What is the #1 Source for New Opportunities?

Friday Funnel Focus by EPOCH Sales Management Solutions

4 Keys to Make it work for your business

When it comes to creating new opportunities, your existing clients frequently represent your most fertile ground to seek new opportunities.   Today we will discuss 4 keys to creating new opportunities with your existing clients.

First, you need to build customer success and create raving fans by building authentic relationships.  The more success you create with your existing customers the more opportunities you can create for new business.  As a business owner ensure that your team is focused on creating customer success.

Evaluate your customer base and segment them so that your Account Management efforts are focused on those clients that warrant the most attention.  For each company, the segmentation may look different but the concept remains the same.

We like to segment customers into four groups to prioritize efforts to create more new opportunities. 

Some people use a more quantitative approach to segmenting their customers. 

For example, the Pareto principle (80/20 rule) tells us that frequently 20% of our customers represent 80% of our revenues. 

• Applying the 80/20 rule a second time to the top 20% would mean that 4% (20% of 20%) of our customers represent 64% of our revenues (80% of 80%).
• Applying the 80/20 rule to the bottom 80% would mean that 64% (80% of 80%) of our bottom customers represent the bottom 4% (20% of 20%) of our revenue.
• This leaves a third group of 16% which represents 16% of the revenue.

Using the Pareto principle, 

• the first group would be the top 4% 
• the second group would be the next 16%
• the third group would be the next 16% 
• the bottom 64% would be the 4th group.

Some people label them ABCD, others Tier 1,2,3,4, and others Platinum, Gold, Silver, or Bronze. The key is having a system or process to logically see the big picture and increase focus.

Applying a more qualitative approach

We recommend that you apply a qualitative approach to those Pareto principle numbers when segmenting your customers.  Mike Weinberg offers a great recommendation in Chapter 5 of his book New Sales Simplified.

• Which customers are your largest?
• We did that with the Pareto Principle exercise
• Which customers are the most growable?
• For example, which customers closely represent your Ideal Customer Profile or top 20%, but aren’t buying at the volume they should?
• Which customers are most at risk?

Prioritize your sales activities at your existing clients based on the priority of each segment.

Conducting Periodic Business Reviews is one of the best times to seek new opportunities.    You may want to base the frequency of the review on the Tiered Segments above. For example:

• Tier 1 - Quarterly
• Tier 2 - Semi-Annually
• Tier 3 - Annually

We also recommend that you include Gino Wickman’s “Rocks” concept presented in Chapter 8 of his book, “Traction” in your periodic business review process.  As part of each Periodic Business Review, mutually agree on priority objectives for the coming period.  This provides you with measurable objectives to determine levels of success.  Upon successfully achieving those objectives, you are better positioned to seek more new opportunities for your business with that customer.

Step One is to build customer success and create raving fans by showing them they are important to you and you are committed to their success. 

One way to quantitatively measure that success is through Customer Satisfaction scores.  Consider building a process to quantitatively measure customer satisfaction preferably with technology to ensure rapid and consistent feedback.

Another way to measure customer satisfaction is to ask your customers and listen to what they say.

Existing clients represent the most fertile ground to seek more new opportunities.  Help make your customers successful, segment them so that you know how to best prioritize your sales activities with existing customers, and seek more new opportunities with them.

At EPOCH Sales Management Solutions, we are committed to help you get up to speed at your desired pace and be here as you grow with the platform. We are building an online community at EPOCH Sales Management Solutions for our HubSpot customers. 

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While growing Small Businesses and Building Great Sales Teams is hard, the process to do this is simple. But, simple does not mean easy. 

Want to explore the process further, schedule a free 30-minute consultation.

In the meantime, get our guide to the 3 Part Formula to a Healthy Sales Pipeline