Big Business in Small Accounts

Where will your sales team look this year to achieve its sales growth goals? If they’re like most sales organizations they’ll be busy managing your biggest customers. However, a growing number of companies are finding a rich opportunity in proactively selling more products and services to their smaller accounts. Look for these accounts among the 80% of customers that deliver 20% of your sales. This hidden treasure is delivering 20-30% growth for those organizations that can adjust their selling approach to meet this groups needs. For a $100 million company, that adds up to an additional $4-6 million in new-found sales revenue.

The key to growing these accounts requires a different approach to selling. The key is to develop a sales strategy that is focused on developing and nurturing relationships with these customers rather than communicating with them only during a transaction or when a problem arises. Developing a relationship with more frequent communication will put you at the right place at the right time when the account is looking to conduct additional business.

Successfully selling to these accounts requires selling skills and communication skills just as strong as your top sales leaders. Smaller sales volume accounts may not justify many personal sales calls. Make sure that the sales professional that is managing these accounts is able to communicate very effectively using all the available technologies including web presentations, telephone and e-mail. These sales specialists are a key part of the sales team and should posses a strong knowledge of the selling process.

Develop an inventory of marketing materials and communication tools that will allow your firm to stay in the forefront of each account. While larger accounts may justify frequent personal sales visits, smaller accounts won’t. You will need every communications tool available to become the top-of-mind supplier for your product category. Prepare and communicates a frequent and consistent stream of successful case histories, company and industry news, technical bulletins and other informative communications that will keep you in the buyers mind. While top-notch sales professionals are required to get orders, developing and managing market communications must be handled by marketing professionals. Don’t ask your sales team to manage the communications program. Keep them focused on closing sales.

Small accounts offer tremendous pricing opportunities. While your biggest accounts are constantly demanding price give-backs, smaller customers will often support higher prices. In our earlier example of the $100 million company, a 4% price increase on the smaller accounts delivers an additional $680,000 in profit margin. Even the smallest increase in price can have a dramatic effect on income. Strategic pricing management is seeing unprecedented growth as firms look beyond cost reduction to improve financial performance.

With continued competitive pressure, companies need to consider every avenue to achieve growth. Small accounts offer a significant opportunity to achieve incremental revenue and profit growth.