Manage Your Sales Territory to Maximize Your Sales RevenueBy Jim Searls, Sales Leadership Expert
In tough times it is easy to think that any sale is agood sale because they are so hard to come by. But,the reality is that the wrong kind of sales can becosting you money.Our biggest constraint in sales is the time we haveavailable to sell. If you take out time for non-salesactivities that consume your day the actual time left tosell is limited. To get the maximum return on your investment of time you need tofocus your sales efforts on the right customers and prospects.
80/20 Rule
In sales, 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your customers. However, theother 80% of your customers that make up 20% of your income use a largeamount of your time.Let me give you an example: I had a client who had 50 customers that comprisedover 95% of their revenue. In addition, in those 50 customers there wasconsiderable market share for their products/services that they did not have timeto pursue. The reason: they had another 300 accounts that made up theremaining 5% of their revenue but took a disproportionate amount of time andeffort to support. In addition, the cost of sales on many of those accounts wasgreater than the revenue received. That did not even include the opportunity costof not pursuing more profitable opportunities.Here is the bottom line. If you could focus your efforts on your best customersand find more prospects like your best customers, you could greatly increaseyour revenues.
Steps to Maximizing Your Sales Revenue
1.
Analyze which customers bring in the majority of your income.
Seehow many customers are left, how much they bring in, and how much timeit takes to service them.
2.
Divide your customers into two groups based on your analysis.
Group One: those that are “ideal customers” or have the potential tobecome ideal customers; and, Group Two: those that are not idealcustomers. Determine what the revenue potential is within your idealcustomers. Focus your time on these customers first.
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