Eggermans and Powerballs

All prospects aren’t created equal.

Eggerman

One company I work with won an account called Eggerman. Over the course of a full year, they billed Eggerman $187. That’s all the money that Eggerman had to spend in their space, and they commanded 100% of Eggerman’s mind share and wallet share.

Eggerman showed up in the win column. But Eggerman wasn’t a win. Truth be told, the two sales calls that the salesperson made on Eggerman cost three times as much as the company billed Eggerman. Eggerman was a waste of time and energy.

PowerBall

This same group is working on another deal, this one is huge. Let’s call it PowerBall. This company uses an online vendor management system. The vendor management company views everything as a transaction, and it loads vendors into the system.

The vendors all blindly bid for jobs. They never get to speak with anyone inside the company. They never get to create any value. They are unknown, and they have 0.0 percent chance of developing a preference for their offerings. But they are approved.

PowerBall shows up in the win column. But PowerBall isn’t a win. You have the same chance of realizing the promise of PowerBall as your chances of winning the real PowerBall. Let’s call that 0.0 percent, or something close to it.

Move Upstream

Eggerman is an example of a company for whom you can create no value. They don’t really spend money in your space, and they don’t have the kinds of problems you can solve. This being true, there is no reason to call on Eggermans.

PowerBall is an example of a prospective client where there is no way to profit from having won the business. It doesn’t matter how much money they spend, if you can’t really compete for the business. there is no reason to call on PowerBalls.

Right now, look at your pipeline. Delete any “opportunity” that is either an Eggerman or a PowerBall. When your sales leader asks what happened to those deals, tell him there was nothing there and you are going to replace them with real opportunities.