How to Keep Your Biggest Clients

This Strategy Allows You to Play Both Offense and Defense Against Your Competitors.

For the last five years, a hardware supplier has been selling screws to a national home building company. Whenever the home builder ordered screws, the supplier delivered them accurately and on-time.

If the home builder wanted Philips screws, the supplier delivered them. If they wanted flathead screws, the supplier had those, too. The supplier had screws of all types in all sizes which allowed them to serve this national home-builder client.

The supplier was proud of its performance, and the home builder was pleased with the customer service responsiveness. Over the years, this client grew to become one of the largest, most profitable clients in the hardware supplier’s portfolio.

Then, one day, everything changed. The home builder stopped buying screws from this supplier. A competitor had come along and taken the account away.

Providing a full solution

How could that happen, given the performance of the hardware supplier?

The competitor talked with the home builder not just about the screws. The salesperson inquired about the tools they used to install the screws and the material in which the screws were installed.

Interestingly, just like the incumbent supplier, the competitor could provide a comprehensive solution rather than sell a single product. Unfortunately for the incumbent, they never had a conversation about the full solution they could provide.

They were complacent with the revenue they had and felt that their customer service would create client loyalty. Unfortunately for them, they were wrong.

They lost this account, and the competitor didn’t win it on price. They positioned the value of consolidating suppliers, which made a strong business case justifying a change.

Conquering accounts

This story parallels a dynamic found in most companies. They have a fragmented client portfolio.

They sell a product to a client and don’t develop a strategy to position the full solution they can bring to bear. You may have sold a single product to a company, or a full solution to a division or location. In either case, there is more selling to be done.

This is a selling strategy I refer to as conquering accounts. Your client portfolio represents both opportunities and vulnerabilities which a conquering accounts strategy would address.

The opportunity you have is to grow revenue with those with whom you presently have a relationship. The vulnerability comes into play when you don’t have a conquering accounts strategy and a competitor, just like with the hardware supplier, comes along and presents a compelling solution rather than a point sale.

Have you ever looked at your client portfolio and asked yourself how much untapped revenue it represents? If not, you should. Salespeople are pushed to hunt for new accounts, but who is tasked with going back to the existing clients with a conquering accounts strategy?

The first step in the development of your conquering accounts strategy is to put together a product contrast matrix as described below:

1. List all of your products in the left-hand column
2. In the second column, identify who the competitors are for each product
3. In the third column, ask yourself who buys this product (market segments and the decision influencers within them)
4. In the fourth column, for each product, ask yourself the following question: If they are buying this product, what other products of ours should be of interest? (If the hardware supplier had asked themselves that question,
5. they would have identified opportunities on both sides of the screw.)
6. In the fifth column, explain why the other products should be of interest by asking this question: What is the synergy between the product they are currently buying and the related ones?
7. In the sixth column, list the competitors for the other product(s)

Once completed, contrast the data in this tool with your client portfolio. You will quickly be able to see opportunities and vulnerabilities which you can resolve by conquering the account.

Assign each account to a salesperson to develop a conquering accounts strategy and develop a timeline for execution of the strategy.

Your conquering accounts strategy allows you to play both offense and defense against your competitors, drive revenue and keep them out of your accounts.

Source: Business Journal

Patty Block, President and Founder of The Block Group, established her company to advocate for women-owned businesses, helping them position their companies for strategic growth. From improving cash flow…. ​to increasing staff productivity…. ​to scaling for growth, these periods of transition — and so many more — provide both challenges and opportunities. Managed effectively, change can become a productive force for growth. The Block Group harnesses that potential​, turning roadblocks into building blocks for women-owned businesses​.

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