JACOBY BLOG
Most businesses could benefit from taking a critical look at their business from a strategic perspective. Answer the following business assessment checklist questions and gain some objective, actionable insight into your company.
After you’ve read this post, check out our new business success calculator to understand your company’s probability of success in the market.
Checklist Questions
Copy and paste the following questions onto a document and take a few minutes to answer each one as objectively and thoroughly as you can.
- How beneficial are your products/services to targeted users?
- Is your target market niche a specialty that makes it a competitive advantage for you?
- Do you have a marketing calendar and budget that is just the right combination of the 5 P’s for your target market?
- Are you currently profitable and do you have a history of strong earnings?
The 7 Most Important Aspects Of A Business
After having worked closely with 100s of small-to-medium sized businesses, JACOBY has developed a framework of the characteristics of the most successful companies. More »
Marketing in a Recession – 4 Rules To Live By
When a recession rocks the economy and profits start to decline, businesses look for ways to decrease spending. One area most often affected by such cost cutting is marketing.
This post outlines some methods that companies can use to adapt their strategies of marketing in a recession to meet their consumers’ needs and ensure their own survival during economic hard times.
Spend More Money
This may sound counter-intuitive, but the truth is that the trick to making money under recessionary conditions is to keep investing!
Companies that maintain or increase their marketing and advertising efforts during a recession while their competitors cut back often see a dramatic return on their investment.
More »
In the current economic recession, the thought of your business actually growing may seem about as realistic to you as being able to fly around the city like Superman.
However, according to a recent survey by Intuit (Quickbooks, TurboTax) 90% of small business owners see growth opportunities for their own companies over the next year. That’s quite surprising, isn’t it?
Many of these companies are in for a rude awakening unless they take the proper steps to weather the storm and come out of the recession ahead of the game.
Following are a few strategies to grow your company during a recession
Ways to Keep Growing a Business in a Recession
1. Continue advertising & marketing. It may be tempting to cut your marketing budget during tough times, but firms that stay visible in a recession tend to come out stronger in the end. You want to stay in front of the market so that your presence is felt. More »
There are a few small service business marketing strategies that not many companies are fully taking advantage of. These strategies are not only very effective, but most of them are affordable as well.
If done right, implementing these strategies into your daily business practices (Disclosure: that’s not the easiest thing to do) can make a great impact on your top and bottom lines.
So grab a drink, sit back and explore our Top 7 Powerful Small Service Business Marketing Strategies
More »
A lot of times when I’m sitting with clients, they will ask for a sample business development plan – a template that they can follow for business development success. If that sounds like you, then this post will help you.
The Tough Questions
If you’ve ever asked a “business development guru” for advice on your business plan, it probably started with some really tough questions…
What’s the purpose of your business?
How much money do you want to earn?
When do you want to have this money by?
What products and services will you offer in exchange?
Who is your target market?
The list goes on…
While these are all very important questions, they don’t necessarily hit on the main point. More »
Have you ever thought about hiring a sales growth consultant?
- Is your business slowly dropping sales and losing profit?
- Are you looking for a long-term strategic plan that will help your business earn higher profits?
- Are you a young company looking for a stable foundation?
- Or maybe you’re an established business looking to take your business to the next level.
Profit growth and projections are clearly important to the growth of a company. If your business is not “lighting up the boards” – that is, making a bunch of sales, then hiring a sales growth consultant might be one of the best decisions you can make for your business.
Especially in a recession.
But can we afford it?
The bottom line is that any sales consultant worth their salt will not cost you money. They may be an expense in the short-run, but the beauty of sales growth consultants is that they quickly produce returns on the money you invest with them.
Not only will a good sales consultant reinvigorate you and your sales force, but they will give you actionable, proven ways to increase your sales NOW! Not to mention help with training new sales people.
There are many different strategies and techniques a growth consultant could use to help your business, which ones will work for your company?
Choosing the ideal sales consultant
When looking for a sales growth consultant you should consider the background of the specialist and their past credentials.
- Have they helped companies like yours before?
- Do they have references you can talk to?
- What was their career before they started consulting?
- Do they have a good reputation in the area?
- Have their techniques had demonstrated success in improving company revenues and profitability?
Where can I find a consultant like that?
Jacoby is a Business Growth Consulting firm specializing in sales growth that’s located physically near Baltimore, Maryland. But we have clients are from all over the country, from California to Texas to Boston.
In addition to decades of combined experience, the reason that our clients excel is because of our passion for helping clients, and seeing them succeed.
Aside from sales growth consulting, we have the expertise and know-how to solve complex business problems that can help your company prosper.
“Jacoby conceived an exceptional expansion strategy that has been a dramatic success for us.
Christopher Simpson, CEO, Simpson Scarborough
If you think you or your company can benefit from sales growth, contact Jacoby today!
Call 410-744-3900 or fill in this contact form to get started.
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Designing and creating training programs for sales people can be one of the most difficult (yet important) activities that business owners or C-Level executives ever have to partake in.
This post will examine some of the most common mistakes executives make when creating sales training programs, along with some “DO’s” and “DONT’s” you should keep in mind to ensure the success of your future sales team.
DON’T Get Overwhelmed. It’s easy to start feeling like there is so much to do with not enough time. Realize that the creation of this sales program does not have to be finished in a day or a week.
DON’T Reinvent The Wheel. There are thousands of companies that have already created training programs for sales people with phenomenal success. Why start from scratch when you can easily leverage the work already completed by sales masters?
DO Read! Why not pick up some Zig Ziglar? Or take another look at the legendary “How To Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie? There is a gigantic wealth of knowledge at your fingertips, especially in this digital age. Harness the resources available to you.
DO Consult. As you’re designing your training program for sales people, take a lesson from the most successful sales organizations in the world, and create consultative sellers. What does it mean to be consultative? In a nutshell, it means asking meaningful, relevant questions, and listening more than you talk.
There’s a reason we have 2 ears and only 1 mouth.
DO Tweak. Just as it’s not possible to create a sales training program for your company overnight, it’s not going to be possible to absolutely nail it on the first time, either. We live in a world of hyper-fast change. Your business is changing at light speed as is that of your customers. This hyper change is inherently going to present itself in your company’s sales training.
DO Embrace Change. Realize that if you neglect to change, or if it has been a long time since your company has changed, you’re probably falling behind. Because the competition is changing so quickly, if you’re doing the same things that you were doing ten years ago, you can’t possibly expect the same results. Know that success comes to those who are most willing to embrace change.
These are some of the many lessons I’ve learned over the past 20 years I’ve been selling professionally. We will be releasing our complete “Sales Optimizer System” which will be tremendously valuable for anybody tasked with creating training programs for sales people.
If you’d like a free copy of the system to preview before its official release, or if you’d like help coming up with your company’s sales training program, contact us here and let us know what’s on your mind.
Other things you may be interested in:
Is your business destined for major success? Take the 90-second business assessment test and find out instantly!
Top small business consultants in Baltimore
Business consultant prices and how much you should be willing to pay
Using growth consultants to devise plans to grow
An overview of corporate growth strategies
Go back to the Business Growth Consultant homepage
There are hundreds of free and paid marketing and sales seminars available online and offline. Most are not particularly valuable. So, how do you choose?
Welcome to the World of Marketing Seminars
“Buzz word, buzz word, buzz word!! Trendy, Trendy, trendy!! Learn it here and make lots of money!” Welcome to global marketing and sales pollution.
Common sense, business basics and hard work trump trendy marketing buzz words every time. Much of what’s presented as state-of-the-art marketing is either worthless drivel or plagiarism of concepts that have been around for years. If it looks too good to be true…Well, you know. More »
As a career business growth consultant, I’ve provided individual sales coaching to more than 300 small and mid-sized businesses (SMB) around the U.S. It may not be a surprise to you that the vast majority of salespeople I’ve met do not excel at sales, don’t know what to do to improve, and yet do not seek individual sales coaching.
That’s a mistake. More »
No matter who you are, you can benefit from coaching. The question is the type of coaching that you would be best for you and your company. This post covers three major types of coaches:
General Coaches
Human Resources Management Coaches
Business Strategy Coaches
What do you want from a Coach?
The title “Coach” is used by individuals with a very broad array of talents and experiences. It’s best to determine what your needs are before searching for a Coach that fits the needs of your firm. Take the time to list not only what’s pressing on your mind at the moment but also, the types of issues that you confront on an ongoing basis where a skilled other person might add value.
Here are some questions that you might ask yourself to determine what you need: More »
