Target Sales Focus

Danita Bye

In my sales development and business coaching work, I repeatedly see one shortcoming at the heart of my clients’ failure to thrive: a failure to focus on the narrowly defined, high ROI markets and product/service offerings that will help them secure greater market share and niche dominance that’s hard to budge in any economic climate. In the ebook, Target Sales Focus, I deconstruct the myths that encourage too many managers and CEOs to dilute their sales efforts on markets that are too broad, and then detail a step-by-step plan to concentrate their resources on targeted markets that deliver more – and more predictable – sales.

Here’s an excerpt from Target Sales Focus:

Myth 1: All Markets Are Good Markets

The thinking goes like this: markets are markets. If I can sell to one, I can sell to another. The fact is, though, that some markets are like three bears fighting over a picnic basket – one bear is going to be eating egg salad and the other two are going to go hungry, even if they do have a lot of scratches and bites to show for their trouble. If you happen to be an especially strong bear, this situation works out nicely. If not, you’d be smart to avoid some picnic baskets, no matter how full of egg salad they are. Frankly, the beating you’ll take isn’t worth the effort.

Little bears, take heart, though – there are some relatively unguarded picnic baskets out there, and you’ll learn how to find them and break into them without getting beat up later in the book.

Myth 2: Never Leave Money on the Table

This one seems so obvious that it doesn’t even bear discussion. Then again, the worst myths, the ones that will really bring you down, are like that. But however hard it may be to believe, there is some money you don’t want to touch. To know which is which, you have to take a look at the core of your business – specifically, your core competencies and core values. Stray too far from what you’re good at for a customer who’s waving a handful of cash in your face and you’ll soon be waving goodbye to your good reputation, profitability, staff, and sanity. Why? Because you’re in over your head, you’re starting to question yourself, and you’re spending way too many resources on something at which you’re mediocre at best. Eventually, that fistful of cash starts looking like just a fist. The same thing happens when you violate your core corporate values. Is it okay to leave money on the table? For good business, it’s imperative that you do.

Myth 3: Specialization Limits Profit Potential

To understand why this myth is flat-out false, imagine a combination neurosurgeon/dentist/ obstetrician/ophthalmologist. Now, imagine you’d like to ditch your eyeglasses and you’ve been hearing good things about LASIK surgery. Do you choose this doctor, this jack-of-all-medical-procedures, to shoot a laser beam into your eye? Either she’s brilliant, which would be a good thing for your continued sight, or she’s just trying to get a piece of every pie out there, no matter whether she’s qualified or not. Since brilliance is, by definition, rare, you’ll go with the latter. And you’ll go with a different doctor – one who really knows laser vision surgery because she’s made it her specialty. So will other customers who value their sight. Guess which surgeon is going to do the best, long term? Guess which surgeon gets the best ROI out of her advertising expenditures? Guess which surgeon can command higher rates?

To read more about the myths that keep your business from seeing the profits it should and zero in on niche success with a targeted sales and marketing plan get your free copy of Target Sales Focus.

Bio: Danita Bye

Nationally recognized sales management and leadership expert Danita Bye built her reputation on building and inspiring process-oriented, no excuse, high-performance sales teams that deliver bottom line results. With her unique Fortune-100-turned-entrepreneur perspective, Danita helps CEOs and company presidents take their businesses to the next level. Her practical, no-nonsense approach to sales management, combined with her leadership acumen, enables sales leadership to increase sales, creating predictable revenue streams.

As a 10-year veteran of the Xerox Corporation, Danita consistently achieved award winning sales performance before leaving to become an equity partner and national sales manager for a Minneapolis-based medical device company. In this capacity, she increased annual revenues from $300,000 to a run rate of $20 million in just ten years.

Danita has authored numerous articles on sales management and leadership. In addition, she was a featured as a sales development expert on the TV show, “The Ruthless Entrepreneur,” which is currently airing on the Oxygen Network. Leadership Shift, Management Acceleration and a library of eBooks on critical sales management issues are available on the Sales Growth Specialists’ website.

Danita can be reached at Danita@SalesGrowthSpecialists.com, 612-267-3320 or 800-256-2799.

For more insights on Sales Strategy and Sales Process, visit www.SalesGrowthSpecialists.com.