Choose Your Sales Opportunities Wisely

February 7, 2014

Having a large turnover and volume can be beneficial for businesses focused on selling, to a point. Having successful sales techniques will aid companies looking to improve their bottom line, but understanding the relative value of customers and knowing when to turn down an opportunity is important as well.

Juggling too many clients can be more frustration than it’s worth, taxing valuable resources and not providing the best possible experience to each customer. A focus on maintaining a manageable patron base can yield better results for both the buyer and the seller.

The New York Times recently profiled an entrepreneurial group called She Owns It, which held a session that focused on knowing how to manage business prospects and saying no to potential clients that would end up being detrimental to their organizations.

Set limits across the board
The amount of time dedicated to new clients is one reason to limit the overall amount of business interactions made by your organization. It’s an old but true axiom that it takes more in terms of overall resources to bring on new customers than it does to maintain current relationships. While it can be exciting – and fit in very well with the entrepreneurial mentality – to accept whatever offers come the way of your business, the quality of service provided will improve with limitations on overall patron count.

Understanding the needs of potential partners is another aspect of being smart with sales opportunities. If potential clients need a large amount of customization or reassurance that’s out of character with your company’s approach, it may not help in the long run to engage with them. Although this advice is malleable, as during slow periods companies may need to take on customers that aren’t perfect fits, if your business is growing it makes sense to focus on partnering with the right kinds of individuals and groups.

Say no to existing customers with prudence
Business 2 Community points out that even the best sales leadership techniques and customer service strategies have to involve responding in the negative to some customer requests. While these sort of decisions are often made on a discretionary basis, weighing impact with the consequences of saying yes, your staff has some options to make the exchange less awkward. Workers who may potentially have these interactions with patrons should both practice saying no and slow the pace of conversations or negotiations to consider the cost-benefit analysis of such an action.