I’m touring Japan for a couple weeks (or should I say eating my way through Japan), and I’ve noticed that the best meals are also the simplest. From the freshest fish, perfectly cooked rice, handmade noodles, a locally, just-picked vegetable, the best meals have a singular focus on each plate highlighting a single ingredient with no ornate sauces, or fussy preparations.
In thinking back to my past travels, Mykonos was the same way. The meals we remember the most were simply prepared and focused on the highest quality, local ingredients.
Occam’s Razor tells us that most often the simplest solution is the best. And, while this is the case for food, it is also the case for revenue generation. A confused buyer never buys, and a confused seller never sells.
What we need to do is simplify to accelerate sales:
- Focus on a few best quality products or solutions to meet the customers’ needs. Don’t flood the market with different options.
- Streamline your lead generation process to reduce handoffs and match the buyer and the seller together quickly.
- Simplify your compensation plan to ensure the seller knows exactly how and when they will be paid for each opportunity. Complicated compensation plans are demotivators.
- Reduce the steps in your own sales process, or simply match the buyer’s buying journey to make it easy, and desirable for them to buy from you.
- Eliminate handoffs during implementation and account management. Each time the buyer is passed to someone new, they lose trust and the process is stalled.
- Examine your renewals process. Do you make it easy for the customer to buy more from you over time?
- Automate your customer service. Do you require the customer to take one step, or multiple steps each time they have a question, want to place an order or want to check the status of their account?
One client of ours is taking steps now to reduce five ordering systems to just one or two. In simplifying this service, and offering the customer a simplified way to do business with them, they are able to reduce costs and invest in other advancements, furthering the customer experience.
[bctt tweet=”This simplification effort will result in a win-win for everyone. It’ll work for you too.” username=”EngageColleen”]
What are you doing to simplify your processes?