Are You Really Making The Most Of Your Most Important Accounts?
by Jonathan Farrington
A vitally important sales activity is that of managing existing customer accounts to consolidate and grow the relationship. Yet unfortunately, when compared over time, the customers’ interest levels increase while salespeople’s interest levels tend to decrease. This creates a “relationship gap” and is due entirely to complacency.
Another major issue is that too often the salesperson fails to expand his “contact base” as this next survey proves which results in vulnerability and exposure to competitive activity
Periodically, the Financial Times conducts a survey of British industry to establish how companies go about their purchasing. The survey is very comprehensive, broken down into many kinds of products and services.
From a Sales Director’s perspective, these are very worrying statistics.
Customer size (Number of employees): Less than 200
Average number of buying influencers: 3.43
Number of influencers visited by salespeople: 1.72
Customer size (Number of employees): 200 – 400
Average number of buying influencers: 4.85
Number of influencers visited by salespeople: 1.75
Customer size (Number of employees): 401 – 1000
Average number of buying influencers: 5.81
Number of influencers visited by salespeople: 1.90
Customer size (Number of employees): 1001 +
Average number of buying influencers: 6.50
Number of influencers visited by salespeople: 1.65
In essence, without a sustained approach to ongoing servicing and support activities, customers that took months to win are ultimately lost because there was a lack of interest from their supplier.
To-days clients/customers are looking for vendors who can be business-partners, who are willing and able to share risks and who are able to properly manage the entire sales process.
Fact: It costs seven times as much to locate and sell to a new customer as it does to an existing one.
Are you making the most of your customer base? Answer the questions below honestly and find out.
Question:
1. How many regular clients do you have?
2. Has that number increased in the last twelve months?
3. How many of them have bought in the last three months?
4. Of those ‘regular clients’, how many have you contacted in the last month?
5. Of those, in how many have you progressed upwards from the user/recommender?
6. With how many of them do you enjoy exclusivity i.e. preferred supplier status?
7. How many of your clients have bought more the ‘second’ time around than when they originally bought from you?
8. With how many of your regular clients have you conducted an account review within the last six months?
Study your answers – Are you still confident you are making the most of your existing accounts?
Jonathan Farrington is a globally recognized business coach, mentor, author and sales strategist, who has guided hundreds of companies and thousands of individuals around the world towards optimum performance levels. He is Chairman of The Sales Corporation, CEO of Top Sales Associates and Senior Partner at The JF Consultancy based in London and Paris. Early in 2007, Jonathan formed Top Sales Associates (TSA) to promote the very best sales related solutions and products. TSA is now a subsidiary of The Sales Corporation, based in London and Paris. Visit his website
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by paul_mccord: @iamjf are you making the most of your existing accounts? http://tinyurl.com/yhpnlrk…
Trackback by uberVU - social comments — January 13, 2010 @ 6:25 am |
Very useful sale stats… thanks.
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Best regards,
Mark
Comment by Mark Goodson — January 13, 2010 @ 7:01 am |
Quite motivational! Making customers always feel important to us is just as important as winning the customer in the first place.
Comment by Sales Training — January 14, 2010 @ 2:12 pm |