Assisting with a GROWTH ISSUE

The owner of this luxury boat and yacht business had been a sales person all his life.  His belief was if “you sell enough boats, you make enough money”.  At year’s end, the accountants reported this was the fourth consecutive year of flat growth.  Although the company had been profitable, the owner could not explain this lack of growth.  Unable to devote the time necessary to ferrite out the problem the he hired Smith Group Consulting.

A review of the company’s financial performance showed the reason for profitability was from the service side of the business.  The service department was not the focus of the owner so long ago he had hired a service manager and let him operate independently.

The lack of growth was a sales problem. The sales cycle in the luxury boat business is long. The owner was surprised to learn most sales were re-sales or referrals with only a few being new customers.  Motivation and incentive were the issues. There were three commissioned sales people, one had been with the company from the beginning, and his territory included Miami, Florida’s gold coast and the Keys.  One sales person was responsible for all Hispanic sales and the other was responsible for everything else.

We made three recommendations to the owner.  The first was to hire an experienced sales manager. The second was to design an incentive program heavily weighted to new sales, but which also rewarded sales related activities.  Last, was to restructure the sales territories and redefine the expectations for the sale staff.  The owner approved our recommendations and we implemented them.

The owner continues to use the services of Smith Group Consulting as his business grows.  He says, “I paid these guys a lot of money to have them tell me things I don’t want to hear but I now have three new sales marinas and my sales manager is pushing me to open two more.”