Sales Question: How Long Do I Chase an Account?
A Question from the Sales Team:
How long
should I pursue an account before I give up?
 |
| Chasing money is a timeless art. |
Was the customer properly selected as a
prospect?
Is the customer in the right industry, possess the right
potential volume and credit worthy? A
lot of this information is available via a little research. Armed with a manufacturer’s directory, the
internet and maybe a D&B report, we can narrow the answers to this question
down rapidly. Experience tells me this
step could be completed in the first month of exploring the account.
Was the customer properly qualified?
During the first round of making calls on any new account,
one critical task is qualification. Here
we answer this list of questions:
·
Is the account real?
Sometimes sales offices with no
real potential show up on our radar screens.
If your information says 300 employees, you can tell by the parking lot
and building size.
·
Is the company stand-alone or part of a
larger organization?
This information is important
for multiple reasons. First, if they are
subsidiary of a company that makes your kind of product, purchasing options may
not include you. Secondly, larger
Fortune 500 companies often have supply agreements in place which restrict the
supplier count. We’ll talk more about
this later.
·
Are your kind of products being used in the
quantities you suspected?
A quick walk through the
production or work in progress area will typically tell the tale. Do you see your products being assembled into
the machines? Are there stocked shelves
in the storage crib containing the kinds of quantities you need to make this a
good account?
·
Are you able to gather information from the
customer?
Does the customer share product
and company information with you? It’s
impossible for you to do your job without information. The list of information is long, but you
should be able to ask: what they make, who they sell to, current suppliers,
lead times required, design standards followed, government regulations and a
bit about annual usage.
Is there some reason why you cannot do
business?
Everybody already has a supplier; some have good
suppliers. Count your blessings or place
a strong hand over your wallet anytime a customer tells you they were looking
for somebody just like you and the day you walked in the door was a gift from a
higher power. A relationship with a
competitor may slow down your work; probably making your work harder. But, it’s not a reason why you cannot do business.
However, there are several good reasons why you cannot do
business a potential customer. Here’s a
short list:
·
The company has a long term supply contract with
a competitor which is strongly enforced.
·
The company is part of a larger organization
with sister divisions producing your kind of products
·
The company has shared ownership with a
competitive distributor.
·
The head of engineering, purchasing or some
other high ranking person at the company is related to your competitor.
·
The customer is purely price driven and your offering is not the “low price”
brand.
Back to the
original question: How long should I
pursue the account?
The answer is complex.
The simple answer is this; until you discover a reason why you cannot
sell to the account, you should continue to pursue the business. In the meantime, most salespeople manage a
territory. It’s a game of juggling and
balancing time. Current business is
important. However, many salespeople
make the mistake of pushing this type of account to bottom of their priority
list. If the volume is right and if the
customer matches well with your value proposition, it is in your best interest
to continue to mine for information.
Sales opportunity could be just around the corner.
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