£100,000 Profit Increase

A manager in a wholesale business used new ideas on leadership, quality of communication, and delegation to draw a host of business improvement ideas from his people, which included:

• an idea about a new product which added £400 profit per transaction
• a new approach to carriage charges which resulted in an £800 increase in profits month on month
• improvements in the working environment in terms of equipment and morale

All of this played a substantial part in an increase in year on year profits of £100,000. When asked how he orchestrated this success, the manager said he used a variety of simple management tools to empower his people to create a more dynamic sales environment. “This,” he said, “plus plenty of hard work from everyone and making lots of small step changes on the way forward, has made the difference.”

 

£20,000 a Month Profit Increase

A manager in a stockholding business reported that his unit was making £20,000 a month more profits than at the same time the previous year by adapting and improving his management style. Measures included:

• Introducing more concrete metrics into the business
• Releasing more staff ideas on how to make improvements – after asking “how can we increase our current trading accounts from 200 to 300?” the staff responded with a host of suggestions, resulting in 20 new accounts in just 5 weeks
• Completely reorganising the warehouse operation, including providing extra support for the warehouse manager, employing higher calibre staff, and extending the working day
• Splitting the sales team into two units

 

Record Monthly Sales Figures for a Particular Product

A manager in a wholesale business applied new ideas on how to manage and motivate the sales and warehouse teams to achieve the best month’s sales figures on a certain product in the last three years. The manager:

• Ran a 60 minute sales meeting where, rather than talking herself for the whole hour the manager spoke for only 10 minutes and spent the rest of the meeting drawing ideas from the sales team
• Suggestions included: splitting the 180 accounts managed by one salesperson between three, and targeting particular group of existing customers to whom they could cross-sell
• The manager then ran a similar meeting with the warehouse team, drawing out their ideas on how they could make this particular product more attractive from a service perspective
• Suggestions from the warehouse team included a way to ensure next day shipping
• The teams implemented their suggestions, and as a result of these meetings and the manager’s careful follow-up, both sales and warehouse teams became more confident, more active, and more enthused about the business
• Three months later the team recorded their best month’s sales figures on this particular product

 

Securing an £800,000 Opportunity for 2014

A high-potential manager decided to pursue an opportunity he would not previously have had the confidence to develop.

• In the past his (UK-based) company had supplied a company in Bulgaria, and then lost the business as they become uncompetitive in comparison to local firms
• However, the local firms could not match the manager’s company on quality, and the manager’s company had started to supply the Bulgarian business again on an ad hoc basis
• The manager saw a chance to develop this opportunity, and pushed forward with a confidence he had not previously felt, by

o Requesting a meeting with the client in Bulgaria

o Managing colleagues’ initial scepticism by asking them to agree a principle: “Our 2014 sales budget will be a challenge, do you agree that hard work on projects like this will pave the way to success?”

o Preparing scrupulously for this trip by holding three internal meetings to secure all relevant pricing and service details, set concrete objectives for each phase of this process, and ensure each individual who was travelling to Bulgaria was fully prepared

• The meeting in Bulgaria was a great success, securing a four-month rolling contract with an £800,000 potential turnover for 2014
• The manager commented that as a result of working with Sean, he had felt confident and equipped enough to drive this initiative forward so successfully