One of our biggest customers was located in a country to which we had to fly out once every quarter to meet them. We had an excellent relationship and it was always a good meeting. Usually followed by a nice dinner or social activity that perpetuated the relationship. Most other suppliers also visited this customer in the same way.
However, I noticed that there was a much smaller customer located a couple of hours’ train ride outside the city we visited. As I was there anyway, I made contact with them. Tagging on a visit to them each time as part of my trip. It didn’t take long and just required the effort involved to go and see them. Which I could do by a relatively minor detour. But no other supplier bothered to do this.
We started doing some business and rapidly became a major supplier for them. They gave us premium placement within their products solely because of the way we treated them.
More importantly, the people I was primarily visiting went on to become senior executives at a much bigger customer. This allowed me to have a great rapport with them in that role. So to boldly go where others don’t can lead to further business and developed into a much bigger revenue stream.
This post is supports advice in Build Your Sales Tribe – Sales in the Information Age Book. If you own the book, thanks for visiting. If you don’t own the book, find out more here: www.salestribe.co.uk
Books we recommend
Keep inline with the latest thinking in successful selling
Related Posts
- How to build an effective commercial sales team LIVE with Steve Schrier
- Metrics: What Should be Measured
- Legal Agreement Basics
- Why Skills are More Important Than Talent
- BOLDLY GO WHERE OTHERS DON’T
