BlogInstructor tips

Time for housekeeping

High season for outdoor companies is almost over. Summer in Northern hemisphere is gone and after a short rest (hopefully you got a vacation)  it’s time to thinking about the next season and do some housekeeping. Here are three tips that will make the process stress free and make a massive difference to future profitability

1. Wipe out the underperformers

Are there are services in your portfolio that did not work? Either  that did not sell or are not profitable to carry out. Now is the time to go over the service list and kill those that are not delivering the goods. Do not leave it to the spring. You won’t remember the agony of carrying out something that only gets ordered once a season. If it does not have a reason to be in your list of services it should not be. Log in to your web and delete it.

The same principle applies in different contexts – for example, the CRM system Pipedrive explains the importance of housekeeping in sales in their recent blog post about cleaning your sales pipeline.

Just keep in mind that seasonal services sell on customer recommendations and can take two full season to become performers. Do not kill the growing cows!

2. Nurture the performers

You have hopefully learned a lot about every service that performs, just because you have been delivering those constantly. But have  you updated the customer comments and photos/videos already? Now it is time to do that. Also go over the main claims in every service, fix that typo online and review the pricing. Yes, now. Because your long term partners will start asking about the next season pricing soon. Do not leave that to the spring either. Just apply all the learnings from the season instantly. As the saying goes ‘don’t put off until tomorrow what can be done today’

3. Bring in some young guns

New ideas are not just new ideas, they hold the key to the way your company could develop. Bringing in something innovative will open peoples minds and get them to do new things or old things in new ways.  Loquiz worked with a  company that bought iPads to run our games and found additional use for them in event registration and online voting within a couple of months. Take some risks and keep your eyes open at news ways to do things.

A good way to test something new is to ‘take your own medicine’. Run your company’s motivational event using new technology.  It will only  perform when your people believe into it, so testing within your own organisation is crucial.  A good second step is to pick a client company from your list that is happy with you and with taking some risk with really new technology. Offer it to them. Get them to pay for it.  Then give the new service some time to grow into great performer and see where your company takes you.

Follow the above and housekeeping won’t be a chore but a golden opportunity to futureproof your company’s growth.

Eric Hints

Eric is a founding partner in three successful nature and outdoor companies. He has acted as an expedition leader, instructor, salesman and team player.  Eric’s current undertaking Loquiz helps event companies reinvent team games.

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