Some Of the More Stupid Things I have done along the way:
So there I was the business losing money, staff turnover through the roof – remember I was still searching for the elusive one in seven successful sales people. So I started to grasp at straws – any straws!:
Networking groups
My experience of networking groups is that they can work quite well for sole traders particularly sole traders in trades. For example in the networking group I participated in there was one sub-group that had done very well for themselves – a plumber, carpenter, interior designer, painter. By definition one or other would be on a site – a new build house, an extension on a house, whatever and at the time they might see that the carpentry was unfinished. Hey presto I can recommend a good carpenter etc. etc.
For me referrals were few and far between and invariably very weak, really they just were one (very small!) step up from coldcalls. Also at the start I fond myself inundated with others within the group selling to me.
Part of the meeting that I was involved in required standing to publicly pass the business referrals at the meeting. After countless stand ups saying I have no referrals today and trying to say something nice about the meeting you find yourself buying off others in the group to avoid embarassment.
Then you find others doing the same back to you - so it sort of works! - just not how you want it to.
There are lots and lots of business networking groups out there. Remember these are money making activities and the organiser / umbrella group. Depending on the size of the network they can make lots of money in membership fees from the members. However, this might work for your business and may be worth a look.
So if you can stand getting out of bed early, being sold to by other members, returning regularly depressed then this could be the thing for you. However, if you are a sole trader in the trades then I actually have seen this type of networking group working quite well.
Some of the business meeting groups out there are
BNI, Business Over Breakfast, Small Business Referral Network, Business Referral Exchange but just google and you'll find lots.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Thursday, January 3, 2008
The "Business"
So off I went into the big bad world of B 2 B sales with my hands behind my back and leading with my chin.
An office was located, a handful of computers purchased. The attempt to hire sales staff began. The blind were leading the blind and having been told that the ideal sales methodology was telesales and I could expect a conversion rate of 10% what could go wrong?
After three months my erstwhile sales staff had made no sales. We followed everything the experts in head office told us with religious fervor but to no avail! There was no holy grail, no light at the end of the tunnel.
My pleas to the franchise head office were met with “to find a good sales person you need to keep trying as your success rate will only be about one in seven”. One in seven! What about all the expertise the expert sales training? I recruited from websites, I advertised, I used recruitment companies. I employed staff who could sell other procucts couldn't sell this!
But the product was good. We had no direct competitor and it worked. So the product was good but we couldn't sell it. I thought that "a good product would sell itself". I was so wrong mediocre products will sell well with good marketing, sales and advertising whilst the best product in the world won't sell without.
Then about six months into the process we got a list of previous purchasers who had purchased the product previously but had not purhcased again because of the lack of a local agent and poor service.
So could we sell to a group who were in general unhappy with the product?
Yes we could! Unbelieveable, we had lists of cold calls to people who needed our product (in our opinion) and whom we couldn't sell to and we had people who were unhappy with the product and who we could sell!
What was the difference between these groups. Well a number of things:
They had purchased before
They were open to the product
They were "qualified"
They had a need for the product
But the list soon ran out and we were back to where we were before – cold calling with no success.
We tried fax campaigns and had limited success usually bringing in more sales than the campaign cost. But we’ve got better at that – I’ll tell you more later!
We tried advertising and had no appreciable return – but we’ve got better at that too!
And mainly we tried continuing with what we had been told would work – cold calling, cold calling, cold calling. Thousands and thousands of calls and no significant success. But there was an upside we did generate lists of contacts. I didn’t know what to do with them but I do now!
But let me tell you about the misery first.
Month on month the business lost between €5k and €10k. Mainly in staff costs. The majority of your overhead walks out the door every evening at 5:00pm and if they are not selling, well you do the math.
I went through sales people like a bull in a china shop. No sales out, no sales fired, no sales out, no sales fired, the mood was depressing, the staff were depressed, I was depressed, passersby ran past our door in case they contracted the pervasive depression.
One in Seven to find a successful sales person – I think more like One in Seventy.
Then the crowing glory, I was advised by the head office that I should look at outsourcing the sales out to a third party specialist sales company. They had the ideal company which successfully sold the product in another country because they could sell, when clearly through my own ineptitude I couldn’t.
Stop I hear you cry don’t do it! But at this point I was so giddy and delusional with my continuing failure that I did it.
Guess what 3 months later I had a €20k bill and less than €0.5k of sales. So much for the sales experts!
So I needed to restructure everything or walk away.
An office was located, a handful of computers purchased. The attempt to hire sales staff began. The blind were leading the blind and having been told that the ideal sales methodology was telesales and I could expect a conversion rate of 10% what could go wrong?
After three months my erstwhile sales staff had made no sales. We followed everything the experts in head office told us with religious fervor but to no avail! There was no holy grail, no light at the end of the tunnel.
My pleas to the franchise head office were met with “to find a good sales person you need to keep trying as your success rate will only be about one in seven”. One in seven! What about all the expertise the expert sales training? I recruited from websites, I advertised, I used recruitment companies. I employed staff who could sell other procucts couldn't sell this!
But the product was good. We had no direct competitor and it worked. So the product was good but we couldn't sell it. I thought that "a good product would sell itself". I was so wrong mediocre products will sell well with good marketing, sales and advertising whilst the best product in the world won't sell without.
Then about six months into the process we got a list of previous purchasers who had purchased the product previously but had not purhcased again because of the lack of a local agent and poor service.
So could we sell to a group who were in general unhappy with the product?
Yes we could! Unbelieveable, we had lists of cold calls to people who needed our product (in our opinion) and whom we couldn't sell to and we had people who were unhappy with the product and who we could sell!
What was the difference between these groups. Well a number of things:
But the list soon ran out and we were back to where we were before – cold calling with no success.
We tried fax campaigns and had limited success usually bringing in more sales than the campaign cost. But we’ve got better at that – I’ll tell you more later!
We tried advertising and had no appreciable return – but we’ve got better at that too!
And mainly we tried continuing with what we had been told would work – cold calling, cold calling, cold calling. Thousands and thousands of calls and no significant success. But there was an upside we did generate lists of contacts. I didn’t know what to do with them but I do now!
But let me tell you about the misery first.
Month on month the business lost between €5k and €10k. Mainly in staff costs. The majority of your overhead walks out the door every evening at 5:00pm and if they are not selling, well you do the math.
I went through sales people like a bull in a china shop. No sales out, no sales fired, no sales out, no sales fired, the mood was depressing, the staff were depressed, I was depressed, passersby ran past our door in case they contracted the pervasive depression.
One in Seven to find a successful sales person – I think more like One in Seventy.
Then the crowing glory, I was advised by the head office that I should look at outsourcing the sales out to a third party specialist sales company. They had the ideal company which successfully sold the product in another country because they could sell, when clearly through my own ineptitude I couldn’t.
Stop I hear you cry don’t do it! But at this point I was so giddy and delusional with my continuing failure that I did it.
Guess what 3 months later I had a €20k bill and less than €0.5k of sales. So much for the sales experts!
So I needed to restructure everything or walk away.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
The Search for a Franchise
And so the search was on - how to find that elusive franchise. My requirements were simple:
An established product
A proven product
An established business model
Easy money (was I asking too much?)
Preferably with little work (yes I know its been drummed into us that hard work pays off in long run, but I prefer the concept of easy work paying off or my ultimate goal very little easy work paying off!)
Surely this wasn't to much to ask given that I had the money to purhcase that elusive exclusive franchise!
So hours and days spent trawling through the usual websites franchisedirect.co.uk, fdsfranchise.com, Franchise Pit-Stop, Franchise UK, Which Franchise The Franchise Magazine, Franchise World, etc etc etc
It does strike me that one of these "purchase a franchise" sites will soon start to franchise its own business model - "buy a business franchise to sell other business' franchises" - the ultimate pyramid scheme?
So long days were spent contemplating cooker cleaning franchises, childrens furniture franchises, dog grooming franchises, sushi franchises, drain cleaning franchises, bin cleaning franchises, golf franchises, online franchises, website building franchises, websearch optimiztion franchises, burger franchises, vegetarian burger franchises, vegan burger franchises................
Eventually I came across a B 2 B franchise long established in Europe but effectively untried in the UK and Ireland. It seemed to tick all those boxes.
Established for 20 years
Successful in many other countries
An established business model
Easy to sell
And so I jumped on a plane and travelled to the head office to meet the chief exectutive.
Lesson 1- I met the chief executive and in a minute had summed him up as someone I could easily steamroll over in a business meeting and get my way. I was right and I thought this was good!!!! - wrong wrong wrong!
I had approached the meeting as a normal business transaction and intended to get as much of their product / service for the least possible price - a "normal business transaction". Buying a franchise is not a "normal business transaction", when you buy a franchise you are not only getting an exclusive distribution area but you are also buying their corporate knowledge, their years of experience. Together that should stop you falling into the pitfalls that they fell into whilst building their business. My first mistake.
Lesson 2 The head office no longer ran a sales office themselves and they focussed purely on running the Franchising aspect of their business. The business founder had recently passed away. Business changes year to year, month to month, day to day, hour to hour - it is essential that the Franchisor runs some hands on offices themseves to keep them abreast of changes in their own business. This is paricularly true in sales and all business is sales
The head office was now divorced from the actual nuts and bolts of running their Franchise and relied on their franchisees to give them feedback as to what works and what doesn't!
Well guess what as a Franchisee if I work my butt off to develop new sales techniques or marketing plan, without help or support from the head office do I really want to share them with my head office. The same head office who charge me a royalty for every product unit I sell - what's in it for me! My second mistake.
Lesson 3 I believed it when they told me that the best method for selling the product was telesales, that conversion rates of 5-10% were possible. My third mistake.
So three significant mistakes when selecting my Franchise and developing my business plan. So now with both arms tied firmly behind my back I set off into the boxing match of B 2 B sales.
Surely this wasn't to much to ask given that I had the money to purhcase that elusive exclusive franchise!
So hours and days spent trawling through the usual websites franchisedirect.co.uk, fdsfranchise.com, Franchise Pit-Stop, Franchise UK, Which Franchise The Franchise Magazine, Franchise World, etc etc etc
It does strike me that one of these "purchase a franchise" sites will soon start to franchise its own business model - "buy a business franchise to sell other business' franchises" - the ultimate pyramid scheme?
So long days were spent contemplating cooker cleaning franchises, childrens furniture franchises, dog grooming franchises, sushi franchises, drain cleaning franchises, bin cleaning franchises, golf franchises, online franchises, website building franchises, websearch optimiztion franchises, burger franchises, vegetarian burger franchises, vegan burger franchises................
Eventually I came across a B 2 B franchise long established in Europe but effectively untried in the UK and Ireland. It seemed to tick all those boxes.
And so I jumped on a plane and travelled to the head office to meet the chief exectutive.
Lesson 1- I met the chief executive and in a minute had summed him up as someone I could easily steamroll over in a business meeting and get my way. I was right and I thought this was good!!!! - wrong wrong wrong!
I had approached the meeting as a normal business transaction and intended to get as much of their product / service for the least possible price - a "normal business transaction". Buying a franchise is not a "normal business transaction", when you buy a franchise you are not only getting an exclusive distribution area but you are also buying their corporate knowledge, their years of experience. Together that should stop you falling into the pitfalls that they fell into whilst building their business. My first mistake.
Lesson 2 The head office no longer ran a sales office themselves and they focussed purely on running the Franchising aspect of their business. The business founder had recently passed away. Business changes year to year, month to month, day to day, hour to hour - it is essential that the Franchisor runs some hands on offices themseves to keep them abreast of changes in their own business. This is paricularly true in sales and all business is sales
The head office was now divorced from the actual nuts and bolts of running their Franchise and relied on their franchisees to give them feedback as to what works and what doesn't!
Well guess what as a Franchisee if I work my butt off to develop new sales techniques or marketing plan, without help or support from the head office do I really want to share them with my head office. The same head office who charge me a royalty for every product unit I sell - what's in it for me! My second mistake.
Lesson 3 I believed it when they told me that the best method for selling the product was telesales, that conversion rates of 5-10% were possible. My third mistake.
So three significant mistakes when selecting my Franchise and developing my business plan. So now with both arms tied firmly behind my back I set off into the boxing match of B 2 B sales.
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