Sellers and presale engineers have limited time and the cost of chasing bad business confines them from growing their existing accounts or developing new ones.
In my last article “Less Is More,” I shared some insight about the importance of analyzing your clients, and how more clients don’t necessarily mean higher margins or more of the right type of revenue. Through some examples and evaluation criteria, I made the claim that by classifying your clients into A, B, C and F, you can identify the right clients that are key to growing your business — and the ones that you should separate yourself from. Sellers and presale engineers have limited time and the cost of chasing bad business confines them from growing their existing accounts or developing new ones. The fact is, most sellers have too many accounts and don’t know how to say “no.”
Just classifying clients and moving away from the F’s isn’t good enough. You also need to focus on moving the C clients to B, the B to A and the A to A+. This requires strategic focus and solid account planning. I don’t know about you, but I will say the majority of solution providers I talk to say their sales team isn’t investing significant time on this today. The bulk of sales people I know say they don’t have time; they have a quota, a monthly number they need to hit and mouths to feed.