Keep the weeds out of your sales garden

This is about dealing with competitors who infiltrate your customer base

First categorise your customer base. Then, starting with your A class customers review each one and, using your knowledge of your customer, list those products that you could supply but that must be being supplied by a competitor. For example, if you supply restaurants with crockery, glassware and cutlery and one of your restaurant customers buys crockery and glassware from you but not cutlery you can assume that a competitor of yours is supplying the cutlery.

After doing this analysis of your A class customers select one item as the first item you are going to try to take away from your competitor (make sure that it’s a profitable one) and develop a strategy for doing so. This may involve asking your customer why he uses your competitor for cutlery. Do all you can to win the cutlery business and then select another item to focus on.

When using this approach focus on only one product per customer at a time; get an answer YES or NO and only then move on to another product or service.

Continue this approach with each of your A class customers (and then maybe some of the Bs who could be turned into As) - you may surprise yourself with the improvement in sales you can achieve without adding a single customer to your list.


(The up-coming post for Friday 6/2 is Sales time? Where did it go? It's about time management in selling.)