I believe salespeople should be salespeople.
They should focus on growing the business, and investing time in the right customers, not necessarily just taking care of existing business. So, I recommend the second classification system: Classify your accounts according to the potential for future business. In that system, it’s possible that an A account has never bought anything from you.
In order to do that, you need to collect some fairly detailed information about each of your accounts. For example, you‘ll need to answer this question: “If this account bought everything they could from me over the next 12 months, how much would that be?”
The answer to that question is what I call QPC (Quantified Purchasing Capacity) and it is the objective measurement of an account’s potential and where you should invest time in the customer.
Only half of the equation
You’ll also need to collect subjective observations about the account, and compile those into criteria that I call “Partnerability.” Combined, those two measurements amply describe the account’s potential and allow you to rate every account into one of three categories, A, B, or C. Partnerability is the factor that will help salespeople know where they should be investing time.
By the way, this whole system is described in detail in Chapter Five of my book, 11 Secrets of Time Management for Salespeople. It’s a bedrock discipline of my Kahle Way B2B Selling
System, and a part of almost every seminar I present.
Having established that, let’s go back to the reader’s question: How should you invest your time?
If you classify your accounts by history, then you need to further divide each class into two sub-classes: Growth and Management. Thus, if you have an account in which you have all the business, it is a “management” account. If, however, there is room for more business, it is a “growth” account.
If you have an A or B account in which you have all the business, then work to reduce the time and effort you put into that account. Facilitate relationships with your customer service people, with your operations and inside people, and try to remove yourself as much as possible from interactions with the account. The selling is done, now it is just a matter of servicing them to keep them happy.
If you have an A or B account which has a lot of room to grow, then invest heavily, as this will likely be the best investment of your time.
The issue is not how much they are currently buying from you; the issue is how much more they could be buying from you — unless, of course, your job is to be a mobile customer service rep and not really a salesperson.
Invest time with customers that have potential!
Which brings us to the place I recommend for every salesperson. Classify your customers according to their potential for future business. Create three classes: A, B, and C. Spend half of your time with the A’s and the other half of your time with everyone else.
Making this change in how you view your customers is one of the single most powerful things you can do. By investing your time in customers that have the most potential, you can reasonably expect to double or triple your business in two or three years.
Good luck.
