I’ve been having a lot of conversations with salespeople and leaders who are thinking about their NEXT success – perhaps because of my August post if the year were pie.
Here is my process – use it, modify it, or completely disregard it and share YOUR process with me instead! I’d love to hear it.
Step 1 – who are my top customers anyway?
This is the exercise where I don’t GUESS, I look at the numbers. Who were my top customers: the past fiscal year, as well as year to date in the current fiscal year. For me personally, that is a pure monetary exercise.
- What is your money ‘cut-off’, the yearly number – per account – that makes someone a top customer?
- Who is above the ‘cut-off’?
- What was their actual monetary number for the years you’re looking at?
Step 2 – what big opportunities do I know about with my top customers for the rest of this year AND next year?
Step 3 – what can I expect from each top customer every month? Feel free to change the period to quarter or whatever makes sense for your business.
Step 4 – IF your sales involves small incremental business, ask yourself: how much do I do each week? if that’s not a thing in your business – move along.
Step 5 – what significant opportunities do I know about with my customers ~ those who didn’t make it to the top customer list ~ for the rest of this year AND next year?
Step 6 – what big opportunities do I know about with my top PROSPECTS for the rest of this year AND next year?
Step 7 – add it up!
Oh – because I do this exercise regularly; I also look at my LAST year’s estimates and compare them to my actual numbers as a gut check… but if you’ve never done this type of forecast before it probably isn’t an option… next year!
Now ask yourself:
- What can I do between now and the end of the year to hit my number?
- For this year…
- In the next fiscal year…
- Who do I need to remove from my top account list?
- Who needs to be added to my top account list?
- Which accounts are set to be my next top accounts?
FINALLY, it’s time to decide: where am I spending good time & where am I wasting it?
It’s critical to assess – evaluate – plan, purely based on the money… then move on to other criteria. Notice I talked about top accounts not ideal customers (those are NOT necessarily the same thing).
Always looking ahead,
Lynn