MANAGEMENT
How to Identify and Open Major Accounts THEODORE B. KINNI
Establishing major accounts is “really 70 percent planning and strategy and only 30 percent face-to- face execution,” says a prominent sales consultant.
Given the cost of pursuing new ac- counts, how you identify and pursue major accounts is critical. “Large com- panies may well spend half a million dollars or more before they get any business from a new major account, because – nearly always nowadays – products in a major account are customized, adapted, specially con- figured,” explains the consultant. “It’s costing a lot of money; it takes a lot of time. So you have to pick the winners.”
THE RIGHT PROSPECTS The first step in picking the winners in major account sales requires some upper-level decision making. “I hear a lot of the salespeople who attend my classes being told that they are to determine and develop 10 major accounts in their territories,” says one sales consultant – a veteran facilitator of national account management and strategic selling seminars. “But what happens if the guy in Chicago has no
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major accounts in his territory? If we have him selecting on his own, the re- sources of the corporation get diluted. “Sales managers or executives have got to set up a list of criteria that work as screens, just like you were mining for gold,” says the consultant. “Major accounts have to be this size, have this kind and number of people, have these number of product lines, or have to be in one of these mar- ket niches. We need to screen the whole population of potential major accounts on a nationwide or global basis and then determine how we are going to allocate our resources around those customers.” Once potential customers have been identified through this sifting process, sellers must analyze them in- dividually. “How do you know it’s the right door?” asks the consultant. “I worked with a bank that had a team of six people working on how to get into one big account. Now, I had worked
with that company and knew that they had made a corporate decision to re- duce the number of their face-to-face relationships from 32 banks down to two. So, here is this poor sales team working like crazy to get in there and they have no hope of doing so.” To avoid such situations, the consul-
tant recommends teaming up with the marketing department. “Most sales organizations, particularly at the level of individual sales managers, don’t go to their own marketing departments and ask for help,” he says. “Go to marketing and try to use them as a data source. Say, ‘Hey, I expect you to help me find out these things about this company. And, I expect you to tell me whether this is the best segment for me to be targeting, and whether there is another company that I should be going after that is better than this.’”
THE RIGHT VALUE
The second step in the journey to winning a major account is creating a compelling offer. “Once you’ve identified a desirable target,” says the consultant, “you have to think about
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