Images_Digital_Edition_September_2019

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT www.images-magazine.com 44 images SEPTEMBER 2019 Marshall Atkinson is a leading production and efficiency expert for the decorated apparel industry, and the owner of Atkinson Consulting. Marshall focuses on operational efficiency, continuous improvement, workflow strategy, business planning, employee motivation, management and sustainability. He is a frequent trade show speaker, article and blog author, and co-founded Shirt Lab, a sales and marketing education company, with entrepreneur Tom Rauen. atkinsontshirt.com These next four months can have a tremendous impact on your year. How are you going to use them? shops that just talk about it. That’s right. These shops seriously messed up a bunch of stock. They failed. But they kept at it and learned how to do it. They took a class or watched a video or two. Their suppliers helped when they could. The more time they spent practising the new stuff, the faster they learned how to do it. This was a scheduled activity. They didn’t wait around, these are busy shops: they knew that the only way they could get this knowledge was by actually turning in the work. So these jobs were scheduled, just like a paid job for a customer. What were they tracking here? How many times the new stuff was on the schedule. Imagine how different a learning curve is going to be from one shop that only tries something once a month, to a shop that schedules one learning lesson a day. That’s a 30:1 difference. At the end of the year, who has a better story to bring to their customers? ■ Sales goals Ah, the dreaded sales goal. Lots of shops throw a number out and stick it on the wall. “Here’s our target,” they say. But how many sales goals are backed up with sound strategy and tactics? “Here’s the plan for us to achieve the goal.” Have you broken down your sales goal into a daily number? What does it look like with an average order total? Better, instead of looking 100% at the top-line number, what is the drop to the bottom line? Are you benchmarking your sales? What’s the pipeline? A lot of shops take a roller coaster ride with sales as the year goes on. It’s feast or famine. During busy times, it’s hard to get out and close more deals. As things dry up, there is a sudden panic. “We need more jobs!” Then there’s a flurry of activity on social media and new shops sales and discounts are created to bring in work, often at a lower margin. Instead of crippling your shop with that seesawing sales strategy, what if your sales process was built on constantly targeting the best customers, with the best work for your shop? This uses data. What’s the best type of job for your shop? You know, the one that you make good money on and is repeatable. What if you based your sales goal on cloning that type of job? Who are those customers? Sales metrics would be based on how many of these customers you need to talk to a day to fill up your pipeline with work, knowing full well that there is a sales cycle and it takes repeated effort to close those deals. The sales process could track all of the metrics associated with those conversations. Instead of just throwing a number on the wall and stating “This is our goal”, your process is built on daily and weekly benchmark numbers. Tiny wins. Cumulatively they will make up a larger number at the end of the quarter. Focus on what you are doing this week. Today. Maybe even by lunch. Those are the stats that are worth tracking, because you can immediately see what is working, or not working. No excuses. Ask for help You don’t have to go it alone. One weakness that I see in this industry is that so many shops get into a mentality that they can’t ask for help. It’s too embarrassing for them to let anyone know that they don’t know how to use a tension meter, or how to hire a salesperson. That mental block jams them up, and they struggle for years with the same problem. Until the dam breaks and it’s an all-or-nothing affair to improve something. It doesn’t have to be this way. Help is all around you. But, if you don’t feel you are ready to talk to a shop performance coach, you can reach out to your supply chain, other shops and even the internet for help. That problem or challenge you are facing? I hate to tell you, but you are not a unicorn. Almost always, those same problems turn up in shops everywhere. Get past your pride and ask for help. Make the rest of 2019 a winner.