Growing Distressed Company Sales

By Allen Pratt, FGMK

The chapter's Certified Turnaround Professionals (CTP) Committee hosted a presentation provided by Craig Lowder on the subject of sales management and growing distressed company sales when there’s no time or money.

Lowder, author and founding member of MainSpring Sales Group, is a seasoned business veteran with more than 30 years’ experience helping business owners achieve their sales goals. For the majority of his career, Lowder has served in senior sales leadership and advisory roles. His expertise includes sales strategy development, sales channel management and sales operations.

As an author, Lowder recently published Smooth Selling Forever, a book that enables leaders to generate significant, predictable and sustainable sales growth. For those attending, Lowder shared a copy of his book as a gift so the members might further benefit from his presentation.

Lowder described the Top 12 reasons why sales are not growing as expected. The list of reasons was extensive and included no defined sales process and no detailed sales business plan that is understood by the entire sales team. Collaborating with the sales team is critical, from Craig’s experience, to achieving breakthrough results.

“The probability of hitting your goals is much greater if you have one,” he said. “Setting sales metrics is another important reason why sales are not growing as expected for many distressed clients.”

Lowder's comments continued with the six foundational elements for growing distressed company sales. The company must target the right opportunities, develop and implement a sales process for new accounts and existing customers plus develop a 5 x 5 revenue growth strategy, included in the foundational elements.

Finally, Lowder described the five ways to increase a distressed company’s profits through sales growth and profit enhancement. He illustrated the multiplier effect of increasing these five was by only 10 percent to achieve breakthrough results.

This first of four CTP Lunch & Learn sessions of the year ended with an interactive Q&A opportunity. CPE credits are available to CTP members participating in this and future educational presentations.

The CTP Committee's next event will be held on Friday, July 15, featuring a how-to session illustrating 13-week cash flow modeling in association with the Continuing Education Committee.