How many times have you set a sales target and hit it? How many times has your business really worked hard on a sales strategy that produced an amazing result? How many times have you watched in disbelief as your revenue doubled and maybe tripled? If you are like most entrepreneurs, the answer to these questions is…never.
I don’t think many entrepreneurs shoot for the stars. In my experience, if entrepreneurs cast a vision they often do so in the context of wishful thinking and not in the context of a thoughtful insight about what could be possible. It’s one thing to say you are going to crush sales targets and then have exactly no clue how. It’s another thing to say you are going to crush sales targets and be able to articulate from a high level how it will happen using your current results as context. There is a fine line between setting a vision and wishful thinking. Sales are hard but what makes selling even harder is the commitment and focus required each day in the absence of results.
Cyber Monday is expected to generate almost $10 billion in sales up from almost $8 billion last year. An interesting side note is that that over 75% of sales were completed on mobile devices (who would have thought?). Amazon is the market leader in online sales however its competitors have slowly and carefully invested in e-commerce enhancements and have worked hard to bring together an online experience with a physical retail location experience. This has lead companies like Nordstrom, Walmart and Target to massive increases in year over year online sales. Nothing in business stays the same. There is always an opportunity to win market share and the retailers competing against Amazon are proof of that as evidenced in the amount of business transacted over Cyber Monday (along with Black Friday, Thanksgiving and the rest of November).
Selling more than you think your business can sell starts with believing you can. Not wishful thinking, but thoughtful review of where your business is now and what could be possible if you invested in people and resources that improved your customer experience. Keep in mind that customers pay for value and associate value with what they experience when they interact with your business and the products/services it offers. If large slow moving retailers can figure out how to compete with Amazon surely your business can figure out how to do more than it is doing now.
