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Sales: Optimize Positive Outcomes for your Customers!

"If people understand what needs to be done, almost anything can be accomplished."
Marilyn Marks

When Your Customer Wins, You Win

Everyone has experienced significant changes in the business landscape within the past year during this pandemic. Consider sales. These changes have impacted every sales department and every customer in some way. Forecasting sales during a pandemic may not likely yield reliable and valid results (McLeod, & Lotardo, 2020). It is possible, however, to utilize your time right now to empower the sales process throughout your organization to optimize results for your customers, and in turn, for your organization. You can achieve this by considering Customer Performance Indicators (CPI’s). Whether B2B or B2C, your customer is key to your success. You have many opportunities to create or build upon a meaningful relationship with your customer. When your customer wins, you win.

How Do Your Customer Performance Indicators Compare to Your Key Performance Indicators?

Making a sale is often just helping a customer solve a problem, rather than “selling,” specifically. What issue are you helping your customer to address? How do you help to problem solve? How do you make things easier for your customers? Is your organization truly customer-centric? How are you measuring this? So often, we measure what works for our companies through Key Performance Indicators, while the true customer focus and satisfaction can be best captured from Customer Performance Indicators (Cronfield, 2020). How do these compare with your Key Performance Indicators (Cronfield, 2020)?

Everyone is Included

Everyone on your team is involved in sales in your organization! Anyone who has contact with a customer at some level has an important role in this process. Is everyone engaged in this? Do your departments work together, or do silos exist? Do members in your firm feel confident and supported as they provide information?

Ask your customer what it is that they truly value as they engage with you. Does this correspond to your internal assessments?

This can be a key opportunity to support each other as a team and to strategize for success as we move forward into the New Year. This may be an excellent time to think strategically about your entire sales strategy as you consider how your customer is impacted. There are any number of ways you can measure this.

  • Do you have the right products specific to your customers’ needs?
  • How has your supply chain been affected this year?
  • How do you compare in pricing within your industry?
  • Is it convenient for your customer to work with you?
  • How quickly do you get back to your customers (Cornfield, 2020)?

Assessing and Communicating Your Value to Your Customer

Ask your customer for their feedback. How does it compare to your own internal assessment? As you develop more customer focus, you will be able to communicate how your organization drives value beyond price. This can also help you plan and prioritize for the year ahead, which especially important in terms of addressing your marketing and sales strategy, assessing new opportunities, and maximizing your budget. This will help you to stay efficient. You may also begin to notice new and innovative ideas from your team as well. Assess this on a quarterly basis next year to gauge how you are doing.

We are all living with great uncertainty right now in the midst of this pandemic, and it is difficult to make forecasts with any specific accuracy. Your customer is an integral part of your team. Having a proactive and thorough understanding of your individual customers and their needs is essential to customer loyalty. Find out what is really on their mind. Engage your team for ongoing success.

Woodland Strategies can assist you as you create your strategic narrative framework to help you connect with your customers. This will foster ongoing positive relationships with your customer base and create ambassadors for your brand. If you would like assistance with your sales strategy, please get in touch. Woodland Strategies is happy to help! You can find out more here.

Cornfield, G. “The Most Important Metrics You’re Not Tracking (Yet).” Harvard Business Review. Retrieved online May 1, 2020. https://hbr.org/2020/04/the-most-important-metrics-youre-not-tracking-yet. April 30, 2020. McLeod, L.E. and Lotardo, E. “Three Ways to Improve Sales Forecasts when the Future is Unclear” Harvard Business Review. Retrieved online September 15, 2020. https://hbr.org/2020/09/3-ways-to-improve-sales-forecasts-when-the-future-is-unclear. September 11, 2020.

This article or any other promotional material(s) from Woodland Strategies, Inc. is in no way intended to be a comprehensive plan.

Please note all markets, circumstances, and results vary. Any strategic plan or marketing initiatives must follow all State and Federal laws and regulations, accordingly.

Please contact us directly for a complete assessment and plan for your individual organizational needs.

Stewarding Your Stakeholder!

Imagine our surprise when we received a note from the Rochester Chamber of Commerce stating that Woodland Strategies would be welcomed through a promotion on a digital billboard in Rochester, MN on 41st Street right off of Highway 52!

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Your organization’s Value Proposition is your declaration that communicates the value of your product or service and why clients should buy or even care about this.

Navigating Change – How does Your Team Respond to Conflict?

At Woodland Strategies, we do facilitate the necessary space for our customers to navigate conflict in a productive space so that they can achieve results and move forward for their desired success.

Glossary of Strategic Planning Terms

The following list includes some – but not all – of the most common terms used in strategic planning. Many planners might have a different interpretation of a particular term, especially if they primarily use one model of strategic planning. The most important requirement around the use of strategic terms and concepts is that the facilitator and strategic planning leadership team share common interpretations from planning to conducting to implementation of the strategic planning process.