"Locking in" business without knowing more about your customer looks more like this. Let’s think about quantity discounts.  For many folks the idea of “locking in” business by offering up a special discount seems to make sense when future potential is involved.  Here’s how it works.  Acme Manufacturing has yet to purchase your new product but based on your knowledge of the Acme’s size and an intuition that Acme could buy lots of your product, you provide a discount.  Our analysis of many first time sales situations, indicates a couple of key points:   First, the discounts are provided unilaterally, with no probing of the customer’s current purchase price.  What’s worse, we see this tactic used with new, emerging technologies and products never before introduced to the customer.  Sometimes, the seller offhandedly informs the customer, “The normal price for this product is $1,000, but I am going to knock off a hundred dollars so your...

Does your OEM customer view spare parts as a revenue stream?   Solution sellers should know the answer to this You and your customer can share a love of those spare parts! very simple question.   Strangely, perhaps even sadly, many distributor sales guys have never fully explored the question.  In their daily struggle to get parts specified, solve technical issues and sometimes baby-sit orders flowing from the customer, they overlook an opportunity to move up the supplier food-chain.  For review let’s look at the types of folks selling to our customers: Type of Supplier Customer Perception Vendor A company we send lists of materials to and sometimes make purchases if the price is right and delivery schedules meet our needs. Supplier A company we regularly purchase from because they appear to provide a competitive price and good service. Valued-Supplier A company we do more ...

For the seasoned professional reading, you may scoff at this piece and see it as a restatement of the obvious. I am a veteran of thousands of customer/client lunches. Back when I was a young pup-seller, I was instructed to take customers to lunch, but not given much guidance to do so. It was the day of the two-martini lunch. For some strange reason, maybe it was my rebellious streak, I decided not to do the martini part. But I made a number of observations around the whole customer lunch thing. First, lunch with customers expanded my day. I could make a lunch appointment for 11:30 am and create time for another call. In a territory which covered most of the state of Iowa, finding time for another call was difficult. Customers tended to open up during our lunch times. They told me about their families, personal interests, career goals and often provided coaching. It was over lunch they shared the names of other people I should call on and often gave me pointers for my own pe...