Profit in Plain Sight by Graham Anne C.;

Author:Graham, Anne C.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Morgan James Publishing

GAP #1

Most Sales Teams Are Overlooking the Low-Hanging Fruit

Most businesses have a 60-70% chance of selling to existing customers, a 20-40% chance of winning back a lost customer, and only a 5-20% chance of securing a new customer. Does that feel about right in your business, when you think about it? Where do your sales representatives spend most of their time? Probably trying to close new customers, because most sales representatives love the thrill of the kill. They are hunters, not harvesters. You want to make sure you harvest all the bounty of the hard work you’ve invested in already in addition to chasing new customers.

Take a close look at the business you’re incenting. If your sales team sees new customers as the hallmark of success, then you are overlooking rapid, easy, and less costly paths to Top-Line Growth.

It’s Guts, Not Glory

A company selling packaged software solutions in a niche service industry found that mergers and acquisitions among their customers were resulting in consolidation and the belief by many customers that they had the critical mass to create an in-house software solution of their own. As a result, customers were cancelling their contracts weekly, yet the company failed to develop any type of retention strategy.

One enterprising account manager spotted a gap in the approach many of those developing their in-house solutions were using that his company could fill — they might not be able to keep the existing software contracts, but they could still retain the customer by finding new solutions that filled a new need.

He also stayed in touch with his “lost” customers to track the results they were getting with their in-house efforts. Over time, he often was able to illustrate to his accounts that they weren’t driving as much revenue with their own efforts as they had by using the 3rd party software. When faced with the facts, customers gladly came back to his solution.

There wasn’t a lot of glory in simply doing the right things to Retain and Regain customers … but he remained one of the few account managers whose sales continued to be strong in an industry that was losing ground to unexpected shifts in buyer behavior.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.