A New Year...A New Plan of Action!

"An empowered organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success." - Stephen Covey

● Better sales performance
● Better team commitment
● Better customer communications
● Better bottom line results

A Checklist for bringing it all together!

Manager's 2010 Checklist

√ Emphasize accountabilty—establish accountability guidelines and/or diligently enforce the ones you already have in place. Individuals/teams should always be held in check for meeting job responsibilities and performance standards.

√ Stop making excuses and start reaching out and ‘touching’ your customers more often--via regularly scheduled customer campaigns, phone blitzes, marketing promos, surveys, web conferences,
in-house invites, email broadcasts, etc.

√ Listen to your customers and listen intently—learn from and proactively respond to their feedback and concerns. Go above and beyond to deliver what they ask for—-not what you think they need!

√ Follow up and follow through. Follow up and follow through (worth repeating!) No customer, prospect, or lead should be left unattended, untouched or unassigned...period!

√ Never compromise on: (a) Product or service quality; (b) Sales training and skills building (c) Ways to better serve your customers.

√ Meet with your Reps/team often for the purpose of lending support and channeling success. Do not allow meetings to become a forum for incessant complaining and negativity. Everyone should take a personal stake in responding to each goal, challenge and opportunity with a 'can do' attitude.

√ Rid yourself of dead weight—unproductive, complacent and substandard performers. If all training/coaching/disciplinary efforts have failed; if other team members are being adversely impacted; if productivity is minimal to non-existence; if there has been little performance improvement for a 6-8 month period—then you are committing a tremendous disservice to your sales effort. Time to cut your losses and move on!

√ Stop watering dead plants! Perform a database/pipeline ‘detox’ by purging aged (5+years) customer/prospect records—this includes customers who have ceased doing business with you; duplicate files; and prospects who have consistently avoided making a commitment. There’s a 99.9% chance that they will never buy from you. Place your focus instead on cultivating prospects/customers who will grow your business...refer your business...and remain loyal to your business.

Study these Checklist recommendations and keep them on your strategic radar--making sure you are on track for your most excellent and productive sales/telemarketing year.

May the months ahead bring rewards of economic health, sales growth and professional success.

May this new year afford greater opportunities and prosperity for you, your team and your business.

Happy New Year one and all!