Many businesses are laying off employees because their bottom line has been suffering, perhaps partially due to the economy. The ironic part is that these same businesses are not seeing growth after the layoffs take place. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that staying strong and not laying off your employees can strengthen a business.
Another irony is that the wage freezes and layoffs usually take place first in the areas of production and office personnel, who keep the business running. The remaining employees in those departments often are overworked and their work quality consequently suffers. Yet the sales employees often continue to get raises and bonuses, while their sales are down.
If you run a company and are considering what to do when times get tough for your bottom line, consider your options wisely. Eliminating positions, especially amongst your support staff, should not be your first step.
The first step is to look at those on the front lines. Who in your business is handling the marketing aspect of your business? Is your business being advertised effectively, with advertisements containing the two most important criteria: benefit (or emotion) and a strong call to action? If not, you need to retrain or rehire your marketing personnel.
The other area of your front lines is your sales staff. Perhaps you need to retrain your sales staff. Contrary to common misperception, aggressive salesmanship is not necessarily the key. The key is effective and persistent salesmanship.
To be effective a salesperson, like a marketing rep, also needs to help your potential customers and your existing customers understand how your products and services will benefit their business, and what those customers need to do in order to get your products and services in a way that meets their needs and budget.
The first step to effective salesmanship is a brief discussion or interview with the potential customer. The salesperson needs to ask key questions to figure out what the potential (or existing) customer needs and why. This way the salesperson can ascertain exactly what the benefit would be of your company’s products or services.
Depending on the type of company you run, such a direct discussion or interview may not be possible with any or all of the consumers in your customer base or potential customer base. In those cases, it is necessary to conduct tests and studies to determine as much general info about the types of customers who are most likely to be in the market for your products or services. To that end, you may then use that information to target those customers through marketing and other business initiatives.
At the end of the day, there are always alternatives (usually involving increasing marketing and advertising effectiveness) to laying off employees or instituting long term wage freezes. Focus your attention (and the attention of your staff) on making wise steps in their everyday work to increase the bottom line, rather than focusing on the negative and minimizing your staff (a staff which needs to be in place to get you where you need to be, and will help maintain the business when the success you’re looking for does go into effect).
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