3D Test to Check Your Business Health by Asif Khushnood
Why do organizations suffer and fall to their deaths? The answer is simpler than you think. It’s because they don’t pay enough attention to the priority areas that keep their businesses running as smoothly as a well-oiled machine.
Here’s an example we often cite in the sales world. Imagine you introduce a variety of products to the market. You spend a fortune on R&D, marketing, and launch, but three years down the line, nobody cares. While you’re still busy shelling out money for a lost cause.
In the end, your sales suffer and so does your business.
Creating a business is easy. Startups launch every single day. But, keeping it running? That is a different ball game altogether. How do you make sure your business isn’t at the end of its run?
Here are the three dimensions that will help you gauge your business health.
Product Mix
Your business is a collection of products. And each contributes significantly to the organization’s success. You need to make sure all your products are selling and selling well. But how do you do that?
Concentrate on the sales trends at brand level. In sales, consistency is the key to good business health. Ensuring consistency in terms of each product’s contribution, growth since inception, future and seasonal potential, competition, and industry trends helps you maintain and increase your sales across the spectrum.
Why is consistency so important? Because, relying on one or two products to bring in the major share of your sales can eventually kill your business. Which is why it’s crucial to make sure all your products are putting strong sales on the board. And if one product fails or performs poorly, you have a line backing you up and absorbing the losses.
Get to the root cause of why some of your products are performing poor. And fix the problem. And if your product still fails to impress and connect with its target audience, make space for a new one.
Key Customers
Here’s how the 80/20 ratio works in sales. Let’s assume you have a sample space of 100 customers. Your major contributors will make up 20% (20 out of 100) of that pie and will be responsible for 80% of your total sales. They’re the ones that will make or break your business and they’re the ones you’ve to cater to, first and foremost.
Start by paying individual attention to each one of them. Understand and monitor their purchasing behavior. Why do they buy more at times and less at others? What’s influencing their sales pattern? Inconsistency in buying from you is a big, red flag. It means anyone can replace you and you don’t have a stronghold among your customer base.
Build a solid foundation with your top tier customers and nobody will be able to take your place in the market.
The Team
At the end of the day, it all boils down to teamwork.
Every single member in the team should contribute fairly. If your star performers are giving a 200-percent output, while most others in the team are working below a mere 90, you have a problem. Again, consistency is the key here.
You need to set a threshold. Performances are bound to vary. But the variance scale should be around 5-10%. If your top performer is putting in 110%, the rest of your team should not go below 100 or 95.
Sometimes the fault also lies with the management. Whether you’re overwhelming your team with targets beyond their capacity or assigning bad turnover areas to the inexperienced professionals, mismanagement hampers the overall team output.
Make sure your team is performing up to par. And if that’s not the case, work with them until everyone’s giving it their best.
Parting Words
In the end, all three dimensions carry equal importance and play a crucial part in maintaining your business’ health. One weak link, and a whole organization tumbles to the ground. Analytics and human connections are a big part of what sales really is.
While numbers help you figure out what’s working and what’s not, it’s really at the ground where you build the foundation. Create emotional and personal tether with your customers. And they’ll respond with their loyalty.