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Home Entrepreneur Newsletter for Mel
Publisher: David Riklan – http://www.SelfGrowth.com

In This Issue:
– Recommended Product of the Day: Join SelfGrowth.com
– Inspirational Quote for Home Entrepreneurs: Kurt Lewin
– Article: Managing Accounts: Build Rapport and Revenue – By Justin Zappulla
– Article: Keep a Steady Flow of Clients and Prospects Coming Into Your Business – By Tracey Lawton
– Subscription and Contact Information

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** Recommended Product of the Day **

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** Inspirational Quote for Home Entrepreneurs **
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A successful individual typically sets his next goal somewhat but not too much above his last achievement. In this way he steadily raises his level of aspiration.
- Kurt Lewin

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** Article: Managing Accounts: Build Rapport and Revenue – By Justin Zappulla **
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We tend to think of sales as all about gaining new clients and new accounts. However, existing accounts and clients represent new sales as well. Meeting and exceeding customer expectations and becoming a valuable business resource for your current accounts is one of the best sales tools you have. Moreover, your customers are prime targets for competitors. Guard your sheep well by keeping the grass the greenest in your pastures.

The best advice I’ve ever heard for making long-term relationships work is to be attentive and become irreplaceable. Business is all about relationships.

For many companies, “key” accounts can make up the majority of their revenue, so it’s important to train salespeople how to manage these key accounts in addition to selling new accounts. Begin with the concept that existing accounts, though “sold” to your company for the time being, represent a potential sale to your competition. In other words, an existing account is never “sold” and your salespeople and account managers must continue to “sell” your accounts with service to keep them “sold” to your company.

Managing accounts begins immediately after the sale. There is never a shortage of tasks that must be done when acquiring a new account. Though these tasks are probably not the responsibility of your salespeople, having your salespeople follow up with their new clients to make sure these tasks are being done will impress—it shows attentiveness.

As a salesperson you should make a follow-up call or follow-up visit to each of your new accounts. Though you are not directly handling tasks for bringing the new account on board, you nevertheless want to show your new client that they are not just a sale to you. You are a personal representative for your company until the client becomes familiar with other staff that he/she will be working more directly with. Your new account can also be a source of future sales—up-selling, cross-selling, and referrals. Don’t make the mistake of showing up only when you have something to sell. Additionally, if you did your sale right, then you probably took on the role of a consultant or trusted advisor to your client. Maintaining regular contact with existing accounts provides opportunities for salespeople to identify new needs and put themselves in a position to provide solutions with additional products/services—to become irreplaceable.

Put yourself in the shoes of your account’s owners, managers, staff—any person from that company that comes in to contact with your company. Seek feedback so you can evaluate their experience, set up their expectations, and initiate improvements before the lack thereof becomes an opportunity for your competitors.

Look at the following account management strategy and compare to your needs-based or customer-centered sales approach:

1. Understand your customer’s needs. This is the key to sales including sales to your existing customers. Train your service and support staff in how to listen for potential unmet needs. Consider a printing vendor for example: the printing company may be meeting the clients’ printing needs, but how many of the clients struggle with writing the documents—could the printing company also provide basic templates for a fee to help customers write letters or brochures?

2. Provide a portfolio of products and services to meet those needs. Clients may start out using one of the services your company provides, but other products or services might benefit the account as well. There is never an end to the competition, and your company doesn’t need to lose accounts to a competitor that offers one more basic service or product than you can provide. Again, it goes back to needs.

3. Provide support and service for these products and services. You might truly have the very best product or service around, but if you don’t back it up with top-notch support and customer service, then it is worthless.

4. Create value by helping your customers to grow, save, expand, sell more, spend less. Wherever possible, you need to quantify this value in numeric terms so that your clients can see the value your company’s products and services provide. Find a way to give regular, quantitative feedback to your accounts as to what specifically your product or service has done for them. Show them the results.

5. Exceed expectations. Every customer has certain expectations about your products and service. Start by being very clear about what your customers should expect (so their expectations aren’t beyond reach) and then exceed these expectations. You will earn their loyalty.

6. Be a business partner, not just a supplier. In doing all of the above, you will become a valuable and irreplaceable resource for your customers. Communicate this mindset to your staff so they understand that your goal is to be more than what your competition represents. Earning customer loyalty means your customers see more than just a contact phone number when they think of you as their supplier. You need your customers to see you as an irreplaceable resource of trusted advice, proven results, and attentive service to their goals.

By continually evaluating needs with your accounts and providing solutions to those needs with additional products/services you can offer, and by showing them value with results, then your sales cycle continues to… well, cycle.

It’s shortsighted to assume that any one client has only one need that you meet with one sale. Your existing accounts can be your sales.

It’s not just about price either. Most companies and individuals would rather spend more for really good service and solid value than spend less for questionable results.

While your salespeople may not be directly involved in the support and service, they certainly should be assessing needs, suggesting additions to the portfolio of products and services, and using the value they can show to sell more to the account.

Taking a bird’s-eye view of all your existing accounts also means making some choices about where to focus your staff’s energies. For some companies, a minority of the accounts actually make up a majority of the company’s revenue. While every account is important, it also pays to know which accounts are showing you the most profit. In some cases, you may find some accounts are actually costing the company money and tough decisions might need to be made about whether to keep such accounts and try to build up their portfolio of products and services, or actually let the account go.

About the Author:

Justin Zappulla is a Sr. Sales Consultant at Janek Performance Group and brings extensive sales management and training expertise to the company. He has worked with hundreds of companies on developing and implementing strategic sales performance solutions. During his career, Justin has also trained more than 10,000 sales professionals world-wide.

In addition, Justin co-authored several of the fundamental and advanced Janek sales and management training programs including; Critical Selling®, Critical TeleSelling™, Critical Sales Negotiations™ and Critical Sales Management & Coaching™.

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** Article: Keep a Steady Flow of Clients and Prospects Coming Into Your Business – By Tracey Lawton **
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If set up correctly your contact management system allows you to:

* Keep a note of clients, potential clients, and colleagues contact information.

* Easily and effectively follow-up with a prospect.

* Locate critical client contact information quickly and easily.

* Build your business.

Having all of your contact data readily to hand will allow you to build your business. You have all the information you need; it’s all in one place, and you can locate it quickly and easily. Follow-up becomes a much smoother process and in turn it builds your business.

Let me share with you below my 5 easy steps for creating your ideal contact management system so that you constantly have a full pipeline of interested clients and prospects:

1. Choose your system. You need to decide on a system that works best for YOU and YOUR business. This could be using Outlook (as I do) to manage all your contact data, appointments, To Do lists, etc. or you could use dedicated contact management software. A third option might be to utilize one of the many web-based contact management systems.

2. Draw clients into your pipeline. Once you’ve got your contact management system in place, you need to have a system for keeping in touch with people you meet at in-person events, online networking forums, or visitors to your website. One way to do that is to publish a regular ezine (electronic newsletter). This will keep clients and prospects flowing into your business and provide you with a base of interested people who want to find out more about you, your services, and your products.

3. Define the process for working with new clients. Once you’ve got prospects into your pipeline the next step is to create a system so that those clients who are ready to work with you are able to do so. This could be through an initial complimentary consultation to determine if you are a good fit for one another. List everything you currently do and come up with a system for streamlining the whole process.

4. Keep it all up-to-date. It’s all well and good having the systems in place, but if you’re not keeping it all current, then your contact management system quickly becomes of no use to you at all. Ideally, you should be updating your client data as you go along, but if you find you’re not doing that, spend 15/20 minutes at the end of each day, before you shut down your PC, reviewing who you’ve talked to/emailed, what the outcome was, and when you promised to follow-up with them. Note it all down in your contact management system.

5. Create a waiting list! If you find that you have more clients wanting to work with you than you can handle, offer to put them on your waiting list. If you suddenly get a client who has to cancel (and it does happen, for a variety of reasons), then you’re not left with a big hole in your cashflow – you simply approach your waiting list and let them know you have an opening available. Plan to keep in touch with your waiting list on a regular basis so that they don’t forget you!

Consistency is the key to keeping a steady flow of clients and prospects coming into your business. Make the commitment to spend time each and every day on your contact management system, and watch your business grow!

(c) 2008 Tracey Lawton

About the Author:

Office Organization Expert Tracey Lawton teaches professional speakers, coaches, and authors how to create the essential online marketing and office organization systems needed to operate an efficient, organized, and profitable business. Learn how YOU can create an efficient and organized office in 7 EASY steps, and receive free how-to articles here.