The Sales Foundation Manifesto

Author: Kent Laws 2005

How many times have you had consultants or agencies in your office or on the phone telling you how they are going to change your business? At least once a week right!

Do you even want to change you business? Probably not. But I’m willing to bet that you’d like to increase the revenue from your current sales model and find more new customers right!

I have spent most of the last eighteen years working in various consultancies, advertising agencies and direct marketing agencies. Each of which has its own spin on what they could do to add value to a clients business. Sometimes, only sometimes they got it right and found themselves featured in Campaign Magazine. In the main however the end product is just ok, just good enough to break even, just acceptable.

During that time I witnessed some huge changes in the business, new thinking, sometimes very innovative new thinking. New attitudes to everything from loyalty to planning to production and of course the rise of the now ubiquitous focus group.

However in 2003 I reached the conclusion that on the whole the consultancies and agencies of today offer very little if any real value to clients. They consistently miss the point that;

At the very heart of business is the fundamental that
Revenue Rules!™

Now I know I am not making any friends here, but someone has to say it, and if you are reading this from your office in an agency building I want to ask this. ‘Can you point to a place on your client’s balance sheet and say with absolute confidence that your agency or consultancy were responsible, wholly responsible, for those revenue figures? That you are absolutely happy that you have provided your client with real value and you have paid for yourself many times over?’

Now this may sound like I just have a downer on the competition but I have also been a client. I have hired agencies and consultants myself and very quickly realised that my expectations were to be compromised time and time again. The delivery never matched up to the promise, never came close in many cases.

So, in early 2005 I formed Sales Foundation. A business dedicated to one thing - increasing the revenues of its clients.

For those of you who are saying ‘yeah right same, old same old’ here’s the first difference. Sales Foundation is also a business willing to gamble the vast majority of its own remuneration on its own effectiveness.  Only by making things happen, by adding real value, by increasing revenue and/or by cutting costs will we, rather I, get paid.

No, I have not won the lottery and need something to do with myself. We have proved the Sales Foundation model and I firmly believe we can have a rapid and positive effect on almost any business.

So what makes us so confident? The approach, simple as that. We combine the skills of my fellow director, Gil (a former Head of European Finance) and myself into a powerful three step process which collates and maps a client’s sales process, identifies holes in the model and then presents a plan of action to resolve the issues.

Understanding business and business metrics is the key, and when coupled with extensive sales and marketing experience Sales Foundation is able to identify quick wins which can literally change a company’s fortunes overnight and inform mid and longer term strategic decision making.

The deliverable is improved sales performance by;

1. Making the most of the customers you already have
2. Plugging the leaks in your sales model where potential customers are slipping away
3. Dialling up conversion rates across all channels
4. Identifying cost savings which can be ploughed back into the marketing effort

There is a fifth - identifying where more new potential customers can be found. However its pretty pointless pouring more potential business in at the top if the sales model is broken in any way.  Fix the model, find the business!

I have worked with so many clients who concentrated their time trying to generate new enquiries without realising that they could do so much more with the enquiries they already had. Most of these clients will have tried to plug the leaks with various tactics but when they are not successful they revert back to what amounts to a numbers game. ‘It’ll be alright if we can drive enough business at the front end’. I don’t think it is alright actually, and that’s the real reason Sales Foundation has been established.

We want our clients to have the confidence to forecast sales accurately at the start of every year knowing that their sales process is effective and operating at maximum profitability.

We want our clients to know they are making the most of every enquiry that walks through the door and not have to play the numbers game.

We want our clients to know they are getting value from their supplier partners.

We want our clients to generate more revenue because as we all know Revenue Rules!™