It's genuinely hard to believe we have reached the end of another year. A year like no other and one to many which has provided more challenges than ever before.
As I sit and write this in mid November for the December edition, it’s given me time to reflect and review our year and to be perfectly candid, it has felt more like a year and a decade than the standard twelve months, which I imagine many of you can relate to.
Working across a multitude of sectors we have seen a diverse range of insights, the challenges, frustrations, barriers and on the flip side – the positives, the wins, the good news stories businesses and individuals face. And its fair to say this year has shown a mixture across both. Recruitment, retaining and retraining seem to be a common theme, which we discussed in our October edition. I’ve been discussing with fellow business owners only this morning about the increasing cost of customer acquisition, marketing spend, in fact the increasing cost of everything, the constant margin squeeze and increasing expectations both internally and externally.
Let me be frank, we like many of you haven’t had the growth we expected, we’ve faced challenges I wouldn’t and probably couldn’t have ever predicted, rising costs we hadn’t forecast and a constant online battle with increased marketing costs. It has been a tough one but for what its worth, here’s what I’ve learnt over the last year since launching Just Williams Sales Academy and training over 3000 customer service and sales professionals – which I hope in turn may help you too.
Training needs to be a long term plan, built into a business strategy, supported by an IDP and reviewed and reflected on monthly.
Forced fun on training days isn’t fun (for anyone.)
Very few people truly know their Customer Lifetime Value.
Taking time out of your business to reflect and create a long term sales strategy bears fruit.
Even fewer people think to maximise their existing customer spend before attracting new business and have calculated or know their Customer Acquisition costs.
A long term training plan for your team supports retention and recruitment.
It is possible to transform a poor performing team or individual into highly successful cohesive sales teams.
Investing in your team is the most important investment of all.
A sales tracking system eg a CRM system is utterly essential.
As a result of all we have learnt, we have launched a new branch to The Just Williams Sales Academy for 2023. Our monthly webinars will provide an opportunity to come together and discuss key topics in a roundtable format – each session will have a theme and provide an opportunity for one to one mentoring after the session.
If you’d like to join our customer service and sales community to learn, network and build your knowledge and contacts in the industry – get in touch and make sure you register for our monthly webinars and our newsletter full of ideas and ways you can increase your return.
Have a great break over the festive period and thank you for your support in 2022.