Prioritization of Accounts Just to bring everyone up to speed on the process of building a strategic plan for our accounts:  First, we talked about knowing where we stand with the account, things like our strengths, whether the customer sees us as a pipsqueak specialty vendor, one of the top suppliers or as their critically important partner in business.  Later, we covered what you need to know about the account.  By now I know many of you are thinking, “I just don’t have enough hours in the day to go through this exercise with everyone customer.”  And, that is precisely the point we want to address.  You don’t have enough time. American Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson said, “All men are created equal.”  As smart as he was, Jefferson wasn’t a top flight salesperson.  Top sales guys learn, early on, that all accounts are not created equal.  Some will never contribute much to your commission plan.   Figuratively speaking, blowin...

What do you know about your account? Everybody claims to be a Solution Seller these days. It’s the place where the cool kids are supposed to be hanging out in world of selling. To illustrate, a quick “Google” of the term Solution Seller turns up something like 179 Million entries. As a group, we are talking the talk, but deep dives into the topic make me wonder. Many of the top salespeople in our industry confuse product expertise with providing a customer-centric solution. Is there value in helping your customer select just the right product for their application? Absolutely. Does your troubleshooting assistance provide something important to your customer? No doubt about it. But, I believe solution selling extends well beyond this type of product domain customer support. If the only solution you provide comes in being able to answer customer questions about products, I suspect you are vulnerable to future competitive threats. Here is why. We are moving into the next ge...

Knowing where you stand The wizened and gnarly voiced singer on a scratched old 78 rpm disc said something like this to me this: “If you want to get to Hollywood son, you better know where on earth here is.” I believe sellers must apply this advice to the first step of their strategic account plans. Where are we with the account? As reasonable as this sounds many sellers refuse to truly understand their importance with an account. Most don’t understand their strengths nor their vulnerabilities. Repeatedly salespeople tell me, “I get the lion’s share of the business at this account.” Yet, when I visit the account on joint calls with them, I see pallet loads of the competitive product coming in the door. Deeper research indicates whole technology segments which are supplied by the guy down the street. We see a long list of competitors signed in at the reception desk; many calling on people we don’t know. How do we know where we stand as a supplier? Are we viewed as...