As we round the last corner on our way to the checkered flag that signals the end of 2009, many of us are already thinking about 2010. You may, in fact, already be working on your sales budgets for next year, or reviewing the new quotas your boss has dreamed up for you. You may already be developing an ulcer as you look at the numbers – ’09 was down (because of the economy, of course), but the boss expects you to rebound sales in 2010. She’s not taking “no” for an answer; in fact, she has been pretty clear – she doesn’t want to hear excuses. Hit your numbers, or else.
So, let’s get started. Now – RIGHT NOW – is the time to begin making 2010 a great year. Wait any longer and the odds of success will diminish rapidly.
Here is the short course on creating a big increase in sales in 2010:
- Take care of your best accounts at all costs.
Analyze your current numbers. Working from your top account towards the bottom, work your way down until you reach 80 percent of your sales revenue and draw a line. The accounts above this line must be diligently worked and protected – these are the accounts your competitors will try to take from you in 2010 – you simply cannot afford to lose them.
What you will typically find as you analyze your sales revenue is that 80 percent of your revenue is coming from about 20 percent of your accounts (count the number of accounts above the line and divide by the total number of accounts on your report with revenue – it almost never fails). What you need next year is more of these accounts, not the ones below the line.Here’s what I mean: if you have 100 accounts doing $200,000 in sales revenue, typically about 20 of those accounts produce around $160,000 in sales – that’s $8,000 per account. That means the remaining 80 accounts produce $40,000, or $500 per account. It takes 16 of these accounts to make up the revenue of only one of your top 20% accounts!
Your top 20 percent of accounts must be protected at all costs.
- Find and develop more of those “best accounts”
Again, look at all the accounts above the line – your top 20 percent – with few exceptions, these accounts represent your “ideal” customers. Use them as a template – you need to find more accounts that “look” like these!
Sure, anybody can figure this one out – you need more “big accounts.” Big surprise. The difference, however, is that you know exactly what they look like – by examining the accounts in your top 20 percent. Analyze your top 20 percent carefully, then go identify more of them in your territory. The key is to quit chasing the $500 accounts (using the numbers above) and work incessantly on the more productive accounts.The only thing you have is TIME, and if you waste it all on smaller accounts you will never get ahead.
What you will find is that many of these larger accounts are hiding right in front of you…right there in your bottom 80 percent! They just need to be nurtured and developed. Identify as many of these “Top 20%” accounts as you can – in your existing accounts, and out there in your territory that you haven’t even started to work on – and create a detailed plan to capture them. Find out everything you can about these accounts – decision makers, influencers, current products/services, their goals & objectives, key marketing initiatives, etc. Become an “expert” in these businesses long before you make the first call. Surprisingly, when customers find out how much you know about their company and industry, they are often quite interested to talk to you.
Then, before you walk out the door to go to work on each and every Monday morning, you should know, 1) exactly which of these accounts you are calling on that week, and 2) exactly what your call objectives are for each call. When your work is planned to this detail, a lot of stress disappears – good planning creates confidence and progress in each call creates momentum.
- Set a hard target for how many calls you will make on these accounts each and every week
Whether it’s your own personal revenue objective or one that is provided to you by the boss, you need a defined goal for next year. The question is, how many of these “best accounts” will it take to reach your target for 2010?
Using the numbers above, let’s say the boss has determined that you must do $280,000 next year to meet your revenue quota – that’s $80,000 more than 2009, a 40% increase. Using an average of $16,000 per account, that’s only five new accounts next year!Well, not really…you probably won’t acquire all five accounts the first month, which would be necessary to get all $16,000 in revenue for the year. However, you could set a target to get one new account the first quarter, two the second quarter, three the third quarter, and four the fourth quarter, resulting in approximately $80,000 in new revenue next year:(1 account at $16,000 in annual revenue) + ( 2 accounts at $12,000 in revenue – only 3 quarters of sales, or 75% of the $16,000) + ( 3 accounts at $8,000 in revenue – only 2 quarters of sales) + (4 accounts x $4,000 – only 1 quarter of sales) = $16K + $24K + $24K + $16K = $80,000.
Of course, it would be nice if sales revenue happened this predictably – but it doesn’t. However, if you start NOW to identify all of the accounts you possibly can, and you begin to prime the pump in December, you will probably develop more than one new account in the first quarter, or two in the second quarter.
Here’s the deal: that big number doesn’t look so scary when you start talking about only one or two new accounts in the FIRST QUARTER and only 10 new accounts next year! They just have to be the right accounts – you have to quit wasting time (in general) and quit wasting time on accounts that don’t contribute significantly to your bottom line.
Plan well. Work with purpose. Make each call count. Focus on a hard target each quarter.
That’s the short course to a big sales increase next year.
