Don’t Pile Misery On Top Of Misery

Why Cross-Selling Efforts Often Fall Short

Self-Delusion and Other Popular Paths To Failure

Nurture Sales Leads Until They’re Ready To Buy

Unlike a lot of newsletters I receive, ours is written and edited based on the single idea that we should present timely topics that you should be thinking about in your business but probably have not read elsewhere.

That's why this month's edition has such a diverse array of articles, including one about how businesses that have an unexpected emergency can avoid piling misery on top of misery. In two separate articles, we write about a proven method of making additional sales to current customers or clients, and how companies loose too many sales to customers who may want to buy from you but not today. We also look at how company performance can be undermined by a problem known as the “halo effect,” which describes the tendency to reach specific conclusions based on a general impression.

Many of our readers are half-way through their second quarter so they’re getting a pretty good idea of what the first six months will look like. I hope you’re meeting your targets; if you’re falling short – or are meeting goals but would like to do better – I invite you to check two pages on our website. One offers a sales optimization tool to show the cumulative impact of falling behind sales targets in the first half of the year; the other covers Stage 5 Selling, a proprietary but tested and proven new way of thinking about your relationship with customers that, when implemented properly, helps checkmate your competitors.

I hope you’re enjoying spring.

Greg Petkovich
President
Atticus Interim Management



Don’t Pile Misery On Top Of Misery
By Bill Smiley

Few executives realize what can happen to a business if disaster strikes – even if insurance covers repairs and regardless of what caused the interruption. In fact, about 60% of companies will fail if they are not up and operating two weeks after a shutdown. A Business Continuity Plan can help avoid the trap.
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Why Cross-Selling Efforts Often Fall Short
By Jim Bliwas

It’s an on-going issue for nearly every business: how to effectively sell more to existing customers. Not surprisingly, most companies say that their suppliers go about it the wrong way.
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Self-Delusion and Other Popular Paths To Failure
By Greg Petkovich

A new study suggests that too many executives delude themselves into thinking that success lies at the end of a path of specific steps. Actually, following that road usually leads to failure.
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Nurture Sales Leads Until They’re Ready To Buy
By Steven Parker

A new report says that half of all sales leads want to buy, just not right now. Meanwhile, they’re not fully tapped. Between 40% and 80% of new business leads are lost, not followed up upon, or otherwise mishandled because of poor company processes. Here’s a way to stop losing leads before they have a chance to mature.
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Atticus is a leading professional services firm dedicated to interim executive management. Interim management is a step above consulting, combining needs analysis with implemented solutions. When companies need immediate results but lack the time or in-house skills to get them, they turn to Atticus, whose team of interim executive managers achieve critical goals as much as twenty times faster than permanent senior managers. Contact us today to see how we can help you achieve key business goals faster.