Customer Prioritization
To determine how your are going to invest your time for maximizing sales, you’ll need an A, B, and C customer identification matrix. Figure 5-1 shows a method of future account prioritizing that you might not have used in the past:
| Accout Name | Cust. | Compet. | Relat. | Size | Maint. | Credit | Pot’l | Total | A, B, C |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExampleAccount | 5 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 29 | A |
| Notes: | |||||||||
| Existing Customer of ours = 5 | |||||||||
| Competition has business = 1, we have business = 5 | |||||||||
| Size is relative to territory | |||||||||
| Maintenance = time spent with handling complaints 1 = high maintenance | |||||||||
| Potential = relative to territory | |||||||||
| Total = Maximum of 35 points | |||||||||
| A, B, C is relative to territory | |||||||||
| Remember: You may weight any of the columns if you want, just make sure to be consistent! | |||||||||
| ©2003 Renee Walkup, Sales PEAK, Inc. 678-587-9911, www.salespeak.com All Rights Reserved | |||||||||
Before you begin your planning, you’ll need to honestly consider where your best customer potential lies. By filling out the matrix in Figure 5-1 for each of your customers and prospects, you will find out how to invest your time to maximize income.
Consider these ideas when planning: What is your relationship with the buyer? On a scale of 1 to 5, your relationship might be a 4. If your competition has all of the customer’s business, that would be a 1 on the chart; if you have all the business, that’s a 5. Future growth potential may be a 5. You can total different categories and begin to look at all accounts. Maybe totals of 27 to 35 might be an A account, 19 to 26 would be a B, 18 and fewer is a C. This is a time-management and time-investment determiner, because you will never get your time back and planning is for sales growth.
Look at the future. Past A accounts might be maxed out, but Bs might be in a position for greater growth. One other determiner from a time-management decision is “How high maintenance is that account?” If there are complexities, problems, or a high need for attention, it may actually be in our best interest to assign the account to a tech-person account manager or to customer service because the account might actually be costing you money in terms of your time. Remember, all these business-planning decisions are determined by time invested for the greatest result.
These are business decisions. If you don’t have the freedom to choose these courses of action, make a case for a change and take it to your manager. A $12-per-hour employee can maintain an account, where your $80-an-hour attention for limited return might not be a good business decision. As a phone sales professional, you need to spend your time doing what you do best—selling on the phone, not maintaining already sold accounts that lack growth potential.
Let’s look at an example of an inside computer salesperson, who secures a $1 million sale to a school district. The school district also needed a service contract worth another $300,000. The total sale for 2005 was $1.3 million. This is an A account for this territory.
Now, it’s time to plan the new fiscal year. The salesperson considers this customer, an A account, then schedules the time in his calendar to work this account, say one call a week. A close examination, however, shows that it is, disappointingly, now only a $100,000 per year service account—not a priority at all. In fact, this customer won’t be eligible as an A account for another two years after the existing contract is up. This account, in reality, has become a B or C customer. Calls from the salesperson to this customer for the current year should be strategically reduced and not disproportionately allocated by calling them once weekly.
What about you? Are you thinking past or future? Remember that phone selling is not just a matter of getting up and dialing from a list all day; you are not paid for the number of times you dial the phone. You are paid to generate revenue for your company, and subsequently for yourself. Companies base goals on projected revenues—not past sales. So, take a look at your A, B, and C accounts. You’ll probably find that some of your Bs are your best As for the upcoming sales year. That some of your As are now Cs, because of buying patterns. Oh, and your Cs can translate into Bs and even As. Take a look at your business and make these forecasting determinations. Just be honest when evaluating each customer.
Once you do that, you can strategically plan where you are going to invest your time, turning your calling time into dollars!
Now that your priorities have been determined, you have to parcel out your forty phone hours very efficiently. Because Garrison School (previous example) was an A account last year, too many salespeople would spend an A equivalent number of calls when the potential just isn’t there. The result is wasted time that should be spent selling more to existing accounts and developing new accounts.
For example, in a forty-hour week:
A accounts should take up approximately twenty-five hours of time (that includes planning, calling, leaving messages, having conversations with gatekeepers, and preparing proposals).
B accounts require ten hours.
C accounts are five hours. (You can often accomplish quite a bit with well-thought-out voice-mail messages, e-mail, and appointments in advance for phone conversations so that you aren’t abandoning your C accounts.)
Remember, prioritizing is based on this year’s potential, not last year’s performance!