed.

The Best Paths to Follow
The remaining three paths provide some real potential for gain. Increasing sales effectiveness by increasing the close rate, profit margin and average sale volume can be acheived through fine tuning and training. These topics will be discussed as part of this series in future article, so be sure to subscribe for updates. We will never "spam" you or give your information to others; we will simply let you know when we have something new.