3 Top reasons you’re leaving cash on the table!
I’m often asked by sales leaders, “How can we quickly and easily increase our sales?”
One great area to explore is to step back and question where we can add more value to our existing clients.
This seems overly simplistic, right?
Well ask yourself honesty, how many of your existing clients use or even know about all of your products or service offerings?
Experience shows that doing this self-analysis frequently highlights to individuals and companies that they are leaving substantial amounts of money on the table.
And the main reason is a lack of perception. Imagine standing in a beautiful spacious art gallery perhaps admiring a large Rothko or Monet.
How much of that painting would you appreciate if you stood a foot from the canvas?
At best you would only see a few details. Your narrow perception blinds you to the larger context and you would have a poor appreciation of the overall image.
Sales people too can quickly form a narrow perception of their customers. Seeing only the individual sales opportunity in front of them. Rather than forming a complete picture of their customer. Including their overall key business objectives, the challenges they are facing & their individual concerns.
There are 3 key reasons for this:
- Your client has a limited perception of you.
The client only knows you for one specific product or service and are happy with you but they are unaware of the additional value you could provide from additional products or services.
So don’t be a one trick pony. Regularly include examples of how you are helping other clients, make an effort to include these into your conversations, articles and marketing.
- Your own perception of the client is limited.
You see them with tunnel vision focusing solely on the original product or service they purchased rather than keeping up to date with their current needs or objectives.
As an example, recently whilst doing this exercise with a sales director I found she was shocked to discover she had missed out on a large opportunity with an established customer. What added to her frustration was the fact she had built up a great relationship with the client and the account was producing a good level of revenue from the commercial sector.
She was surprised to learn that the company had expanded into the hospitality sector but not considered calling her to discuss the new venture. When she asked why, the client admitted they simply didn’t know she had experience or appropriate solutions for the hospitality sector.
By not regularly reviewing your client’s business objectives with them you can easily miss great opportunities.
- Over reliance on one or two contacts.
I often see senior sales people becoming complacent. Relying solely on a couple of key contacts who have become friends within a larger organisation. They assume they are covering all the bases and are really managing the account well. However sooner or later their negligence will come back to bite them. Either a key person will leave the business and in the process leave
them out in the cold. Or a competitor will win a sales opportunity they didn’t even have in their pipeline! Why? They did not continually expand and update their network of contacts to ensure it included new and influential people joining the business.
So here is what I want you to do, the next time you plan to visit a client review these three points.
Step back, breath, relax and appreciate the full view. Take the time to give careful thought to the many opportunities right at hand.
