A research paper from the US market from early 2019 stated that more and more sales teams are relying on renewals in revenue from their existing accounts which is giving them around 70 per cent of their annual sales revenues.
On one hand, this sounds like good news. Sales teams understand the importance of retaining existing business with their clients. But you’ve got to ask yourself though, what does “retaining existing business” really mean? Are the salespeople just holding onto what they currently have, keeping existing deals going, happy with that alone? Or are they really looking for new business opportunities in existing client accounts? And beyond that, do they work on replenishing their lapsed client portfolio with new business from new prospects?
Finding and winning new customers, as well as expanding existing relationships with new opportunities in existing clients, is critical to keeping a healthy sales revenue and pipeline. Otherwise, changes in market conditions and clients can quickly lead to ‘empty baskets’ and nothing to replace lost business.
Complacency can easily creep into sales teams who manage and service regular client accounts if they do not remain vigilant to changes on every level.
Sales teams waste a lot of time ‘managing’ client accounts, without actually working these accounts to explore opportunities, or adding value to both the clients’ and their own organisation.
We call salespeople who fall into this trap ‘Professional Visitors’. They cease to be professional salespeople.
Professional Visitors
Professional Visitors risk missing many new business opportunities because they do not take control of their territory plans, account plans, the prospecting pipeline or the client conversation; instead, they leave all of this to chance.
They get caught in the complacency trap where they end up becoming professional visitors. They are all in for a ‘chat’, or at best an on-site customer service visit, but they are not proactively initiating a viable new business conversation.
12 characteristics to check
Have a look at this profile and double check if you or your sales team might be prone to becoming professional visitors:
- Continual rounds of visits to clients you are comfortable ‘doing business’ with
- Lengthy amounts of time spent establishing ‘rapport’ and ‘chatting’
- Difficulty zeroing in on real customer problems and opportunities, instead focusing on the symptoms or ‘taking an order’
- Inability to effectively negotiate the way around the ‘price’ question
- Sticking to ‘safe’ but irrelevant topics
- Hesitating to get into the fray with customers, not feeling comfortable being assertive, or challenging ideas
- Walking away with no advancement or agreement to do anything else of value
- Selling the same old products/services, rather than understanding the full suite of solutions for clients
- Customers end up continually asking for more discounts because they do not see any value beyond product and price being demonstrated
- The customer controls the sales process
- Failure to see opportunities with customers beyond the obvious current deals
- Longer than necessary decision cycles
These are just some of the issues that appear when businesses have teams slip into the realms of professional visitation rather than remain professional sales teams. And it’s not often the salesperson’s fault as management can unintentionally let this type of culture fester where it becomes BAU (business as usual) before you know it.
For example, if your goal or KPI as a salesperson is to ‘see your clients every X weeks’ with no further agenda or objective, then, of course, salespeople will ‘visit’ their clients regularly.
However, all is not lost. Many of these teams of professional visitors can be transformed back into teams of professional, highly skilful, salespeople who add real value and deliver more and better results across existing and new clients over the long term.
So what needs to be in place to create the conditions for this sales transformation?
- Design and execute an effective sales strategy that delivers clarity and purpose
- Have a compelling value proposition beyond product and price
- Pick the right market/sales segments to sell to
- Have the right size sales team with the right team structure and clearly articulated sales processes
- Deliver the right level of sales training and coaching to lift their capabilities to become consultative in their sales approach where they can properly explore opportunities and develop viable solutions clients want and need
- Coach sales team on a very regular basis to build skill and mastery
- Deal with under-performers quickly, they not only affect results but the whole team
- If relevant, put in place a key accounts management plan and teams
- Manage and report on the relevant sales financials, sales conversions including quality and quantity metrics so people can make adjustments, control their destiny and perform better
- Liaise and link with other departments across the value chain to ensure a seamless customer experience
Author: Sue Barrett, www.salesessentials.com