Prime have recently been working with a client that sells top end IT Software. They are a multi awarded company and leaders in their respective field.
Their revenue had started to decrease, not alarmingly, but enough for us to hold a session on driving new business opportunities.
It had become apparent that they were looking at new exciting projects to be “AGILE” and “TRANSFORMATIVE” to combat the current business environment which was pleasing BUT through conversation, it occurred to me that we were not maximising what was under our nose……correct: our existing clients that know, like and TRUST us.
What did we do?
Called a meeting of all the Business Development team (I don’t like the word sales). We then allotted 2 hours to scrutinise our client CRM. We took the following actions:
- Updated the CRM so that it was accurate and reflect active and non-active clients
- Rated the clients in order of importance to the business (very interesting debate I can assure you 🙂)
- Analysed them one by one and identified opportunities within their business to improve their productivity and profitability
- Created a call programme for each BD team member
- Set a KPI to ensure a number of calls were made weekly
- Scripted the approach to the client allowing for each team member to adopt their own approach to the client BUT always reinforcing the end goal
- Reinforced that we should be connecting with our clients regularly, regardless and showing them “love”
“Love” was defined by asking two essential questions:
- How are you tracking at present and what issues are you experiencing in your business?
- What are the plans for the business in the next 12-24 months?
- Then we LISTEN and ask more searching question to understand and solve their problems if possible
The result? We identified another $300k of business opportunity sitting under our noses BUT had not asked for it!
We are 1/3 way through the process, to date we have secured $120k of potential sales.
Who do you know, that may require running through such a process or you think may have leakage in their business and needs a plan to extract it?