You already know that making money in business is all about making sales, and the sales process consists of finding prospects, attracting them, and closing a sale.
So what’s next?
Finding Incremental sales opportunities. I call these ISOs. And, after the initial sales is done the most profitable next action is to spend time fostering relationships with your clients and engaging them, so they will spend even more money on your business.
But first we have to take a step back because not all clients can grow.
Sadly, many sellers don’t prioritize their clients correctly and end up wasting time that should be spent with those who have the largest ISO potential. So, how do we fix this?
With the Sales Leader Classification System. Here is how it works.
Engagement and Potential
The Sales Leader Classification System divides your clients into four different segments based on two criteria, current levels of engagement and potential to grow.
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Engagement
How engaged are your clients? A simple way to measure engagement is to see how many of your employees are working with you client’s employees. Consider engagement like infiltration. If a many of your team members work with several of the client’s team members, there is a high level of engagement. If your client treats you more like a vendor, doesn’t call often, and isn’t proactive, there is a low level of engagement.
Potential
The next characteristic you will use to analyze your clients is potential. Look at each of your clients and decide if they have a low potential or a high potential to provide more revenue.
You can measure potential with pure revenue or likelihood of expansion. A client with high potential might be one that can spend more money on one product, or it might be one that may be interested in more of your products or services.
Four Client Categories
Now you can use levels of engagement and amount of potential to divide your clients into four different categories. These classifications will tell you how much time to spend with each client to make your business more lucrative.
Think of your clients’ level of engagement as the vertical axis and their amount of potential as the horizontal axis on a graph. Each of your clients will fall into one of the quadrants on the graph.
Maintenance Accounts
The first classification, Maintenance Accounts, includes clients with low potential to grow but high levels of engagement. These accounts are worth maintaining because the clients are buying a product from you and helping you make more money.
Key Accounts
Key Accounts are those that have high levels of engagement and increasingly high potential. Usually these are clients that are innovative and expanding. These clients have high potential to spend more money on your business and they are already highly engaged, which makes them an excellent source of revenue.
Service Accounts
Clients that treat your business as a vendor and don’t have much room for growth or more engagement are classified as Service Accounts. Generally these accounts don’t expand very much.
Growth Potential Accounts
Finally, there are Growth Potential Accounts. These clients are not buying much your business now, but there is a lot of potential for increased engagement and more sales. Don’t confuse these with Service Accounts, which don’t have room for growth.
When you use the Sales Leader Classification System correctly you can easily divide your clients into one of four categories. This will help you prioritize your time increase your sales making your business more effective and lucrative.
Colleen Francis, Sales Expert, is Founder and President of Engage Selling Solutions (www.EngageSelling.com). Armed with skills developed from years of experience, Colleen helps clients realize immediate results, achieve lasting success and permanently raise their bottom line.