Corporate Insider: A HEALTHY START TO YOUR BUSINESS YEAR

                           By Bunmi Jembola

Whether you are a CEO, CMO, CSO, VP of Sales or just a sales rep one thing you want to do is get started the proper way this year. It will be most unprofessional to just start the New Year without a proper appraisal of the last.

Here are seven things you should check in reviewing last year so you can have a better business year.

1. Take a Budget Appraisal– When you started last year; a budget was cut for you. Whether or not your organization appraises you, appraise yourself. And the blessing here is that you can be more honest with yourself. The reason for this is simple; you want to be able to focus more on your strengths this year. As a banker it was a lot easier for me to mobilize demand deposit and get contingent liabilities than other deliverables. My budgets were thus usually skewed more in favor of CASA. If your organization allows you to do your budget yourself this will be helpful and if they don’t you should be able to walk up to Performance Management Unit and explain your strength and ask for a budget skewed more towards KPIs that play to your strength. In a sane organization they’ll allow you to play to your strength. Budgeting is where your success or failure begins.
2. Do Deal Examination– While you examine the deals you did in 2017 you need to group them under 3 categories- size, sector and ease. You should do a case by case analysis of your five to ten best deals. What made them easy? What helped you to close them? What did you say? Who was involved in the process? Why would it have slipped? You must identify the sectors where you enjoyed relative ease of deals closure. Examine why some other deals did not close. And please do this: Reach out to the prospects that disappointed you the most. I’m talking here about deals that almost closed and then slipped. Ask the prospects genuine questions about why they eventually did not buy. You may let them know this is part of your yearly personal improvement procedure so they can be encouraged to tell you the whole truth.
3. Competence Assessment– Now, you must be really honest with yourself here: How competent are you at selling? How better are you this year than the last? What parts of the sales process are you very good at? Are you an excellent opener or a perfect closer? You should know. Sales managers and other seniors need to take particular notice of these differences and be guided by them in the deployment of sales talents. There are reps that do a lot better at opening than closing.
4. Customer Appraisal– For prospects whom you have converted to customer you should ask the following questions:

• Do they make repeat sales after initial purchases
• What is the trend of growth of your revenue per customer- is it positive or negative? Are you able to retain customers long term?

Who are your best customers? What is their sector, age, level of……

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