Peter Finkelstein, South Africa’s leading sales coach and head of the country’s premier sales consulting practice, tells you how you can improve the profitability of your major opportunities.

#1: Know Your Customer's Business
Imagine making a call to one of your key accounts and being told that they wanted you to supply all of their operations around the world. How many times has that happened? Probably not many!

The more likely situation is that you will be told that the company is considering a single source of supply for its world-wide operations. Too many accounts managers get an increase in pulse rate when they hear the opportunity being discussed and often jump in the hope of being the preferred supplier. But knowing what the customer wants isn’t enough.

The key to optimising any sales opportunity is not to sell. Instead of rushing into the sales mode and explaining what you can do to address the apparent need, stop and investigate why the company is considering such a decision.

REMEMBER: In order to be successful in today’s competitive environment you must know not only what customers want, but why they want it. This more rounded understanding enables you to offer advice, guidance and expertise that not only creates a greater opportunity for the deal, but helps the buyer explore the best option.

#2: Become Part of Their Organisation
Professionals know that they cannot be successful selling only their products or services. They recognise that they must become part of the buyer organisation in order to be successful. More than understanding what is wanted and why, they need to understand how the purchase touches every aspect of the account’s business.

REMEMBER: In order to do this invest time, effort and energy in working in and with the buyer organisation. Investing in familiarisation with the buyer’s company not only helps understand real needs, it positions you as a valuable resource to the buyer, something that comes with dealing with your organisation. This results in a powerful barrier to exit.

#3: Be a Consultant
Consultants do not sell products or services. Consultants try to have a tangible, bottom line impact on their customer’s business. Consultants try to differentiate themselves on the basis of the quality of their ideas. And, consultants derive their success from the success of the clients.

Consulting to the buyer organisation gives you an opportunity to put your intellect to work for both the success of the client and the account.

#4: Work the Account at all Levels
Professionals are able to dilute the risk of a potentially strong price focus that is usually found amongst corporate buying departments by including all departments and decision-makers who could be effected by a purchase decision.

Focusing attention on servicing only those decision-makers with whom an executive has a good relationship is always dangerous. The wider the spread of influence, the greater is the potential support for proposed ideas and suggestions.

#5 Create a Good Operational Process
True professionals don’t stop adding value to an account once a sale is made. Rather, they look to build additional barriers to entry by their rivals. One easy way to do this is to create a strong operational process in the account.

In many large organisations, the cost of processing invoices, purchase orders, debits and credits can be very high. The ability to streamline purchase orders, billing, technical support and collections can have a major impact on the customer’s bottom line. By establishing an effective purchase–delivery–payment process with the account executives can save the customer a substantial amount.

#6: Make Promises You can Keep and Keep the Promises you Make
The responsibility of the product-pushing salesperson ends when the deal is done. Not so for the professional account manager. These executives accept the mantle of responsibility until the customer has derived the promised value. And if that means working smarter, working harder and delivering more, then so be it. After all, strategic relationships are hard to develop and even harder to maintain. Protecting the investment made is worth the added effort.