10 Reasons Why Prospecting to Few Accounts May Need More Support

“We call on a limited number of accounts.  So we don’t need any more prospecting resources beyond our sales representatives.”

This is a common response from our clients before they begin working with us. Many companies sell or market to a small number of contacts in a very distinct or narrow market.   In some cases the sales team may support the top 1,000 ,100, 10 or 1% of prospects and clients in a very specific industry.

Your sales team may support a limited list of target accounts by territory or industry. These customers can be large institutions with many departments and many contacts. If these are your only targets they should be handled very carefully with close interaction, and be covered at all times.

What happens as the sales representatives are doing their jobs and begin closing opportunities? They will have less time to prospect.  You need other resources to stay close to your customers and prospects and refill your pipeline. Having the inbound team switch to outbound prospecting is not the best use of resources to cover you in this situation.

So who reaches out to prospects when the sales representatives are busy nurturing and closing business? Usually, companies use in-house or outsourced outbound prospecting resources.  But do sales representatives really have their accounts covered?  To find out, I ask the following questions:

1. Are you interacting with all your prospects and customers on a quarterly basis?
2. Are all your prospects and customers involved with your new product or service ideas?
3. Are you up-selling and cross selling into all your customer accounts in a timely manner?
4. Are you aware of quarterly changes happening for all your prospects and customers?
5. Are you penetrating all appropriate departments with all your prospect and customer accounts?
6. Are you giving all your prospects and customers superior customer service?
7. Are you testing secondary markets and accounts to see if they could be users of your current products and services?
8. Are you testing secondary markets and prospects to see if they could be users of future products and services?
9. Are you gaining referrals from your prospects and customers?
10. Are you losing any prospects or customers?

These questions will help you determine if you really are covering your present accounts and developing future markets to grow your business.