Kevin W. McCarthy

The Professor of On-Purpose

selling skills

Are You Thinking of Starting a Business?

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Economic tough times, job loss, greater expression, or the chance to be your own boss are just some of the reasons people start a business. The barriers to entry are relatively low and the opportunities for success often appear high.

The hurdles to success, however, are hidden at the start but invariably emerge. Be aware of what lies ahead and you increase your odds of winning.

Looking for some help with either starting or running your business?

On-Purpose Partners provides business advisory services. Our clients and customers have spanned from Founders and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies to wannabe entrepreneurs.

If your business is less than $2 million in sales, you can hire me to help you with our On-Purpose Executive Coaching.

Can’t afford much?

  • The On-Purpose Business Person is available in softcover or Kindle e-book.
  • The Service Model is an inexpensive tool to help you plan your business, anticipate what’s coming, and understand the relationships of one level of the business to the next. Order one, just one, because you can print more from the PDF.

Here’s the bottom line for your business start-up (or ongoing venture): invest the time to articulate your purpose, vision, missions, and values.

Until you know

  • who you are
  • why you are here
  • where you are going
  • and what’s important

you’re really at a major and costly strategic disadvantage.

When it comes to your small business start-up or ongoing enterprise, give yourself every advantage by being on-purpose.

 

Sales Growth? How Do I Improve it?

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Sales growth challenge?

What if you had a volunteer sales force spreading the word about your goods and services? Would your business grow? Of course it would. Unfortunately too many of us who are small business or solo owners aren’t clear in our minds about who we are, our ideal on-purpose customer, and our value proposition. In fact, we may not even have a workable mechanism to get paid for our goods and services.

You’re a few short questions away from having a sales force of people recommending your business and getting the sales growth you want. Write out your answer to The 3 Knows:

  1. Know who you are — identity.
  2. Know who you serve.
  3. Know how you profit or add value to your clients.

Equip people to help you build your business and be willing to ask for their help.

Try this sales growth exercise to see how on-purpose your team is.  Ask your 3 Knows of Sales Growthsales team and sales support to respond to The 3 Knows above.  Compare results and candidly assess how much alike or different the responses are.  This will help you gauge just how clearly communicate the core sales growth strategy is for your business.

Another option is to ask five customers or clients to respond. You’ll learn a lot about how easy it is for people to refer or recommend you.

Participate in the economy, but don’t go to the pity party.

A sure way to kill your sales growth (and business) is to blame the economy. Here’s an easy target for slumping sales. The only problem is that it is a distracting and useless exercise. Blame is a losing strategy. You don’t control the economy. U.S. Presidents think they do, but they don’t. Instead focus on items that are under your control and that help to increase sales growth. You do have a degree of control over your economy. Answer The 3 Knows.

Tough times are even tougher especially when we allow ourselves to get distracted from what we do best. In my engagements with business owners, sales persons, entrepreneurs, and executives with P&L responsibility, their greatest challenges are almost always self-inflicted. They just don’t know what they don’t know.

That’s the value of a business advisor, especially one who isn’t an industry insider. We see your business differently. We ask questions. We don’t assume to understand. We’re curious to find out what’s working, what isn’t, and why.

A poor economy reveals what boom times hide.

Use the season of a sluggish economy to strengthen the business by focusing on what is on-purpose. Again the 3 Knows matter big time here.

Test the first of the 3 Knows. Ask someone what they do. Chances are they’ll offer up their title or role, e.g. “I’m a banker,” “I’m a salesperson,” “I’m a health coach,” “I’m a business owner.” 

So what? 

This lazy response reflects an underlying strategic issue of identity confusion. Don’t expect people to understand what it is you do.

Create your DoDo Dialogue. Here’s a fast, easy way to more rapidly and meaningfully engage a volunteer word-of-mouth sales force to send you referrals and recommendations. All because you “bothered” to make their understanding of what you do easily memorable, relatable, and frankly, more exciting. Don’t network for business. Instead, go to equip your volunteer sales force. By the way, be sure to ask them about their 3 Knows first. You’ll have your turn to share.

Watch your sales grow as you equip and inform rather than network and hand out business cards.