Start Up Kids Line

Managing the Sales Cycle to Increase Sales

May 8th, 2007

So, today I started using Business Contact Manager in Outlook. I’m finally starting to monitor and standardize my sales process. From first email pitch to getting the close. So, I’m starting to use MS Outlook Business Contact Manager and it isn’t as great as I thought it was. Just the other day, I came across an article on great free software that would help any and every business owner. Now, I hope I can find that article again, because it had a link to a free sales management tool. Just want something that tracks the sales cycle for me and gives me reminders of what the heck I’m supposed to be doing on any given day.

I’m trying to implement a method to the madness. Catalog goes out – follow up x amount of days later – and these follow-ups are actually schedule on my calendar. I never wanted to be a sales person. Here I am, making it my number one priority because it is just where we’re at in our business. Unless we get some miraculous financing, it’s me doing the sales. I know that we should get a sales person, but I need to build up enough of a business that I’m able to handle (financially) the amount of orders a dedicated salesperson would bring in.

But, this is not far in the future, and we already have a cool lady who is on board and ready to start when we are. This is where goals comes into play. I should make that my next task – to sit down and set some concrete goals for sales. I need to learn sales forecasting, and how would I know what sort of quotas to set for a sales associate if I did have one?

I have confidence in myself, I can do this. (This is part of the daily pep talk I give myself to keep going). A consistent pattern will increase our sales greatly – everyday requested catalogs are going out, pitch emails and pitch postcards are going out, follow-up phone calls are being made, and boutique appointments are happening. I can do this, I believe in myself. I’ll keep you posted as to how it’s going – but my number of hits and contacts is already increasing tenfold, so there’s no way it won’t help. Talking up the business; we’re in the “talking up the business” phase.

Congrats to my husband who just coached his team to league champions – and he deserves a BIG congrats. It was a great game, and I also owe my kids a big thanks for hanging in there and being really good, which meant I actually got to watch most of the game!

          

Entry Filed under: Sales & Marketing