Fishing around for business improvement with Chris Baxter

Although there are signs that the worst of the recession is passing, businesses are still finding their world a much tougher place from what is was 12-months ago.

Yet despite these challenging times, not enough businesses are sufficiently systematic or structured in their approach to sales and marketing. Too often it is disjointed, lacking in strategy or planning, without anybody taking the helm and navigating a course to success.

Professional business coach and If we can, you can member Chris Baxter of GENI Coaching has come up with an analogy to help businesses review the performance of their sales and marketing and identify areas for improvement.

Business fishing:

1. What kind of fish (customers) do you want to catch? Check that you're going after the right kind of fish. Some fish are hard to find these days, whilst other are not worth as much as they were last year. Take time to look at the other fish in sea and work out whether your business would do better by casting a net and looking for other fish to fry.

2. Is your boat (your business) up to the job? In what seas is your boat capable of fishing and what kind of fish can it catch? There's no point in deciding that you want to fish in the Atlantic Ocean if your boat is a small inshore vessel. Although trading the old boat in for a new model is not a realistic option, you might be able to improve its performance by adding some extra capabilities and developing your crew. So take a critical look and take action to improve the crew's ability to bring in a good catch. There are fewer fish in the oceans these days, but no shortage of boats trying to earn a living so if you want to first-rate catch you'd better recruit, train and develop a strong crew.

3. Where will you find these fish? (Marketing) So you know what kind of fish you want to catch and you've got a crew capable of catching those fish; now you need to figure out in what part of the ocean are you going to find your fish. There's no point sailing to the Mediterranean, casting your net and hoping to catch some North Atlantic Cod. So figure out where your chosen fish congregate. In very simple terms, if your target market is plumbers then you need to market your business in plumbers' trade journals, plumbers' merchants, and through trade associations.

4. How good are you nets? (Marketing Communications) You need to have a good net, in perfect condition, and cast at the right depth to catch the fish you’re after. In marketing terms, this is about ensuring that your marketing describes what you do in compelling and attractive terms that makes it very clear how your customers will benefit from dealing with you.

5. Getting the catch onboard? (Sales follow-up) By now you should have a net that's bursting with fish. But just how many of these fish will you land and convert into sales? That depends on how quickly you process the catch (leads and prospects). If you leave your nets in the water too long unfortunately you find that some of the fish will die (lose interest) or be stolen by other crews (competitors). So be prompt and systematic in processing your catch to ensure that none of your catch gets away.

6. How much of your catch did you land? Finally, you need measure the effectiveness of your whole fishing process (sales and marketing). Are you netting enough leads and prospects and are you converting enough of these into sales? Sales and marketing is a process that can always be improved and the interactive nature of this discipline means you can learn something from every customer interaction. So after every marketing campaign and every week of selling, get your sales and marketing team together to identify want went well and where there is room for improvement, and work together to continually improve results.