Are you an account executive?
In today’s video I’m going to share how you can hit your sales targets easier, by prospecting less.
You’re going to learn how to uncover the key accounts that will knock massive, sledge hammer sized holes in your sales target rather than chipping away at it, with crappy small deals.
So I get it, you’ve a sales target to hit and the sooner you hit it the better. Otherwise you’re prolonging the pain, the stress and the lack of a bonus.
With that said then, why do most sales professionals spend their days chasing their tails?
They fire off hundreds of spammy emails and make dozens random calls with no real system in place to make sure they’re likely to bag the bigger deals?
Is that what you’re doing?
The small deals get you close to hitting target, the big ones blow the target to bits.
If you want to crush your quota, you need to be closing what we call “key accounts”.
KEY ACCOUNTS?
So first lets define what a key account approach to sales is –
Key Account Selling: A selling approach which offers strategic value to specific accounts, whilst distinguishing you from your competition.
So that begs the question, “what are strategic accounts?”
Let’s use an analogy of the people in your life. You probably have hundreds of acquaintances you’re happy to speak to every now and again. Perhaps you’re happy to help them out too if it’s a job that takes five minutes or less. But there are likely only a handful of individuals that you will drop whatever you’re doing to go and spend time with or help out. These are the strategic people in your life.
So think of your accounts being in a pyramid shape. With your key accounts being on top, your good customers being below them and then the general riff raff that you have to engage with below that.
Interestingly, if you ran the numbers I’m sure you’d find that this pyramid shape as an inverse relationship to the revenue these customers bring in each year.
You should go after at least a few accounts per year because closing few key accounts could have a dramatic impact on your chances of smashing your sales quota.
IDENTIFYING KEY ACCOUNTS?
So that begs the question, “how do I uncover key accounts in the sea of crappy lead data that I have access too?”
The answer is simple – use the key account matrix.
We go a lot further into this in our Sales Accelerator program over at Salesman.org but here’s a high level view.
If we draw a chart with two axis –
- X potential future revenue
- Y Current relationship with the account
And then split this into 4 segments, we can label the segments as –
- Selective investment accounts – You have low or poor relationships but there is high potential for new business.
- Strategic Investment account – You have good relationships with and there is potential for new business.
- Proactive maintenance accounts – You have great relationships but there is a low chance of growth.
- Avoid these bastards at all costs accounts – You have low relationships and a low chance of new business.
So to find potential key accounts you then need to look through your lead data and find accounts that have the potential to generate lots of revenue, that you also have good relationships with.
They’re the two key fundamentals to quickly developing key accounts – Good potential future revenue and good relationships within the account.
So I challenge you to go through your lead data and uncover a few key accounts to target with your prospecting over the next few months and see if you can substantially increase your average deal size.
