Winning a new client is a great feeling but in many cases that in itself is just the start of a longer sales process. Oftentimes, people forget that once you have “sold” your client, you now have to keep selling and delivering to ensure you keep them. As part of this process, to ensure long-term sales success it is always recommended that you try to go “wider” and “deeper” into an Account.
What does this mean? It means building up relationships with additional key people in an Account that are not necessarily your direct customer. This could include everything from a senior level manager to the CEO to the administrative assistant. Building up relationships at a variety of levels will give you the ability to:
Mitigate the risk if your main contact leaves
People change careers, they retire, they get sick and so forth. Having only one single contact in an Account is always risky particularly if that Account drive a significant amount of revenue. Take some time to meet additional contacts in the company, understand their roles, needs and then keep those relationships warm over time. This can be as simple as adding them to your company’s newsletter or it could mean inviting them all to certain key events etc.
Identify opportunities faster
By knowing more people in an Account and building up solid relationships with them, you will be better positioned to see opportunities as well as be approached to help solve challenges people may be having. This “inside track” also means in many cases you do not have to go through formal sales channels to win the business speeding up time to close and driving new revenue streams.
Position against competitors more effectively
Having a strong relationship with key people in an Account, one where they trust you and you trust them, will allow you to generate a much better understanding of the competitive pressures you are facing. In many cases, your internal champions, will offer up information on competitors activities and if they do not, they are generally open to discussing information they have. Remember these people have invested in you too and have an internal responsibility to ensure the choice they made is a win for their company.
Build barriers to entry
The more contacts in an Account you have that believe you are providing value add, the harder your competitor will have to work to remove you. People are creatures of habit and don’t like change all that much particularly if you give them no reason to.
Build barrier to exit
The more knowledge of an Account you can accumulate and the more embedded your solution becomes, the harder it is to remove you, particularly if you are delivering results. If you are providing a key function, like a ERP or a fleet solution, and you are driving efficiencies, bottom line results and multiple people and systems rely on your solution then it will be much harder for the client to switch to a competitive product.
Provide a better service
Having a thorough understanding of an Account, will give you insight and perspective as to the business pains your customer is facing. The more business pains you can service well, the better your service and the happier your customer.
I can remember for one client in particular, we had signed on a new customer for them and after about 1 year, the key decision maker left to pursue other opportunities. Fortunately for us, over that initial year, we were able to get to know and provide cost savings for a large number of other individuals – mainly at the operational level. When a new decision maker stepped into the empty position, he was pitched by his operational team on the value of staying with our client and now 3 years later we are still working with them. That just highlights the value of having a “wider” and “deeper” stance in an Account.
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