FACTORS KILLING YOUR BUSINESS ARE 99% INTERNAL & 1 % EXTERNAL

These days l have a lot of opportunities to speak at various events. For example, I had a speaking engagement with entrepreneurs in Harare. I went prepared to speak about entrepreneurship, but they asked me to talk about sales. So I‘m ready to present sales anytime, even in my dreams.

Since I am a professional salesperson, l asked about my audience. I asked them why do they think their business was failing to sell. They said it is because of the following:

1. economy

2. inflation

3. People don’t have money.

4. We are out of season.

This cancer has killed most businesses; if you had an opportunity to visit any of my offices, we have stickers written. NO NEGATIVITY IS ALLOWED HERE. We don’t tolerate blame games or negativity around us . As you can see, all these reasons above blame external forces, and no one wants to blame themselves. A human being feels better if they feel as if someone caused the position they are in. I asked some salespeople if they train sales daily, and they said no. It was sad that some company owners also blamed external factors.

This is typical of most business owners and salespeople in Zimbabwe; they quickly blame everything external, excluding themselves. If you want to grow a sustainable business forget about external factors; start taking full responsibility and blaming yourself if anything goes wrong. First, perfect and invest in your internal sales process before you start pointing fingers at the external forces. Most of the opportunities we have in Zimbabwe or Africa are because of the crisis of our economy. Even now, we are experiencing a power outage, for example, if a company is in manufacturing, instead of crying and playing a blame game that your production is affected find a solution. It could be a chance to fight competition. You will identify ideas to rescue your business when you quit blaming or thinking negatively.

Most companies need dedicated sales personnel. However, if they have salespeople, most need to be trained. Hence they need to learn how to pitch, present a proposal or close a deal.

There is also a tendency to give salespeople a basic salary only. Instead, salespeople are supposed to be paid commission only or rather a small basic plus commission. Professional salespeople pay themselves, they eat what they kill . Salespeople are not supposed to be limited in their ability to earn. Giving them a basic salary will create lazy salespeople who are not hungry for more.

In some companies salespeople do not even have targets, they are just working randomly. Other companies have targets but no consequences for failing to reach the sales targets. There is no need of keeping unproductive sales people, no matter how nice of beautiful they are . You should keep sales assassins, heavy target hitters, who can give you more in your organization.

If you want to grow your business, don’t allow yourself and your staff members to blame the economy or any external forces. If you fail to reach targets, the solution is internal, not external.