Reinvigorate your sales processes

[I asked for an image of sales not ales. I know it's getting close to Christmas but this is ridiculous. Ed] 

Now is a great time to re-examine and reinvigorate your sales processes.

1. However for this to be effective you will need sufficient information necessary to achieve a good understanding of your sales, particularly such things as sales margins and the costs of servicing a customer. It is clearly not worthwhile making a sale unless it leads to profit and cash.

2. This information should be used to ensure you look after your good customers and get rid of your bad ones. It should also help you avoid becoming dependent on one or two customers.

3. You can then orientate and incentivise your sales team both to look for new customers and find new ways to sell to existing customers, always remembering that it costs much less to sell to an existing customer than to acquire a new one.

4. Look at pushing through some targeted price increases, possibly by enhancing and explaining the value you are delivering to your customer.

5. Don’t rush to cut prices just to maintain market share, make sure that any cuts are justified in terms of margin achievement and covering the costs of servicing a customer.