This post was recently featured on the DemandGen Report
How to Identify Opportunity in Your Existing Accounts
In my blog post on December 16th (The Myth of the Foot in the Door) I shared with you some thoughts on where NOT to look for new business.
So it’s only fair that I share some ideas on where to look for new business…we try to keep it “fair and balanced” here the B2B S&M Knowledge Sharing channel. And this one is a winner. A guaranteed tip that works 100% of the time or your money back. And the reason it works 100% of the time is…because sales force behavior is predictable and consistent regardless of industry, company, etc.
Here’s why:
- Show me the money – a good sales force sells what they GET PAID on…we like to think of them as “good corporate citizens” but they’re not. And they don't have to be, they're trained and motivated to sell those things that retire quota. Ever heard of the expression…”tell me how I get paid and I’ll tell you what I’m going to do” Who do you think created it?
- Company priorities – good companies pay comp on priority products/solutions. Many times those products are new. Typically, companies have three priority products and/or reps sit on a patch that they need to grow by an incremental 5-10% a year. The best way to achieve that goal for most…sell a few new customers or new things to existing customers.
- Shiny New Thing – sales forces love the latest and greatest. Whether it’s a new product/service and/or customer…if it’s something new to talk about (we’ve done research on this see my blog post, the 2008 Sales Effectiveness study is being released soon). Combine those to ingredients, stir and voila, you have the makings of a goldmine in your backyard.
Here’s how to discover the goldmine:
- Segment your customer database into date acquired using ranges (0-2yrs, 3-5 yrs, etc.
- Segment your products based on when they were launched using ranges (same as above)
- Then create a cross segment with the two sorts (see below)
What I really love about this analysis is that it is simple and actionable. You don’t need to get the Ph.D propeller heads involved who have a tendency to overcomplicate things. Do the analysis and here’s what you will find:
- New customers will be well penetrated with new products (see reasons above)
- Old customers will be well penetrated with older products (ditto)
- As a result, you will most likely find opportunities for new products in older customers and… yes, you guessed it…older products in new customers
We discovered this pattern years ago when building out new sales channels for companies. To avoid channel conflict we had to find “white space” to create opportunity for the new channel. If you have dedicated product specialists this pattern will be even more extreme. You’ll need to do some work on the products (in particular, the older ones +5 years) to see if they’re still relevant. It’s particularly useful for finding opportunities for products that are “rev. 2.0, 3.0, etc". Sales reps tend to take a pass on a product enhancement or extension.
Give it a try, and if you do, please report back your findings. The need for "easy to access" opportunity couldn’t be greater in today’s economy and, as everyone knows, the value of gold goes up in a recession.
