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Clarity In The Process of Conducting Business Will Improve Profits.

Our company has had issues with management and sales personnel making way too many assumptions on projects, processes or customer involvement.  These can easily be serious financial mistakes.  Any suggestions for us?
Steve J; Business owner Cameron, MO

One professional sales lady I know says that she keeps a white board filled with the names of her clients (and prospects) and the title at the top of the board is "What can I do today to help..." She says, "This helps my mind focus on my clients and their needs. It helps me realize what I am all about (i.e., helping my clients) and it causes me to think about where the opportunities are."

An extra benefit to this approach is that it helps you to avoid neglecting some of your clients or prospects. It quickly highlights where you need to devote more mind time.  A clever way to reinforce and employ this technique is to place the same list on your screen saver…Yes that would give your monitor a different look.  

Professional sales and management people sometimes make proposals that ultimately don't work out. Often the source of the failure can be found in the conjecture on which the recommendation was based on.

Call them what you’d like; assumptions, suppositions or conjectures all can be defined as a set of beliefs surrounding a particular topic that are often shared by a group that causes them to think or act in a certain manner.

A helpful technique used to provide employees or clients with better service and involvement is to preface the "Recommendations" section of a given report or project with a list of "Assumptions Made". By explicitly listing the assumptions made, mutual understanding of the problem and actions recommended between both parties can be ensured. It will also help to highlight any faulty assumptions made prior to implementation.

Wrongful suppositions often lead to poor recommendations. Capture these items in writing and share them with your client or employees in advance to ensure that you are both on the same page.

Clarity will improve profits and cash flow.  Mistakes cost huge amounts of money.

Regards,
George F. Mancuso
President
Client Growth Consultants
Grinnell, IA 

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