Does your business have a "Check engine" light? Posted by: Vishal Adsool

Sheldon panics whenever he sees a "Check engine" light on the car dashboard just because he thinks the engine is going to explode whereas on the other side there is Penny who has brought the car with the "Check engine" light glowing and to get rid of that light she plans to put a sticker on it! As funny as it may sound, there are people like Sheldon and Penny who run businesses the same way. Whereas one of them is extra cautious the other one is extra casual about the sensors like the "Check Engine" light. However, the real question over here is, does your business come with a "Check engine" light?  

While most of these businesses(usually SME's) are pretty comfortable working at their own pace, it needs to be understood that a significant locomotion alone does not signify a healthy engine. Just because it moves, does not mean it moves optimally. There can be an urgent requirement for a quick performance tune-up or there can be warnings coming from the engine that need to be tackled. Business in systematic spreadsheets lacks this luxury though. It makes you feel organized, planned and powerful but honestly it is like carrying the impression of running a Porsche but in reality it runs on a small 100cc engine underneath or in some cases running business carefully under the impression that its running on a compact 100 cc engine whereas in reality there is a potential engine like Porsche underneath.  No matter what engine your business runs on, rarely would you get to know if there is something wrong under the hood or if one of the parts requires an overhaul without actually lifting the hood. However the convenience of a "Check engine" light makes you forget even procedure to pop the hood open, right?

What if your business does get a "Check Engine" light? Let us take a look at the ideal situations when the "Check Engine" light should turn ON.

1. The numbers are not following the usual business trend.

So your business is in profit every time but as compared to last year has it marginally improved or has it been marginally hit? What if the "Check Engine" light glows when it observes a downward or upward trend in different colors? Or on Christmas/Diwali/New Year/Independence Day Sale last year you ended up with a record breaking sale of a particular product and this year you are not yet planned to be stocked on the same. A "Check Engine" warning may help you stock up carefully so that you meet the demands of your buyers. 

2. Lack of product demonstrations from Sales Executives and Dealers. 

You are taking all the efforts to offer a range of products to your customers to choose from, however some of these products are not getting demonstrated to your clients through your Sales Executives or the dealers. That should call for that warning light to glow amber. Blame it on their comfort zone or blame it on their ignorance, knowingly/unknowingly they sometimes tend to become so comfortable and ignorant that they try to pitch the same products everytime forgetting about the very old or the new range of products that you have on the shelf thus limiting your business. The "Check Engine" light in such cases will help in giving a feedback to these important parts of your business so that they start working optimally to boost business. 

3. The Quotations are not getting dispatched. 

Sometimes your prospect need a quotation on your products and your Sales Execs are so busy that they accidentally ignore the case. Studies show that most of the leads are lost because of the ignorant attitude of the Sales personals towards sending quotations. Obviously, more the delay in sending quotes, less is the probability for getting that business and certainly the light should glow in such cases. Also sometime if you see more leads getting injected in your database but less number of quotations getting dispatched from the system, again it calls in for the light to glow. Apart from the ignorant attitude of the sales guys the other reason might credit your marketing department. There is a high probability that your business is getting highlighted/visited for the wrong products and that is a sign for you to change the marketing literature all across. With the "Check Engine" light switched ON in this case, you would be able to dig the exact cause for quotations not getting dispatched.

4. There are Pinocchio in your Sales Team. 

Sales Executives are the only people that are allowed to schedule their meetings outside the office and it is a bitter reality that some of them schedule it the Pinocchio way. They usually prefer scheduling meetings as per their convenience rather than their clients also sometimes they don't even visit the client however their call reports show that they have spent a significant amount of time in meeting the client only to wait in his reception area for a majority of time. Finding Pinocchio's in the system should trigger the "Check engine" light on the business. Evidently it might also be more likely that some of the fake promises made to the client by these Pinocchio too get carried as a profit eating burden while servicing the lead once you win it.

Gravity from Equations Work comes with a "Check Engine" light for your business. With a CRM as strong as Gravity in place, the business leaves very less room for errors. Gravity offers a very strong Business Intelligence dashboard that keeps a track of all activities happening in your business. Right from product demonstrations to automatic quotation dispatcher, Gravity even lets you create your ad literature with zero programming that can be embedded anywhere just like a YouTube video. With its add-on by the name FOSTER(Feet On Street Tracking EnableR) you get to understand the past, present and future movements of your assets on the ground leaving less room for creating Pinocchio's.  For more information on Gravity visit http://bit.ly/gravitycrm.

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