Know When to Walk Away from the Sale

January 6, 2012 by Scott Olsen

As a sales person, how hard is it to walk away from a deal?

You’ve worked hard to get as close as possible, but in your heart you know the customer is not a good fit, is unlikely to be a good referral and will probably take an inordinate amount of time along the way. The wise sales organization and sales person knows when to cut their losses and move on to better opportunities.

What steps can you take to improve you ability to better qualify and sell more efficiently? First, define your ideal customer. What do they look like? What are identifiable characteristics you can learn in advance or can quickly uncover through effective questioning. Your list may include topics like:

  • culture
  • current processes
  • other products they use today
  • geography
  • industry
  • competitors
  • employee count
  • revenue
  • profit
  • type of organization (i.e. public, private or government)
  • types of products they sell (ie. software, hardware, professional services, etc.)
  • other (i.e. they love what makes your solution unique)

After you’ve defined your ideal customer, begin to rank your customer’s on a scale of 1-10, “10″ being ideal. As a result, you’ll purposely spend more time with your ideal customers, help some customer’s become or behave more like ideal customers and minimize time with customers who drain your time, energy and resources. In the end you’ll win.

→ No CommentsCategories: Creating Ideal Customers, Executive Selling, Sales Management, Sales Skills, Tactical Selling Skills, Uncategorized, selling

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