Sales Lessons From Goka Foods.

I promised you that in our first year of operation since this idea started from here I will be sharing with you our challenges, how we are handling them as lessons for you too incase your facing the same challenges.

Now our biggest issue has been sales. Some how we have managed to fairly figure out most of the things save for sales. If anything is going to be our undoing then it will be sales but we wont let that happen as we seat and watch. The nature of our business is that it survives on mass production, mass sales because the margins are so low. If you don’t sell enough the small margins (profits) get wiped out by over head expenses.

So you have to have a sales team and strategy so robust, efficient and cost friendly based on your ability.Currently at Goka we are using a sales bike which was part of the assets acquired for the business in the start. This bike does deliveries to schaools, individual clients and also sales to local shops. So when the bike is down due to mechanical issues it affects our sales. This calls for a plan B or back up plan which for us is to have more than one sales bike for now beside office sales. Atleast two or at best three for now.

What this does is, one it takes out dependence on one sales person. Incases where they fall sick or start acting up your covered. You can easily make decisions to fire and hire because if you fired one you’d have one or two others working a luxury you can’t afford with one sales person. Even one delivery guy for those whose businsesses depend on delivery to the client.

Having more than one sales person also creates an environment of competition that drives sales with the help of a reward system that rewards the better sales person. So for a business that largely depends on mobile sales like ours it’s key to have more than one sales option. You could look at it from the angle of saving costs by having one person but the best way to save has always been to increase your income to cater for your expenses. Yes there costs to sales but the target should be to sale as much and have the cost of sales below 5% of actual sales.

As shareholders at Goka we have agreed to raise some money to acquire atleast two new motorcyles and other enablers of sales as sales is the heart of any business. You too should focus on how to sell more in your business.