Could this be one of your customers?

“As soon as I can find a replacement, I’m going to fire them.”

This is a verbatim quote from one of our projects. The speaker wasn’t initially forthcoming, but when he finally confessed what was on his mind, he dropped this bombshell.
The president of the firm at risk had no idea this multi-million-dollar account was in trouble. The salesperson knew, but he’d kept silent.

Could your third largest customer be secretly thinking about “firing” your company right now? How much projected revenue does that put at risk? What will it take to replace the lost revenue after they leave? Let us identify the weak links in your customer relationships and formulate deliberate strategies to minimize preventable losses.

Close the revenue gap
Account turnover is just one reason companies fail to reach their revenue potential. Two other contributing factors are disappointing follow-on sales to individual accounts and inadequate market penetration. We can help you with these problems and more.

Deliberate Strategies Consulting gives the CEOs of companies in business-to-business sales the means to reduce account defections, boost follow-on sales and increase market penetration. We isolate the customer intelligence you need to narrow the gap between current revenues and your business model’s full revenue potential.

In-house research
It’s probably on your wish list to sit down with all your major customers and review the fundamentals:

What are we doing well? What makes us stand out? What about our products? What are we doing poorly? Where are we off track? How are our people doing?

How well do we solve problems? What problems do we create? What would be better? What attracted you to us? What clinched the sale? How did the other guy lose it?

On and on and on. As enlightening as the experience would be, it’s a sad fact that it’s nearly impossible for one adult to say to another adult, “This is how you’re disappointing me” before the relationship is already dead and nothing is at risk. It’s too confrontational. It’s easier to avoid discussing real problems and instead look for a competitor who promises not to make the same mistake you’ve never been told you’re making.

In other words, even if you or one of your VPs took the time to meet with your major customers one-on-one, it is possible you wouldn’t uncover the very issues you want to know about—those that have revenue implications.

External research
You’ll learn more if you let a skilled neutral third party meet with your customers. Any neutral third party will hear something you won’t hear. But choose carefully. High-volume market research firms use college students who ask multiple-choice questions. “Four on a scale of 1 to 10” is not an actionable response. Multi-specialty consulting firms use their research divisions to find problems suitable for referral to their implementation divisions. Other problems go unreported or are distorted to rationalize the need for a follow-on consulting contract.

We have no cross-sell agenda, and we don’t withhold or distort anything. The quote at the top of the page is the type of response we hear. Not all are that dramatic, but they are all considerably more useful than “4 on a scale of 1 to 10.” (The Senior VP of Operations quoted above went on to enumerate what was wrong with the vendor’s performance, and what right would look like. Click here for the rest of this story.)

Deliberate Strategies Consulting helps companies protect, rebuild and increase gross revenues. Let us help you narrow the gap between today’s revenues and your full revenue potential. Call to schedule a free half-hour discussion about whether we can help your company begin increasing its revenues before the end of next quarter.