Mark Allen Roberts has been helping his clients grow their sales and profitability for over 37 years. He found his passion early in his career while working with a small plastics company that had $4 million of annual sales, but with his help, it eventually sold for $300 million.
“Growing a business is my passion. I want to help a business grow at 20%, or more annually. After working with me, a few companies have doubled their sales in 18 months. That’s the kind of company I like to work with.”
Mark has found that working with a CEO and their Senior Management Team to determine what their business needs to grow and become more profitable is an intriguing challenge.
“Many times a company decides they are growing too slow, or may have just received an influx of capital from an outside investor and are looking to increase their overall scale of operations. They find they don’t have knowledgeable staff in-house to handle the immediate jump and are looking for the right individual to oversee the process. I have helped many companies in these types of situations and can prevent wasting time, money, and other resources.”
Mark understands the various phases a company experiences.
During the ‘Launch Phase’ a new business will solely be concerned about serving clients and is very product focused. In the ‘Sales Phase’ the business needs to increase sales, but also balance that with production and delivery capabilities. More attention to detail is necessary to keep everything in balance.
“Systems and processes must be put into place to document efficiency and effectiveness.”
Once sales and production have been scaled up the company begins to focus on the ‘Profitability Phase.’
To assure a profitable operation every area must be examined and evaluated. Systems must be in place to continually evaluate every aspect of the business from production, quality control, sales performance and employee evaluations.
“Plus, during the ‘Profitability Phase’ the company may launch a new product and start the whole process over again.”
Mark is currently working with a new client that is looking to expand internationally.
“We have taken more of a diagnostic approach with a current client. We first asked, ‘Where are we? What’s the current state? What is the direction and vision for the company? Why do they want to go there?’ Once we understand these answers and the “Why,” we can digest the data and help them make an informed decision, then develop a plan.”
Once the plan is in place it is normal for a company to train current employees for new tasks, or to hire additional staff to fill critical roles. Adequately training people for new roles, or assuring new employees fit the company’s culture is another hurdle to cross.
Outsourcing extra staffing needs can be a valuable tool for business today. Over the years Mark has developed working relationships with other entrepreneurs for social media engagement, video marketing, and assessment data to accurately project market data that can help a client grow without adding additional staffing costs.
When the pandemic presented new challenges to train employees, virtual sessions became the new norm.
“During COVID, I was concerned because everyone was working remotely, and no one wanted strangers in their building. I quickly researched virtual training via Zoom and other programs to keep my clients’ businesses on track.”
Mark was able to convert many training courses to a virtual format. The classes involve student/teacher interaction and have been created to improve retention. He was able to use his proven training methods virtually and never lose a beat.
“We found that people really enjoyed the virtual training. I was able to ask questions and they were able to reply and ask me questions just like we were in a live setting. We were able to transfer knowledge and work together. I could assign homework and build a sales playbook without actually being in the same room.”
Mark likes to train a company’s sales staff to become trusted advisors. He helps them discover what problems a client may be facing and find solutions to those problems.
“Managers today don’t want to be force fed a bunch of product features. They want answers to questions that they are actually facing, plus find ways to increase their bottom lines.”
Mark helps his client’s create a ‘Sales Playbook,’ that results in salesmen spending less time on the history of their company and product information, while spending more time demonstrating the value proposition of engaging their company, thus creating real value.
Mark has even created talking points to easily start a conversation with discovery questions to demonstrate competence and build trust. He also teaches qualifying questions to identify the decision maker and who has the control of the budget to buy your products.
“Our ‘Playbook’ features several digital assets that can be used for business development efforts to help current employees, as well as new hires.”
Mark has found the value of asking good questions, during the sales process demonstrates competence and builds trust.
“What I have found is that CEO’s and managers want business consultants, not salespeople. When you’re one of those, the sales process becomes much easier.”
Becoming a ‘Trusted Advisor’ takes more time and effort than just trying to make a sale. Mark has created courses that teach this process and help salespeople to become an advisor and not just someone trying to make a sale.
“It involves a completely different way of doing business. You have to understand your customer and how they make money, plus you have to understand how your products can impact that client and make their business more profitable.”
Mark has found that even with a sound plan in place, managers fail to execute that plan in some cases. So, he has now partnered with a company that wrote the book Scaling Up. He is able to provide his clients with a system and process, a framework per se, so that once a plan has been created, it has built in accountability to make sure things get done. He is able to continue to work with senior management of a company to continually evaluate systems and processes to assure the company’s team is staying on target.
Another area Mark keys on when evaluating a company’s performance is the competence of the Sales Management Team. In many circumstances sales managers were promoted because they excelled as salespeople, but top salesmen don’t always make the best managers. Using a performance-based software system, sales managers can be evaluated using real data, then trained to improve their weaknesses.
Mark also travels around the country speaking to business conferences and corporate meetings. A current favorite topic of planners is how to recession proof a company. A tip from his presentation to recession proof your company, is to do voice of customer research right now. Are your customers happy, if they’re not happy, understand why. What are they buying from someone else that they could buy from you? Right now, the best time and money spent is selling more to your existing accounts.
Even after 30 years Mark is still excited to wake up every morning and dive into helping his clients become more profitable and achieve their goals.
He has two grandchildren with a third on the way that he loves to spend time with. In fact, he was able to work in a trip to the pumpkin patch with them. He and his wife love to boat and travel. This year they were able to visit Sedona, Arizona and Savannah, Georgia.
Being shut in during COVID he gained a few extra pounds and has recently begun a fitness program to shed the extra baggage. In fact, he wrote an article about what Karate taught him about making sales training stick. Read it here. He also enjoys reading and tries to read at least two books per month, both business related and non-business.
Check out Mark’s video series, Sales Science: Improving Sales Effectiveness Leveraging Data on Elite Experts Network.
We thoroughly enjoyed our conversation with Mark; you can listen to the complete Podcast on iTunes or YouTube.
To learn more about Mark’s business consultation and speaking visit his website and follow him on LinkedIN or give him a call at 330-413-8552.
