Is it time to give sales a boost?

Your experience puts the consulting advice you offer right on the mark. Your bakery has the best cupcakes in town. Your graphic design abilities are outstanding, as though you and your creative impulses were meant for the e-age. It's the same with your floral arrangements.

There's not a car you and your mechanics can't fix.

Your law firm? The home repair work you do? The adult day care services you provide?

None better.

The product or service you sell is good, and you're proud of it. There's only one problem: Sales. The sales staff you've hired is struggling. Income is lagging.

It turns out that as good as we collectively are at devising a product or service, we tend to be uncomfortable selling it - a situation that's not unusual in the entrepreneurial world: Creating whatever it is that we've created is one thing; making a mark in the marketplace place is something else.

That's not so unusual, either, according to Kerry Cunnion. Business owners "manage a thousand things every day," he says. "Even if they know how to sell, they may not know how to manage a sales team."

Based in Lake Zurich, Cunnion is one of about 80 outsourced sales executives across the country whose sales skills, experience and outsourced status bring them to Sales Xceleration Inc., an Indianapolis-headquartered company that provides the support that allows formerly employed sales executives to help business owners boost their sales programs.

Essentially entrepreneurs like the rest of us, Sales Xceleraton specialists become part-time sales managers, typically relieving business owners of a task many neither do well nor like.

Other professionals often work in a similar manner, some because they have been outsourced and others because the structure of their part-time roles provides a combination of opportunity to share expertise and enjoy free time.

There are five Sales Xceleration specialists in the Chicago area.

The five obviously are not the only sales consultants in the marketplace. Their twist is mostly senior selling experience, plus a willingness to use their abilities on a part-time basis to help smaller and mid-size businesses build sales.

The Sales Xceleraton concept is that, drawing upon both their own experience and available selling materials, one of the Sales Xceleration professionals will manage your sales team.

Not surprisingly, the Sales Xceleraton website (https://www.salesxceleration.com) is loaded with company sales materials. However, a piece of my conversation with Cunnion may be useful as a let's-explore-this-idea starting point.

Unless they've been in sales, entrepreneurs "typically don't realize that sales must be actively managed," Cunnion says. "Businesses need a sales infrastructure and discipline.

"Otherwise," he continues, "sales can become a big pain point" for many business owners.

Typically, Cunnion says as an example, he is on site one day a week, using phone calls and emails to connect with your sales people - and you - as otherwise needed.

© 2018 Kendall Communications Inc. Follow Jim Kendall on LinkedIn and Twitter. Write him at Jim@kendallcom.com. Read Jim's Business Owners' Blog at www.kendallcom.com.