Why not every customer deserves your attention

Most sales people tend to forget that not every customer wants to buy their product all of the time.  Indeed, analysis of customer buying patterns suggests that, at any one time, only 5% of potential customers are actively buying and over 50% have no interest in buying at all.  Finding the 5% who are actively buying requires skill and dedication and sometimes a bit of luck!

The first thing that any sales person should be doing is to analyse their customer base.  Imagine that you have 100 potential customers.  If you tried to meet with them all, it would take approximately 50 working days, based on 2 meetings per day.  Even if you did nothing else, this is two and a half months of effort.  The chances are, given the other things that a sales person is required to do, these 50 days will be spread over at least 3-4 months.  Trying to locate the 5 companies that want to buy now over 3-4 months means that you have probably missed them and lost the sale.

You need to find ways of defining which customers you are most likely to be successful with.  These criteria will depend upon what you are selling but could include factors such as:

·         How big is the company (turnover or employees)?

·         Where are they located?

·         What is their buying process?

·         Can I get a meeting with the decision maker easily?

It will be important to include criteria that allow you to make some assessment of their potential to buy.  For example, if you sell a product that is based on a number of users, whether they are expanding or contracting might be a suitable criteria.  Not all criteria will be as important as each other so there needs to be some way of ranking each of them based on their importance.  I call this “What does a good customer look like?” and is a critical analysis for any sales team to make.  The analysis needs to be repeated on a regular basis, at least annually, as customer’s needs will change.  In addition, if you sell more than one product, you will probably have to do the analysis for each product as there are likely to be different customers for each of them.

Once you have done this for all potential customers, you should have a ranking of all of your potential customers.  The potential customers at the top probably require further analysis to identify specific needs followed by meeting with them to understand these needs further.  There will probably also be gaps in your analysis which you will want to fill to build a complete picture of them.  Hopefully, the results of the analysis are such that you rapidly identify good opportunities that you can work towards closing while starting to move downwards through the list.

The potential customers at the bottom of the list should not be ignored even if you do not plan to meet with them immediately.  Just because they are not likely to buy immediately, they may well want to buy in the future.  You need to find ways of engaging with them to build your profile and increase awareness of the benefits of your products so that when they are in a position to buy, they are a warm call not a cold call.  Car manufacturers advertise their cars all the time even though most of us only buy a new car every 3-4 years at best.  They want you to be aware of their cars when you do get to that position.  The internet, email and multiple advertising channels make it much easier to do this now than ever before.

So, because not all customers want to buy now, not all customer’s need your undivided and immediate attention now.  Focus on the customers who are most likely to bring you success today while keeping other customers warm.

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