“Stop wasting time serving those who will never become a customer and focus on customers who need you today.” – Anthony Coundouris in today’s Tip 786
How do you focus on customers who need you?
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run_frictionless: How to free a founder from a sales
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Anthony Coundouris. Anthony has a decade of experience consulting to technology and software-as-a-service startups. He specializes in designing automated sales and marketing systems and is the author of the book run_frictionless. Here he is:
Anthony Coundouris: Thanks Scott, for having me on the show. In today’s Daily Sales Tip, I’d like to teach you sales time management. I’m going to show you how you can save time by identifying customers, you never serve. Now, if you guessed, I’m an Australian, you guessed, right. Fun fact about Australians. Texas is the largest state in the US however, the State of Western Australia is more than three times the size of Texas. Sorry, for those of you living in Texas.
Now here’s the definition of a customer you never serve. If in doubt about whether to serve a customer profile, ask yourself this question. If you know, in your heart, a customer will not write a positive review. After you perform a service, this profile may be better so tomorrow or not at all this customer profile is a liability. His profile is more likely to request a refund and provide false feedback on the product. By the way, a positive review can be written or can be told verbally to a friend. Here’s why you want to block customers, you don’t serve.
When customer inquiries are coming thick and fast, the Salesforce needs to make split-second decisions about whom they ought to serve. By trying to serve everyone, including those you cannot serve or those you ought to serve tomorrow they risk dropping customers who really need them today. Here’s an example.
In 2010, I ran a business called Future Books. Our cloud-based bookkeeping service was popular amongst tech startups in Southeast Asia. And during the early game, if we discovered a business had more than 200 transactions per month and did not have an administrator working in their company, we did not serve this profile. The reason is simple. Without the resources and expertise of an administrator, this business owner would never get their accounts to us each month, by the cutoff date. The customer was never going to reach success and eventually would demand refund. And until we began blocking this customer in the early game, our organization wasted time selling and onboarding a customer who was never going to be a customer.
Right now in your business. There is a customer who needs you. Stop wasting time serving those who will never become a customer and focus on customers who need you today.
Let’s sum up if you need what we did and decided to block this customer profile, you made a good call. Here’s why.
Firstly, customer satisfaction, rose and friction fell. You see, you built trust with customers you never served. Because, well, you were honest with them and you had more time to be attentive to customers who you serve today. Secondly, you made your sales manager happy because your prospect conversions were better than the rest of the sales organizations. You blocked this customer in the early game, your conversions during the middle and the end game, shut up. And lastly, you increased your prices to encourage this customer profile to shop elsewhere. Back to you, Scott.
Scott Ingram: Thanks Anthony. Anthony can help you reach predictable revenue with his 4Qs online sales training. You can try one course for free and we’ll have a link for you at DailySales.Tips/786
Once you’ve checked that out. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!