I conducted a workshop recently where a sales rep with a large physical security company told the story of one of his clients who called explaining that he recently had a break-in to one of his warehouse facilities and wanted to better secure the facility. Great! A rookie sales rep might be tempted to “dash to the demo” or even the proposal to help answer this straightforward issue. This rep didn’t celebrate at this point, he kept asking more questions. Through questioning he found out the client affected was the Department of Homeland Security and they were endangered of being fined $1Million per occurrence.
Category Archives: Sales
Don’t Go “All In” Until You See Your Whole Hand
First, let’s take a look at Consultants R Us’ completely dysfunctional opportunity assessment plan: Consultants R Us has no common opportunity qualification screening criteria to determine whether an opportunity is actually worth pursuing. They pursue any and all opportunities most likely because the entrepreneurs who came before them made their livelihood as rainmakers without many […]
Why Play if You Won’t Win?
I was coaching a team at Andersen Consulting several years ago that was sent a “blind” RFP from one of the largest Consumer Packaged Goods companies in the world. This was likely a $60M + opportunity and the pursuit team was intent on bidding for the work.
Client Segmentation – How to Get Started
A proactive, well-defined, and well-communicated client segmentation strategy that gives the organization the guard rails that dictate the organizational behavior in selling and serving clients accordingly. Some key steps in the process.
The Transformation of Accenture through Client Segmentation
In the mid-1990’s when I was responsible for worldwide business development at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) we found that client segmentation was arguably the biggest challenge we faced. How did we know? As part of our transformation process we discovered the following symptoms.