By Phil Harwood

I recently met a young business owner, who is extremely impressive. One of the things that stood out to me the most about him was that he knew his numbers. He wasn’t a financial genius by any means, and he wasn’t old enough to have advanced degrees on his wall. But he did know his numbers. But the more we talked, the more I realized that he only knew some of his numbers. In fact, there were some very important numbers he did not know. He thought he knew his numbers but then he came to realize there was a deeper level of knowledge. 

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One of the highlights of my year is speaking at the Forum for Sales for the Snowfighters Institute. And one of my favorite sessions is focused on leading a sales team in a more effective manner. This begins with knowing your numbers at a deeper level. 

We all know that the number on the top line is revenue. Most business owners can tell you what their top line is and what their projected revenue is. Top line revenue is easily understood because it’s a highly visible number, easily obtained from your accounting program. 

Surprisingly though, there are some business owners, who have no idea what their revenue projections are. If questioned, they simply throw their arms up in the air and say that nobody knows what the future will bring. That’s one way to run a business. Another way to run a business is to establish revenue goals and a financial budget based on those goals. I prefer the latter approach.

Back to my young business owner who impressed me so much. He knew his revenue projections. Not only that, his revenue projections were cascaded down to specific individuals who owned the allocated sales responsibilities. In other words, every dollar of the overall sales goal was assigned to a specific person. As wonderful as that was to hear, there's more to the story. 

At the Snowfighters Institute, we teach how to develop more granular sales goals and sales plans. This is important because it’s not enough to have individual sales goals. Individual sales goals need to be developed into a realistic sales plan. This is where the rubber meets the road.

A sales plan may take different forms, depending on what specifically is being sold and what the customer segment is. We provide the framework and the understanding. You take it across the finish line based on your unique situation.
If you’re ready to lead your sales team more effectively, I invite you to attend the Forum for Sales this July in Rockland Maine. We have set aside two action-packed days for education, networking, and discussion about selling snow and ice management services.

Registration is now open to these educational events for snowfighters:

Forum for Sales July 26-27 Rockland, ME - hosted by Fisher 
OPS Management September 6-7 Bensalem, PA - hosted by Caterpillar

I hope you would consider taking time out this summer for the sake of your snow and ice management business. See you there.