It’s Time To Choose Your Next Prospect
Do you have a sales problem; or an attrition problem? A situational awareness of this question helps your team minimize turnover while driving sales.
It’s Time for a Choice!
Make your customers prospects again. When sales slow down, we tend to rush to market with product-driven/pricing offers rather than solutions. As sales managers, we must step back and start with what the customer thinks about their business climate now.
Sales teams settle into customer relationships based on service rather than ongoing discovery. When did you, as a sales manager, conduct the last “deep dive” with your top fifty customers, the 20% who represent 80% of billing?
We rely on the power of curiosity and questions to define a prospect’s goals. It’s time to start fresh with your customers as prospects and learn how their business has evolved since the last sale. What do you know about their current circumstances? Revisit what makes your customers valuable to their customers
We can provide better solutions and get higher renewal ratios with more information. Protecting our best customer relationships requires that we be businesspeople in sales, not salespeople in the business.
Proactive Communication Reviews.
In short-staffed, lean sales operations, managers are stressed and rely on sellers to meet regularly to keep pace with changing customer needs. Customers who experience less attention can feel taken for granted and are more subject to competitive offers. How can you reduce risk in your customer relationships?
As managers, you conduct weekly reviews with a sales team; what about the customers? Weekly meetings with customers might be too much; monthly could be ideal. Management should have a plan to reach out to customers.
Check your CRM for clients with less contact in the past 60 days. Hesitation to meet for fear of hearing something negative, “no news is good news,” will get you blindsided and result in unexpected cancellations.
Do Not Use Price to Retain a Customer.
Pre-determined discounts are examples of putting your internal goals above your customer’s needs. Stop the unsolicited offers that revolve around discounts. Price may be critical to some customers. I suggest they are not your best customers if they only buy on price.
Highly price-sensitive customers will leave you and chase the next best offer. Your best customers care about results first; price is not number one.
Pre-configured sales packages demote your value as they ignore the customer and put the focus on you. Resist a sales package wrapped in creative spin to spike sales. Replace short-term practices with better strategies that protect your perceived value and continue to serve your customer’s needs.
Stay Current With Your Customer’s Problems.
Every salesperson suffers from turnover, so prospecting will always be critical. We need a proactive approach to lower attrition with active customers, keeping them engaged and informed as we stay informed.
In times of macro downdrafts impacting sales, being more current with your customer’s point of view is critical. Seeing them as prospects again and offering fresh solutions that fit their needs will sustain your sales momentum.
Customers who trust your intentions are less prone to attrition. Your goal is to build robust customer engagement through proactive communication, reaffirming the value of your products and your role in their strategies, and resetting relationships regularly.
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