Focus on the Right Targets

The biggest and best prospects in your territory already have someone providing them with what you sell. They’re completely satisfied. Okay, they’re not completely satisfied, but they will tell you they are.

Your biggest and best prospects, your dream clients, have had the same relationships for a long time, and they trust their partner. Even if they are a little dissatisfied, your competitor is the devil they know. That’s enough to keep them in the game.

This is why they refuse your request for a meeting. The status quo has many allies.

Think about your biggest and best customers. They feel the same way about you and your company. You’re not losing your best clients anytime soon, and neither are your competitors.

Too Little Focus on Known Targets

It’s easy to believe that it is a waste of time to call on known users that have relationships with your competitors. They resist your attempts to meet with them, and because they tell you they are not dissatisfied you don’t believe there’s an opportunity. Instead you shift your focus downward calling on companies that aren’t your real targets. You make poor trade-offs.

• You trade receptivity for a real opportunity.
• You trade an easier to gain commitment for time for the more difficult to gain commitment that will eventually lead to success.
• And you trade the ability to produce a pipeline with some activity for a pipeline that will eventually result in real growth (not to mention the cover your pipeline provides when your sales manager asks).

These aren’t good trades. It may feel like you’re making progress by calling on receptive prospects, but it isn’t progress to call on companies that cannot benefit from the value you create, don’t appreciate the value create, or won’t pay for the value you create. Even though you may have appointments on your calendar you are still wasting time with a haphazard and unfocused approach.

Trade Up Instead

The sooner you start pursuing your dream clients the sooner you win them. You never close any opportunity that you don’t first open. You need a deliberate, thoughtful, aggressive, and persistent campaign to create opportunities inside your target client accounts.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t hit some singles and doubles on your way. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t smaller, very good clients that you should also be winning. But you need to focus first on the right targets, the companies for whom you can create breathtaking, jaw-dropping, earth-shattering value— even if it takes time.