Why a Sales Surge? Whether you're in Financial Services, Food Services, Home Security, Real Estate, or any industry with a sales focus, this guide is designed to help you and your team collectively hit your targets. It's not just about meeting deadlines; it's about creating a culture of continuous improvement, collaboration, and fun that elevates your team's performance.

Does your life ever feel like a whirlwind and it’s passing you by?

It can be challenging to move forward on your life’s goals and dreams if you don’t make space for them.

Creating the conditions to live your life by design and build a business intentionally is not impossible amongst your other responsibilities.

But building a sustainable business takes time.

And it’s easy to become impatient.

But if you take the steps and put the structure in place, the rewards will start to show up - even before you‘re finished.

Has this ever happened to you?

You’re looking at your numbers and year over year, you don’t see any movement in your top-line revenue?

This could be an indication that your business is overly dependent on YOU for its sales.

You might think - of course - I’m the only one who can do sales! — and there’s the issue. For companies with teams there are more options to have others involved in connecting with customers and owning a piece of sales.

For soloprenuers, there are other considerations but there are definitely things to consider and focus on for both types of business owners to get you moving in the right direction.

Listen in for what those are…

There’s much talk these days about a recession and what that could mean for our own businesses. Recessions can be tough for some and yet others thrive. What’s the secret? Is there one?

In my research I’ve identified strategies that can help businesses not only survive, but thrive during economic downturns.

What I found can be summed up in three main areas:

Growing your business can be fun, challenging, rewarding and all-encompassing. It can also feel frustrating, never-enough and like spinning your wheels.

An interesting question to consider if you have aspirations to expand is: how are you measuring growth?

There’s the traditional metrics of using revenue and profit. Those are great measures.

However, measuring growing using only the metric of growing top-line sales is using a very narrow lense.

AND these metrics are lagging indicators. They are the result of the activities you’re engaging in.

What are your leading indicators? (These are the actions you’re taking that LEAD TO the results you’re looking for.)

How easy is it for you to find time and space in your calendar to work on the really important things to you?

You know, the things that will advance your business or improve how you work?

Here’s a thought.

What if the act of creating space for meaningful work is just as powerful as the space itself?

If creating space in your business feels like a big lift, I want to invite you to think about how the practice of creating time and space for important initiatives is a fundamental skill a founder and owner can cultivate.

We can all relate to the owner that wears all the hats. Bookkeeping, Sales, Customer Service, Leader, HR, Manager, etc. You may be at this stage right now.

Even when you have team members occupying these roles, the work of an owner and founder is rarely a calendar of open space.

However, the owner and founder that is able to create some white space is the one that goes farther. Their companies seem to advance, evolve and grow further…

Have you ever thought about what it would be like to sell your business?

Or, hand it over to a family member who now works, or will be working, in your company?

Is this something you know you’d like to do in the future…or does it feel more abstract and you have no idea how to make it happen?

We’ve all heard stories of successful businesses, passed down to the next generation who have failed the business in some way.

While we can’t predict what a new owner might do - whether that’s a buyer or your own family member we CAN prepare our business the best we can so it operates well, setting the new owner, existing employees and existing customers up for success.

AND there’s a way to do all this so you enjoy the benefits now even before you are ready to transition.

You've likely heard the adage that it’s far easier to cross-sell an existing customer a new product than it is to find a new customer. And if your goal is to grow at all costs, then cross-selling makes sense.

However, all of that sales growth may not do much for the value of your company. If you cross-sell your existing customers too much, it could make your business far less valuable.

When you cross-sell a customer so many products and services that they begin to account for more than 15–30% of your revenue, expect your value to drop. If a single customer represents more than 30% of your sales, expect an even deeper discount.

Customer concentration is one factor that makes up your score on the ValueBuilder assessment — it’s one of eight drivers that’s behind the research determining your business's value in an acquirer's eyes…

There’s a relationship between the value of your business and the time you spend IN your business.

First - what is value to you?

What I hear from my clients is that value means you get to meet your financial expectations through your business.

Value also means that it supports their lifestyle expectations.

And, it fulfills them at a deeper level

When it comes to your business, value also means how it can be viewed from an outside perspective. Is it valuable to someone else who might purchase your business one day?

Consider this…

There are a number of metrics as a business owner for you to consider in the running of your business: revenue, pricing, expenses, profit, but there’s another important piece to knowing your numbers.

Understanding your cash flow.

Cash flowing through your business is like water flowing through a river; if it dries up, the environment around that river dries up and suffers.

You could have sales going through your business, but there’s a timing to cash flow and if that timing is off, it could hand-tie your business, inhibiting growth. If cash is running like that flowing river, then you have enough to fund growth and allow your business the flexibility it needs to operate.

The considerations that go into cash flow are largely around the timing of when money comes and money flows out, and ensuring there’s more coming in than going out.

For money coming in, consider things like…

If you’ve often wondered how you can get your team working towards goals with the same sense of urgency that you have — you are not alone.

As a leader, meeting deadlines and goals are important, and yet you can’t accomplish this unless you have the whole team on board.

So what do you do when everyone isn’t on board? Or, have the same sense of urgency that you do?

Being ‘Out of sight and out of mind’ is a killer when you’re trying to build and serve in your business.

Typically only a small percentage of your target market is ready to buy at any one time. So, staying in touch and developing relationships helps you stay ‘top of mind’ when your customers are ready for your product or service.

Because, when they are ready to buy….you’d like them to immediately think of you!

So, consider this….how can you stay in relationship with your potential buyers/clients in a way that adds value?

I’ve been paying a lot of attention to conversations that highlight the challenges and needs that are surfacing right now. These conversations take place in my client interactions but also with my network and beyond.

What I’ve been seeing is that you are evaluating how you’re moving forward over the next few months. Whether it’s deciding what services or products to offer now or how you will position or sell your services and products.

Businesses are looking at re-opening guidelines and looking to their provincial and state mandates to see what that means for them and how they can continue to operate or re-open (if they’ve been closed through this).

In addition to that, I see you wondering about what this means for your existing services and products and questioning how to get these in front of your clients over the next few months. What’s appropriate as a business? How can I continue to be viable? How can I continue to strive to hit certain business goals?

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I would share the year-end review that I conduct in my business to close out one year and move forward in the next.

By sharing my process I hope this supports you to hone in on what’s important in your business. 

My mission is to help Leaders and Business Owners create sustainable businesses. In order to create a sustainable business, knowing the metrics that convey the health in your business is so important. This way you spot problem areas that need to be addressed and successes that you can leverage or lean into.

If you chose to grow your business, you know whether or not you have a healthy foundation in which to do so.

I like to keep it simple.

In my years of working as a sales professional and teaching sales at a Fortune 500 company, I've seen people held back by their own self-diagnosed assessments that they 'can't sell' or don't know 'how to sell'. 

I now coach people who are promoting their small businesses or in career transition and I've seen trends that can make a big impact to your personal sales process (whether selling your skills, product or service).

This chance encounter was not so 'by chance'. And, it reinforced a concept that I learned early on in my sales career...

There’s an event that takes place around this time of year that can fill us with a mixture of both positive anticipation and dread.