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Welcome to “Connect and Convert,” the series that unveils the secrets to small business sales success. In this episode, hosts Dave Salter and Dennis Collins shed light on the challenges faced by small business owners in recognizing sales problems and providing actionable steps to address them effectively.

Drawing from experience and real-life examples, they emphasize the importance of early detection and offer practical solutions. They guide business owners through a step-by-step process to conduct a comprehensive sales audit, assess accountability and rewards systems, and seek external feedback through secret shopping and customer conversations.

It’s time to learn the tools and strategies to navigate your sales landscape and achieve remarkable growth.

 

Dave Salter:
Hi, I’m Dave Salter, and you’ve landed on Connect and Convert, the podcast where we share insider secrets for small business sales success. I’m joined today, as always, by Dennis Collins. Dennis is our resident rockstar sales training expert. He’s been successfully training salespeople for about 153 years. Dennis, good to see you. How are you doing today?

Dennis Collins:
I’m doing well, Dave. I hope you are as well.

Dave Salter:
I am as well. Yeah, what we got, Dennis, I have to tell you, I learned too many things the hard way.

Dennis Collins:
Don’t we all? Gee whizz. I could give you a long list of things. I’m still learning the hard way.

Dave Salter:
So take for example the first car I bought when I got my first job when I got out of college. So I had this car for about a year or so, and I started hearing this deep grinding noise. I have no idea where it’s coming from. My dad was an engineer, he was a car guy. So of course, I’m looking for fluid leaky fluids. I’ve got the hood up on the thing, not having any idea what I’m looking for. And I don’t see anything askew under the hood. I don’t see anything leaking, so I keep driving the damn thing.

Long story short I find out the hard way thousands of dollars for a new brake job. My rotors were shot, my rotors were grinding, but they were so far shot they were grinding into the drum. So anyway, like a few thousand dollars worth of a brake job. And I didn’t know what I didn’t know, obviously. And we see small business owners are a lot like that when it comes to sales, aren’t they?

Dennis Collins:
I am continuously surprised, Dave, at how many owner-operated businesses are not seeing the early warning signs. I live in hurricane country, so I’ve been in hurricane country for a long time, and thankfully we get early warning signs of a hurricane because it is important to protect yourself.

But what are the early warning signs of a sales problem? Often, from what I’ve seen, it’s already too late. A catastrophic failure has happened. The early warning signs weren’t observed, and now it’s a big problem. Just like your car.

Dave Salter:
Yeah. And only 30% of small business owners hit or over-deliver on their revenue target. So today we’re gonna talk about how to know if you might have a sales problem. And it’s really interesting to me Dennis, because as you said, a lot of times, it’s too late when the business owner realizes he’s got a problem.

So talk a little bit about why business owners may have that difficulty seeing that problem. And then we’ll go from there.

Dennis Collins:
There are a number of issues. The first issue that I see is a lot of business owners, and founders, are trying to be the DIY sales manager. “Hey, this is my business. I understand the business. I can be a sales manager. I can do this.”

And what a great intention, shall we say, but usually it’s the wrong intention. How many red flags can a business owner respond to on any given day? In sales, there are red flags in operations, there are red flags in accounting. How many red flags can you get to in one day? Okay, so if you’re trying to do all these jobs as an owner, it fails. I’ve seen it happen dozens of times.

When you start experiencing that steady decline in sales, guess what? It’s too late. The hurricane has hit your shores, okay?

Dave Salter:
You’ve got a sort of a top 10 list, if you will. And you, as you talked about I was gonna use that example as well. You know, we look at the weather channel all the time to see when the next storm is coming or the next bad weathermaker, if you will. And what are some of the early warning signs that a sales storm is about to strike?

Dennis Collins:
Yeah, this reminds me of Jeff Foxworthy; “You might be a redneck if.” No, I’ve been down that road. We’re not gonna do that today, but I am gonna say high turnover — if you are experiencing extraordinarily high turnover. You just may have a sales problem and you also may have to worry a lot more about just replacing people.

There may be some other issues. How about the slow season that never speeds up? You know, I talk, I talked to business owners. “Well, we’re in our slow season right now”, and six months later I talk. Yeah, we’re in our slow season right now. Well, that’s what you said six months ago. A slow season. That never speeds up.

How about your sales leadership and your accountability? Is it a plus or a minus? Is your sales leadership helping you or hurting you?

What’s your accountability? What are people responsible for? Who holds them responsible? What happens when they do perform well and they don’t perform well?

How’s your cash flow? Hey, my kids used to ask me that, Hey, dad, how’s your flow? Well, how is your flow? I mean, if you have a problem with cash flow, you probably have a sales problem.

Where are your prices? Your prices are just right, too high or too low. Too low: you have a sales problem. Too high: you have a sales problem. We’ve gotta get the pricing just right.

The wrong customers? Are you chasing the wrong customers? I have had salespeople in the past who thought everyone was a prospect. Everyone is a prospect. Well, not true if everyone’s a prospect, no one’s a prospect. So what do we do? In sales training? We teach people how to qualify a prospect. It depends on the industry, but we might have five or six elements of qualification. Maybe the intake person on the phone who’s making the appointments does it? Maybe the salesperson does it. Somebody’s gotta do it.

Okay. What I’ve done in the past with clients is build, what’s called the I-C-P, the ideal customer profile. Who is that person that is the most ideal prospect to become a customer? There are all kinds of ways to do this, but if your business is not focusing on the most likely prospects to buy, you may have a sales problem.

Dave Salter:
I love that. I love the process you’ve set up. You’ve got a couple more bullet points on your top 10. Why don’t you finish those off?

Dennis Collins:
Yeah, how’s your communication? How’s the communication in your business up and down the business? Are ideas flowing from staff up and from leadership down? And how are your communications with your customers? Do customers get instant responses to their problems? If you aren’t. If you don’t have a good communications program, you do have a sales problem. Lack of standards. I am shocked, I am shocked, Dave, in this day and age of the number of small businesses that don’t have accountability for their salespeople. “Oh, just go sell, make some sales.”

Dave Salter:
So they have no targeted goals.

Dennis Collins:
No targeted goals. Sad but true. Last but not least, and this is the biggie. You may have a sales problem if the right people are not on the bus. Thank you to Jim Collins. No relation to writing that book all those years ago. Are the right people on the bus? Do you have the right people? That’s a tough one, but I would say in at least 50% of the cases that I’ve consulted, I would say 50% have the wrong people on the bus.

Dave Salter:
So Dennis, let’s for instance, say you’re a small business owner and you sort of in your gut, you see a couple of these problems on the horizon. Maybe the situation isn’t catastrophic at this point but you’ve got some problems. So if you are that business owner and maybe you’re catching it before it’s too late what would you recommend that business owner do before the business tanks?

Dennis Collins:
First thing, Dave, take a step back. Take a step back, do an audit, and spend some time in the sales department. Okay? See what’s going on. Acknowledge that you don’t know what to look for. I am not knowledgeable about sales. What should I look for? Find out what to look for. Review your accountability and rewards programs. That which gets measured and rewarded or punished is your culture. That becomes your culture.

Dave Salter:
Can you explain that a little bit, Dennis? What’s a rewards program?

Dennis Collins:
How do you pay, how do you compensate your people? You would be surprised at how many small businesses don’t have a comp plan that’s in line with their culture, with their top-line goals. They’ve gotta be lined up. Okay? What do you reward people for? What do you not reward people for? What consequences are there for not performing? If there’s no consequence, then there’s no standard. Likewise, if there’s no reward for the performance that you want, clearly define what you want and reward it. That’s what keeps things happening.

Dave Salter:
Beautiful. You’ve got a couple more ideas on this.

Dennis Collins:
Ask another trusted business owner. So maybe you have a friend, a colleague, in the same or other business. Ask them to maybe become a secret shopper. Maybe call in and pretend to be a customer and see how they’re treated. Talk to your customers. How many of us ever talk to our customers after the sale? After the sale. Follow up. Talk to the happy customers. Talk to the unhappy customers.

Work with a coach or consultant. It’s very hard to see what’s going on when you’re inside the bottle. Get somebody outside the bottle. A coach can help you. And of course, contact your Wizard of Ads Employee Optimization and Sales RX team. That’s what we do. We have a product called Sales Scan which we can use in your business to answer all these questions to help you identify those early warning signs.

Dave Salter:
What I heard from you today is that oftentimes small business owners don’t realize they have a sales problem until it’s too late. You gave us some really good indicators of what some of those problems could be, and then also some really good solutions. So 25 years ago, my youngest daughter convinced me to coach her five-year-old soccer team. I had no clue. I had no idea. So what I did was a local high school had a program whereby their students got credit for community service hours. And I, through a third party found this high school soccer player at the local high school. I brought her in cuz I did not know anything about it.

Dennis Collins:
Good move Dave.

Dave Salter:
So she came in and ran my drills. She was standing next to me during games. So I found that third-party expert to come in. She examined my problem and said, I’ll take care of this for you. And then, I provided the leadership. But we all need that sort of neutral third-party eye to come in and take a look at what’s going right and what’s going wrong.

Dennis Collins:
Yeah. We’re just not objective about our performance. We tend to overrate our performance and not give a very read on how we’re actually doing. So that outside party may be the most important of all the things we’ve talked about, highly encourage it.

Dave Salter:
I think the sign of a great leader is admitting that he or she doesn’t know everything.

Dennis Collins:
That’s correct.

Dave Salter:
Dennis, thanks for your wisdom and insight today, folks up another edition of Connect and Convert, the podcast that lets you behind the curtain with inside strategies for small business sales success. This is Dave Salter with Dennis Collins. Thank you for joining us.

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