What I’m talking about here is forecasts that are accurate.

Accurate enough to base key decisions on, such as whether to order more materials now, in order to be able to meet potential future orders within your stated delivery or lead times.

Accurate enough to be able to decide if you are going to avoid some short-term cash flow issues, or if you need some short term injection of cash – really critical in the smaller business.

Accurate enough to be able to decide when to let employees – or yourself – have time off for vacation.

Many production and operational processes are predictable enough – you, as the business owner or manager, have sufficient control over what’s going on, under normal circumstances.

But what about the sales operation? I mean, customers are in control, ultimately. You can’t force somebody to buy something – not legally or ethically (these 2 aren’t always the same thing!).

Well, you can reduce the degree of uncertainty, ambiguity and complexity that often reduces the accuracy of forecasts, by employing a solid, proven process-based approach to every aspect of your sales operation, not just to what happens once you’ve closed the order…

It won’t guarantee you sales success, but it will increase your chances of sales success overall. You’ll still lose some. But you should win more – partly because you’re better at selecting opportunities with a better chance of success for you, and partly because you’re better at ‘working’ those opportunities to a successful conclusion. You’ll also more likely be winning business at higher rates of margin or profit. And none of this needs you to have additional sales resources – such as sales people – or having to work extra hours – quite the opposite, potentially.

In future posts I’ll be exploring what these processes look like and how you can implement them.

For the moment, let me leave you with a couple of useful hints…!

1. Identifying the key players in a purchase decision, and understanding their position – how they see the need (or not) for the purchase in the first place, and what business results and personal wins they are looking for…
2. Connecting your products, services and/or solutions, in the minds of each key player (especially the very influential ones in this sale), to their individual required business results and personal wins.
3. Being very aware of what gaps you have in your knowledge (especially relating to points 1 & 2 above), what assumptions you’ve made, and taking steps, by way of an explicit strategy and plan, to reduce the negative impacts of these gaps and other knowledge, and maximise the positive impacts…

That’s a hint at some of the ‘what’ that is to come in future posts. The ‘how’ also comes later!

Related posts:

1. Sales Process: Here is one question every business person wants an answer to There is one question every business person wants an answer...
2. Sales Funnel: Part 2 Part 2 of a short series on what a sales...
3. Sales Funnel: Part 3 A short series on what a sales funnel really is....

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And this is the first of those blogs.

You might think that the biggest challenge is finding a topic each and every day for 365 days – and actually, it’s not a problem (lucky I’m not doing this in a leap year – that extra day could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back…!)

Actually, the problem is writing something relatively brief yet having something useful in it. This is a particular challenge for me – I can easily write 35,000 words, as I did for my Masters thesis, but struggled with the 10,000 word limit I was set for the thesis…

Until I came across 2 wonderfully simple techniques, courtesy of Patrick Hare, a wonderful mentor, sadly now departed…

The first is the 4-MAT system by Bernice McCarthy (see http://www.aboutlearning.com/) – simply put, and slightly adapted, the 4-MAT system challenges you to consider the WHY, WHAT, HOW and (WHAT) IF of the subject. This approach covers the major learning & thinking styles & preferences of almost everybody. This means that the impact of your writing will be larger for each person, and will affect more people too – better breadth & depth of impact. It doesn’t mean you have to split your article or presentation in to 4 separate sections, 1 for each of the 4 areas, though many do and it works well. If you give it a go you’ll soon get the hang of it and notice results almost immediately. And if you do give it a go you can also begin to adapt it to your own style and strengths…

And the sharp eyed amongst you will have spotted that the previous paragraph covers these 4 areas also… 4-MAT in practice, even for just a paragraph…

The other tip Patrick shared with me is to simply ask myself – or a subject matter expert – what are just 3 things to know about the subject at hand. For example, with 4-MAT, there are just 3 things you need to know in order to put it in to immediate practice:

1. The first is that 4-MAT is a simple, powerful framework to help you quickly structure an article or presentation, no matter how big or small – you can even use it on each section in the article or presentation. This leads to a more effective outcome.
2. The second thing to know about 4-MAT is that it only comprises 4 elements or questions to consider – WHAT, WHY, HOW and (WHAT) If.
3. The third thing you need to know about 4-MAT is that you can consider each element in any depth – deep or shallow, and in any order. You don’t have to explicitly structure your work along the lines of the 4 elements, just so long as you cover all 4 elements – for maximum effect do so within the first 2 minutes of your presentation or the reader’s reading session.

And that’s it!

I came across the subject for my first piece of original content when I was bombarded recently by stack of stories about how everybody else seemed to be successful yet so many of my clients in the past had been frustrated by them.

Right, time I headed off to write the content for day 2 of my year of original content!

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