Why Do Sales Teams LOSE? – Treat Strategic Accounts Like One-time Customers (10-10)

Today is the last in a 10-part series on why sales teams win and lose business. These reasons were outlined by Ron Sathoff, a colleague of mine, in a great article for SAMA magazine called “Five Ways to Bolster Your Strategic Account Strategy, and Five Ways to Sabotage it.” (The article is available for download HERE)

This article was written to help answer the ultimate sales question, “How can we win a lot more deals?” In order to find the answer, Ron started by addressing the questions, “Why do we win and why do we lose?” Each of these points were taken from a library of thousands of win loss sales debriefs and compiled into performance rankings.

10. Treat your strategic accounts like one-time customers.

A final category of problems occurred when respondents felt that they were being slighted because their companies were not as large as others. The account managers in these situations failed to remember that customer relationships are not static and should not be gauged solely on the size of the account at the time, but also on its potential. It is extremely difficult to recover from the hard feelings caused by treating a customer as a “second class citizen,” as this respondent pointed out:

“The mid-sized companies need love, too. We went from platinum to a mid-sized account company and the attention [is awful]. When I was at [a larger company], if we yelled loud enough, we got problems fixed. With a mid-sized company, however, we get shuffled under the rug. I don't really understand that, but it might indicate that somebody with a bigger sale came along, so my sale wasn't important.”

An account manager can miss out on opportunities by forgetting that, just as large accounts can become mid-sized, those mid-sized accounts can also grow into the most profitable of strategic relationships. By continuing to ignore smaller accounts, there is also the very real possibility that the company and account manager will suffer from negative word-of-mouth advertising and poor references, making it difficult to win future sales in competitive situations.