Fishing for Big Ones

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How to identify and land bigger customers
By William F. Kendy


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It’s been said that if you go fishing and you catch a bunch of minnows, you have a bucketful. If you land a whale, you have a ship full. While it sounds obvious, the key to landing bigger fish is simple: fish for bigger fish.
How does a salesperson identify the big fish? Searching the Internet by industry and category can land a salesperson a net full of prospects. Most industries have national and statewide associations and trade journals from which salespeople can capture leads. Then there is networking and scoping out your competition to see who they’re doing business with. So finding where the big fish swim isn’t a real problem for a salesperson who commits to spending time on task.
Once salespeople have identified the “lunkers,” they need to find out who the key players are, whether they are information gatherers or have the authority to sign a contract, their needs, how the corporate purchasing policy works, the support staff and departments, and who has the authority to “kill a deal.” First, they need to get over the fear factor.
Selling larger accounts can be intimidating and requires a certain fearless “go for the gold” mindset on the part of a salesperson. In many cases, salespeople are going into complexes and facilities that look like Fort Knox and many assume that bigger companies have more sophisticated employees and hold vendors to higher standards and expect more than smaller companies. According to sales consultant and author of Bag the Elephant (Bard Press, 2005) Steve Kaplan, that is not always the case.
“Dealing with a big company can be intimidating, especially to the less experienced salesperson, but they need to remember that often, the person in charge of a core supplier program is going to be in the lower or middle level category,” says Kaplan. “Remember that all these fortresses and compounds are run by people like you.”
“We call the larger accounts ‘bellwethers’ and when you land one, you usually pull in other bellwethers as well,” says Jim Buckley, vice president of Reed Exhibitions, a trade show management company. “In terms of trade shows, salespeople need to handle larger companies differently than smaller ones, because the objectives may be different.
“At trade shows, smaller companies need to make sales and let people know about their products. On the other hand, larger companies may have completely different objectives,” says Buckley. “Most of the larger companies are already well established, have a customer base and put more emphasis on brand awareness.”
Buckley, who manages the SHOT Show (Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show owned by the National Shooting Sports Foundation), believes that larger companies have multiple objectives, some of which may not be readily apparent. It’s up to the salesperson to ferret out those real needs.
“Salespeople need to expand their vision beyond just selling booths and floor space and find out exactly what the larger exhibitors want to accomplish,” says Buckley. “Large companies are like octopuses with a lot of arms. They have multiple goals and objectives and want to be involved in all kinds of things.
“For example, a large company may want to exhibit not to just have a physical presence, but to have a larger presence than their competitors, do market research, give a keynote speech, sponsor events, reinforce relationships, promote the brand and basically conquer the show – and it may cost them millions to do it,” says Buckley. “So salespeople need to do their homework and invest a lot of face-to-face time with a prospect or customer, become an advisor and throw in real value.”
According to Kaplan, identifying the right people and what they really need, in terms of a corporate structure and process, is critical in selling large accounts. He also believes that salespeople need to create internal champions and establish a presence with support departments who don’t have money to spend but can cancel a contract.
“Salespeople need to know who the right people to talk to are, understand their plight and what they have to deal with in terms of processes everyday in the corporate structure,” says Kaplan. “In large companies, people work in teams and salespeople need to know who the decision maker is and also who on the team can affect the buying decision and what is important for them. And it’s imperative to know who can kill a deal.
“The salesperson who really understands the needs of the buyer is the one who’s going to get the business and those needs may not necessarily be based on product, price or delivery. It may be something you can value-add,” says Kaplan. “We had a person who wanted to show what she was doing to her management in terms of saving money. So we made sure she got a monthly statement, called a ‘Cost Investment Saving’ form from us detailing how much money her company saved.”

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Kaplan believes that learning the “language of the company” that a salesperson is trying to sell is imperative for sales success and that helps that vendor get on a preferred suppliers list.
“If salespeople don’t learn the language of the customers that they’re trying to sell, they’re like tourists in their company,” says Kaplan. “Salespeople need to become residents. They need to know the names of the buildings, offices, forms and contracts and dig for information that gives them credence.”
“I was selling target marketing programs to a large corporation and found that they referred to them as ‘Point of Market Entry’ programs,” says Kaplan. “So I made sure that the acronym POME was on every piece of correspondence I sent them and I got the business. None of my competitors even thought of including it on their proposals.
“Salespeople need to get their companies on a preferred vendor list and there are two things that need to be done,” says Kaplan. “The first is to prove to the customer that you will be around to fulfill the business. The second is they will want a platform to leverage their scale, which means you have to have a reasonable price and add value.” This value-added component is essential.
Both Buckley and Kaplan agree that creating partnerships and multiple internal champions is absolutely critical in winning and keeping big customers.
Kaplan recounts a situation where he had a signed contract from a large corporation, only to find out that the public relations department nixed the contract.
“We had a signed contract and then found out that the public relations department voided the contract. It came out of left field and I was completely shocked,” says Kaplan. “We met with the PR department and learned their protocol and what they needed from us. Because we knew what they wanted, the next contract went through without a hitch.”
“Salespeople need to get inside the heads of large customers and understand exactly what they want to achieve by exhibiting at a show. That may mean dealing with a number of different departments within that corporation, “ says Buckley. “It may be that you’re talking to the marketing department, the research department or the engineering/new product development side of the business. All of them have their objectives and a salesperson needs to create a relationship with all of them and help them achieve their goals.”
It’s commonly accepted that the best time for salespeople to make a sale is right after they made one. Kaplan takes that concept a step further and believes that once a sale is made, it is the salesperson’s responsibility to “go crazy” on more business.
“Most of the time, when a salesperson makes a sale, they sit back, with a big commission check and the account goes to customer service or operations to manage and make the customer happy,” says Kaplan. “I advocate that once the contract is sold, it becomes the first step for the operational people but the next step for the salesperson to follow the process of the company as they execute what you sold them and that may mean creating additional relationships and champions with the functional people.”
“If you can help functional people become more effective or make their jobs easier, they will sell more for you than you ever could sell by yourself,” says Kaplan.
“Salespeople need to become like gum in the carpet…it’s hard to get them out. If they do things the right way, the customer doesn’t want to get them out,” says Kaplan. – William F. Kendy