So, when is it really okay to accept a drop in Sales?

There is a simple but tough answer to this question, which is never.

It may seem like a blunt response and a lot of people will come up with a lot of reasons why the above statement is not true. Some of the answers we have heard from our clients as reasons why their sales drop for a period are as follows;

1. I work with builders and they are on holidays for six weeks over Christmas so the whole industry shuts down.
2. It was the Global Financial Crisis and everyone was doing it tough.
3. I work with business people and they are not at work over Christmas so therefore I can’t make money in January.
4. We can’t find enough sales people to grow the business.
5. We sell plants and people don’t spend time in the gardens over the Winter.

I am sure there were some people that read these reasons and thought “but hang on, they all make sense, some businesses are seasonal and you can’t control everything”.

Let’s have a closer look at these answers.

“I work with builders and they are on holidays for six weeks over Christmas so the whole industry shuts down.”

This quote comes from a client of ours who is a window cleaner and cleans new houses when they are built. He spent a number of years with no work from mid December until the end of January when the building industry went on holidays. One year we sat down with him in January and said “OK, So what is your plan to avoid this happening next year?” He had a look at what opportunities there are and came up with a couple. One of them was to promote to schools, as they were usually cleaned over Christmas and were similar work to what he was set up to do. He then sent out a lot of promotional material and now one of his most busiest periods is during December and January.

“It was the Global Financial Crisis and everyone was doing it tough.”

This came from a Recruitment Consultant in Melbourne. The truth is our recruitment business – “Exelect Recruitment” had its best ever month of the time in November 2008 and we later found out that job ads fell 50% that month on the year before. If you think about it, Exelect grew during the so-called “Global Financial Crisis”. Unless you are a company the size of Coles or if the market you are working in gets smaller you will only be affected if your results are no good.

“I work with business people and they are not at work over Christmas so therefore I can’t make money in January.”

This client managed to work out how to solve this problem each year in two ways. The first method is that he asks all of his clients in November who is taking holidays and if they are not he books them in for appointments over the break. The second method is that he makes sure he has home phone numbers and not work ones to call in December/ January. Again the Christmas period is now his best sales period.

“We can’t find enough sales people to grow the business.”

This one will affect sales, I agree. With the client who said this, we worked out a plan to find more sales people for him and now he has to hire more technicians to keep up with all of the work.

“We sell plants and people don’t spend time in the gardens over the Winter.”

This client looked at the mix of products they were selling and decided to introduce indoor plants and accessories and promoted them to increase their sales in Winter. Last year was their busiest Winter ever.

Overall it is important to realise that there are a lot of opinions and ideas that float around such as the ones that have been included above that aren’t very helpful to your business if you look at them.

If you want to increase your sales or any area of your business,
as a business owner or manager it is your job to look outside the usual and find a solution.

So build your team by hiring productive and easy to manage staff, give them the basic training needed to help them get established and manage them by their results and statistics to create a productive atmosphere.

This way you can also ensure your only reason for losing sleep at night is because of the excitement up ahead and the expansion awaiting your business!

We’re always open to your feedback and knowing how we can help, so call now on 1800 603 023 or email info@performia.com.au if you need support in any area of your business.

We wish you lots of great production and success!

Negar Riazati
General Manager

Performia Australia
Ph: 1800 603 023
Negar@performia.com.au

©2010 Performia Australia Pty Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

The 7 Deadly Sins of Recruiting [Part 3]

Today is my third blog on what deadly mistakes you can make when hiring someone. Last week we looked at the issue of focussing on the wrong thing while hiring, which is a very common problem. This week we are going to look at something which usually takes a lot of practise to learn: how to avoid the meaningless filler people tell you in interviews and get to the important stuff that will show you whether you should hire a person. This is essential to be able to successfully Build Your Team.

So I’ve created this seven part series on what NOT TO DO when hiring a new staff member:

 1.       Making the job ad too good to be true.

 2.       Focussing on education, “experience” and

other wastes of time.

 3.       Listening but not looking.

 4.       Let’s find someone just like me!

 5.       Making personality a priority.

 6.       Not reference checking.

 7.       Losing the right candidate by not acting fast enough.

THE THIRD DEADLY SIN: Listening but not looking.

This is insanely important. In fact, once you have read this blog perhaps you will see how important it is to apply to managing staff and just about everything else in business.

What you want to find out is usually right there in front of you if you decided to really look. You want to look and find out FACTS not just hear how a person can sell themselves. A person can give you a lot of babble about how good he is, what he has done, how busy he was, and how important he was to the company. The problem is what does busy mean? What does important mean? And pretty soon you realise a lot of these things are based on opinion.

So when you are hiring someone don’t just hear all the “reasons” you should hire this person, but look for the results that the person has produced.  I’ll give you an example, you have two sales people: one is sitting on the computer playing with facebook and the other is running around, super busy, working twice the amount of hours, telling people about all the new potential clients he has got and constantly on the phone. Who would you prefer in your company?

The answer is you don’t have enough information. The guy on facebook might have closed a $3mill sale ever day for the last month and so takes most of the day off and the other guy could have not even got an appointment. On the other hand, the salesman on facebook might be trying to avoid work and the other guy is putting in extra effort to beat his weekly sales record.

So if you are going to hire a person, look for the facts you can verify, the sales the person has made or result he has produced. If those are good, sure you can listen to the rest of it but until you know the raw data on his production, I wouldn’t waste my time.

Alexander Bell
National Course Supervisor
Performia Australia
alex@performia.com.au
Ph: 1800 603 023

©2011 Performia Australia Pty Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Performia Australiais part of an international business that are experts on helping business owners and managers know how to get the best results from their staff as well as recruit the most productive people to business.

Build Your Team is a revolutionary course which allows business to get more productivity from their staff and hire people who will they know will be exceptional performers.

The 7 Deadly Sins of Recruiting [part 2]

Having spoken to many HR Mangers, General Managers and Business Owners I have trained on how to hire really effective and valuable employees, I have noticed there are a lot of common ideas concerning what to look for in an interview. Unfortunately, a lot of these concepts are built upon preconceived notions that certain qualities are necessary in a candidate in order for them to be considered for hiring – and many of these notions are not based on fact or what really works. In the end who really cares if a person seems like a great guy, can sell himself or wears a nice tie if he doesn’t get soaring results that make the company and his department prosper and grow?

So I’ve created this seven part series on what NOT TO DO when hiring a new staff member:

1.       Making the job ad too good to be true.
 
2.       Focussing on education, “experience” and other wastes of time.
 
3.       Listening but not looking.
 
4.       Let’s find someone just like me!
 
5.       Making personality a priority.
 
6.       Not reference checking.
 
7.       Losing the right candidate by not acting fast enough.

THE SECOND DEADLY SIN: Focussing on education, “experience” and other wastes of time.

Simply, how many engineer graduates have you met who have the ability to build a bridge right after they finish their final exam? How many successful people credit their MBA for their success?

Don’t get me wrong, education and training is important – but only to the degree a person applies the knowledge and subsequently gets results from it. I know from experience, most of the most successful people I’ve come across didn’t even make it all the way through high school, let alone university. If you look at the top 100 most successful people in the country, you will see my observation is supported.  Ironically, they demand their employees to have a university degree!

The other credential is often experience, “We need a sales manager of 15 years experience!” Experience in what though? You might find someone who has spent the last 15 years putting the company into debt, or even that he relies on his staff to bring in the results and personally doesn’t contribute a thing. To make this point even more clear, who would you prefer: Richard Branson at age 21 with little experience or a guy who has been a nation sales manager for 20 years and only got mediocre results?

These aspects of a person’s job history may give some insight into their ability but it doesn’t prove that they will come into you company and increase sales by 50% in the next 6 months. The key to know this is the results a person has achieved in the past. You want to see what difference has this person made in their previous roles. By knowing that a person has successfully added substantial value in their previous roles, this is the best indicator to know whether they can produce in your company.

Picture this; we hired a telemarketer for a client a while back. He had never done telemarketing before, didn’t like change, no university education, was quiet, didn’t promote himself and seemed quiet nervous. Not the perfect fit for a telemarketer you would think. However, he previously managed a business and increased profit by 30% in a year – real results. This guy got into the company and in the 5 days got 10 appointments from cold calls, and these people were interested in making investments upwards of $500k.

The point is who cares about education, experience and looks. You can train a person to do a job but you can’t train someone to be productive. So sure, these factors may play a role in who you are going to hire but the first thing you need to be sure of is that they can produce results.

Part 3. Listening but not looking, next week

Alexander Bell

National Training Supervisor

Performia Australia