Maximizing An Account's Potential

Maximizing An Account's Potential

Creating a relationship with a business so they begin to purchase your product or service is hopefully the start of a beautiful relationship. So the Purchase Orders begin to come in and life is good. Now, assuming (always dangerous) that your agreed upon pricing means the transactions are profitable for your company, you're ready to sit back and look through the new car catalog to decide if you want that convertible in silver or red, right? Maybe, or maybe not.

Before you start sipping that cold, well deserved, iced tea & head over to the car dealer, here are some questions you should have answered.

Are the orders being processed correctly and in a timely manner? Are your installations being completed in the agreed upon interval? And the big one... are they paying their bills? The corollary to the old saying "Nothing happens until a sale is made" is "It doesn't matter how much you sell until the money is in the till."

So you're not quite ready to put the top down on your new convertible and sip that iced tea yet. You need to check to make sure your customer's credit line has been approved or they are willing to accept things on a C.O.D. basis (not likely unless they're desperate). THEN, you need to make sure the Bill to & Ship to information is correct, as well as the pricing, and after that you need to make sure your Accounting Dept is sending out the correct bills. I have yet to have a client send my company a check BEFORE they received a bill.

OK, so now everything's good! The orders are coming in, they're being processed, shipped and installed correctly and the customer is paying in a timely manner. The current run rate shows you'll receive about $200,000 in new business for the year. High five? You can go out, put the top down on your new silver convertible, open that baby up and zoom down the LIE at 30 MPH (yes, 30, it's beautiful sunny summer Friday, and it's rush hour on Long Island!).

Sure, until Monday, ... when you go back to sit down to see what else you need to do to get more business from your new account. You'll need to do that because you've realized that $200,000 in new business annually is a good start, this firm spends $25 Million on the product you're providing. This means you have lots of upside and growth potential.

What now? As always, you follow the money! Is all $25 Million ordered by the people you're currently dealing with? If it is, it seems likely that they're using you as a secondary source. Then your mission is to convince them that you're company is the best and you should either be their only source, or at a minimum their primary supplier.

Are you getting all of the business from the team you deal with and there are other parts of the business that order from your competitor? If you need to probe and penetrate other areas of the business, you need to expand your presence in this account & establish relationships with the other decision makers to get the additional business from them.

How? We'll talk about that next time.

Thanks for reading. Questions, comments are always appreciated.