Protect Your Best Accounts

(Continued.from page 64 ) foolproof vaccination against your competitors, it goes a long way to assuring that your good account will keep you informed of what is happening. and will probably give you an opportunity to respond to any especially appealing enticements. It's step one in protecting yourself from the competition.

2. Close any open doors. Your competitors will be looking for ways to gain a foothold in your accounts.

They'll search for cracks in the door that they can wedge into greater opportunities. Beat them to the punch by eliminating any opportunities. Carefully examine these issues:

(a) Pricing.

It is not at all unusual to find that some prices in your good accounts have crept up to the point where they are not nearly as competitive as they may be in other places. Review your prices, and make sure that your margin increases haven't put you in an awkward position. You may have to reduce some pnces to prevent a competitor from making you look bad.

(b) Problems.

There may be some unresolved, lingering problems in your account. And. while they may not seem important to you, they provide an opportunity for your competitors to turn them into an opportunity for them.

Are there products that need to be returned? Invoices with discrepancies that need to be resolved? Items that need to be picked up? Training that was to have been done and never got scheduled? Information you were supposed to obtain for someone that you never did?

You've got the idea. If there are any unresolved problems in the account, a good competitor will find them and exploit them to his advantage and your disadvantage.

(c) Products.

You may have some product weaknesses that you competitor can exploit. For example, you may have available this year's version of some standard product. But your good customer is happy using an earlier version. You've never seen any reason to try to convert them to this year's model, when they are perfectly happy with last year's.

However, last year's model may not stand up favorably to this year's version for your competition. In that case, you may look bad when your competitor brings in this year's hot new product and compares it to an older model that you are supplying. Shame on you. You should have detailed your version before your competitor got the chance.

3. Bundle up your products and services.

You may be selling 10 different items to one of your good accounts. Rather then continue to sell those ten as separate issues, package them together and write a contract that addresses all of them as a package deal. Get your good customer to acknowledge the package. That way, if your competitor tries to pick out one of the items you're selling, they can't because the price and service on one item impacts the others. The more you can bundle items together into packages, the more difficult it is for your competition to dislodge you on one of those items.

4. Formally communicate your value.

Big Creek Lumber Co.

During our almost 60 years in the redwood business, Big Creek has developed a reputation for being a reliable supplier of high quality lumber. We produce a wide range of grades and dimensions, custom cut timbers, pattern slock and fencing. Order full, mixed or partial truckloads.

Arrange for quarterly meetings between your good customer's key people and you and your boss. At these meetings, bring reports detailing aspects of your service, how much money you've saved that customer, the training you've done, the information you've provided, etc.

Don't be afraid to identify other areas that you could impact in the same way. This formal reporting raises your position in the customer's eyes from that of being just a vendor, to that of a valuable partner. This separates you from the competition, and makes it less likely that your customer will be attracted to someone else.

While none of these strategies are guaranteed to put an impenetrable wall around your good accounts, the wise combination of them will make penetrating one ofyour good accounts an extremely difficult and frustrating project for your competitors. Sometimes the best strategy is a good defense.

- Dave Kahle, the "Growth Coach," is a consultant, trainer and author ofTen Secrets of Time Management for Salespeople. He can be reached via www.davekahle.com or at ( 800) 331' 1287.