Keeping your account list strategies organized as a sales professional is not always as easy as it seems. Clients to keep happy and as recurring clients, fires to put out with both clients and internally in your team, finding new lead resources, managing the new leads, and most of all… bringing in new business.
Your account list strategies process can be easy to manage using the following chart:
Clients / Customers: They are the ones already keeping the lights on and what should always be the heart of your business. Within the grouping of the people you work with we have 2 sub-sections.
- Key Accounts – Typically this is the top 25% of your client base and can potentially account for 70% or more of your total revenue. These are the ones where you need to be planning the future for adding continued value to your relationship so the competition is never even a thought in their minds.
- Secondary Accounts – These may be accounts that are on trials with you, situations where it’s a low and slow relationship, downsized clients or any number of reasons. Typically amounting to 75% of your client base and only 25-40% of your revenue they can potentially become time-suckers to be careful. Also remember a Secondary Account has potential to become a Key Account so make sure you’re not completely ignoring these relationships.
Prospects: These are the ones you are working on, identifying if they are a fit, qualifying them and generally preparing to bring them on as hopefully a Key Account… but likely a Secondary Account.
- Ideal Clients – Hitting all the marks for being a Key Account these are the leads or referrals you must focus on when working on bringing on new clients. Put the lion share of your time into these accounts, keep working with them, offer a free consultation, and get to the root of their problems.
- Leads To Qualify – Everyone else. Social media contacts, LinkedIn work with Sales Navigator, Paid or In-house built lists, Networking events. You name it.. if they’re not yet Qualified to know if they can become a Key or Secondary account you needs to slowly work this base to find out which will rise to the top.
Also remember to maximize your time on all calls. About 8 years ago we wrote a post here on the blog about what we call ‘The New Math of Prospecting’ which will exponentially help your calls gain traction.
