Small Business Sales Efforts – “If You Rest, You Rust” by John Benadum

This week’s guest blog is from John Benadum who has the perfect solution for companies looking for machining services and machine shops that have machining time available.  Through https://www.allamericanopenmachinetime.com/ John and Gina Benadum are helping connect buyers with suppliers.

Most small business owners wear a number of hats. That is a good thing, or is it? We like to be involved and in charge and that is truly what drives most entrepreneurs. The problem that I am seeing is that when we have made some major headway with our revenue stream (sales goals), most of us want to take a break and put it on auto pilot. After all, we are busy “taking care of business” right? There lies the problem.

What is an optimal time period to “rest” your sales efforts? The short answer is that there is none, don’t do it. I have been in hundreds of small contract manufacturing shops in North East Ohio and it is a common practice in the industry to completely stop looking for new or expanding business when they get to full capacity.

Our Small Business USA Reshoring efforts must include an ongoing sales plan to attract quality customers and every day of every week develop those relationships. We do not have the luxury of thousands of dollars of corporate money to do this so each one of us must develop a hybrid PR/CSR/Sales Expansion plan to target specific prospects and keep the process fresh and ongoing. As an owner, you can do this yourself or direct someone in your employment to take up the cause. Whatever your decision, you must monitor the process closely as it is way too easy to “let it slide” into oblivion.

To do this you need to pull information from numerous sources:

• Your customers
• Your competitors
• Your employees
• Your business communities
• And wherever your imagination takes you!

This information was recently published:  “60-80% of All New Jobs Come from Small Businesses” – US Small Business Association. This is really outstanding and scary at the same time. We as small business owners are under the spotlight. We must perform and lead the way to making America the best place to manufacture in the world. We can do it and we will. We are here to help at: www.AllAmericanOpenMachineTime.com and I would be happy to connect with you here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnrbenadum