How do you reboot your business in 2021?

Your business has successfully grown year over year for (you fill in the blank) years.

Your customer base has grown and over time you and your team developed systems and processes and procedures to give your customers the best buying experience and a healthy bottom-line for your shareholders. .

You wanted to invest more in digital marketing, improving your website, sales skills training and targeting new markets …but you were busy.

We can argue what month Covid-19 impacted most businesses and for the sake of keeping our conversations flowing lets just agree the impact of Covid-19 was felt by many businesses in March and April of 2020.

What did we experience?

Think about all the changes and new processes and procedures.

How have your buyers adapted to the constraints of Covid-19?

Prior to 2020 approximately 45% of all sales occurred virtually not face-to-face. Fast forward to December of 2020 and 96% of sales occurred virtually.

Prior to Covid-19 as much as 76% of the buying process was over before buyers spoke with a salesperson.

On a call with the leadership team at a mid market manufacturer this week I was asked: How do we write a sales plan for 2021 in a time of so much change and uncertainty?

My advice? …Reboot your business!

If you were to launch your business today what would it look like?

Chances are you would use the same process someone used when they first launched your business.

1. Clearly understand your current market, buyers and how buyers make decisions
2. Look for urgent common unresolved market problems
3. Design products and solutions to solve your buyers problems
4. Create processes, systems, and procedures to help people with those problems find you
5. Create processes, systems, and procedures to help your team deliver the greatest return on customer experience
6. Constantly listen to your markets, buyers and targeted new buyers sensing any shifts in how they buy, the criteria they use to buy and adapt quickly
7. Measure what matters – you have identified what is important to your customers and the behaviors your team must execute to win business and meet your shareholder expectations

Do you need to reboot your business in 2021?

Maybe you are one of those blessed organizations that had record sales and profit year and your biggest challenges are how do we beat sales and profits in 2020?

The best research I have seen shared approximately 50% of business saw a sales decrease in 2020 of 4% to 35% while the other 50% of businesses realized sales similar or greater than the prior year.

If you want to reboot your business where do you start?

Data!

The first data sets we need to see is sales transaction data and strategically analyze that data. What customers realized sales increases, what markets are they in? What products had sales increases and what products declined? Who are the 20% of our customers that represented 150% to 200% of our net profits and who were the 20% of customers that were profit-leaking accounts?

Second we need to engage with our customers and accounts we want to be customers with voice of the customer research. How are your buyers buying today? Where do they turn for new solutions for current problems? What criteria must that have to make a buying decision? Of your current customers who are your raving fans, and what customers are you in jeopardy of losing if things don’t change?

Last we need to improve the skills of our salespeople. We must assess the overall sales effectiveness of our sales team, systems, and process and close any gaps we discover.

One you have the above data sets you have what your team needs to strategically reboot your business in 2021 and have a profitable year.

I have led a number of teams through this process over the past 36 years and if your team would like to explore rebooting your business for a profitable 2021 let’s schedule a call.