Winning New Clients
PAUL LLOYD
| 100+ Recommendations | Beyond the MSP Founder: Building a Scalable Sales Engine ?? Fixing Underperforming Sales Teams?? What would the Bees do ??? Bee Keeper, Speaker, Grandpa, I also have a thatched roof.
Why winning new business is so difficult or is it!
Over recent years I have sent a lot of time meeting and working with Managed Service Providers / VAR’s, when we get into conversations about what is the greatest challenge within their business it comes back to the same one thing over and over. WINNING NEW CUSTOMERS.
This seems to hold true for companies that turnover from ￡500k to ￡40m. They need to win new contracts, new customers. Most of these businesses have reached the level that they have through recommendation and referral or in the case of the bigger ones some acquisition as well, rarely it seems actually going out and generating an opportunity and a sale.
In a conversation with one MD to try and understand how he had won their customers. The top one which accounted for 25% of the company’s business was an enquiry from yellow pages looking for a reseller in Bracknell a number of years before. Lucky but not sustainable.
If you want to be winning new business on an ongoing basis then this has to become ingrained in the culture of your business. Every decision that is made within the company should be done from the point of view ‘how is that going to improve our ability to win’. New business should become the premier currency within your business.
Few ideas’ of how to make it work:
- Build a list of the top 100 target customers
- Pay significantly more for New Customer Wins and business
- Build an elite new win team (Maybe Virtual)
- Have a sales pay plan that rewards new win
- Set new wins into your business planning
- Put the Top 10 targets on the walls office so everyone can see
- Research and build a plan for each target
- Use your Social media as a rifle not a shot gun.
- Managed and Monitor the progress.
- Make a Senior Director responsible for Growth
Pulling this together is a significant investment unlikely to be cheap, but the return that you will gain will pay back many times over. This is the investment that just keeps on giving.
There will be the growth margin on monthly basis.
There will be the growth in the value of your business from the increased recurring revenue.
There will be the growth in value to your business, because of the ability to demonstrate growth and finally the ability to win.
If you are not comfortable putting this together because you do not have the experience then I suggest that you get some help.
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8 年Good advice, also a reminder you have to invest more to get more into generating new business
IT Solutions and consulting
9 年Good One, a good service organisation grows from word of mouth from their customers, exceed expectations from existing customers others will follow....
Private cloud - AI - Colo -
9 年Great article. Also what I would like to add. Whoever comes up with a sales strategy, is given time to execute.
MORE SALES from MORE CUSTOMERS resulting in MORE PROFIT.
9 年An important article Paul. We have found that once sales staff understand that they will lose repeat business for reasons out of their control (customers folding, being acquired by others with different purchasing policies etc...) and that they must replace that with new business in order to stand still let alone move forward, this realisation then drives the required behaviour and approach to disciplined hunts for new customers!