Before I start I want to say that there are many types of companies. There are big businesses that have huge capacities (capital, cash flow, employees, etc.) but there are others that are smaller and that need to take care of their resources, among other traits they have. Big companies can afford things that many smaller companies can’t such as financing huge operations, wait for payments for more than 60 days, work with difficult clients if at the end they are profitable.
Today what I am writing is important for companies that can’t afford this type of situations. Some months ago I wrote about clients that can destroy our business and also our peace. I recommend this post because it talks about the same subjects I am going to mention today but from another point of view. In that post I explained the problems about working with that type of clients, but today what I want to explain is the important role our sellers have in order to detect this type of situation and save the company form a difficult project.
To do this it is very important that the company has clear guidelines about the profile of clients they want and the traits they must have in order to work with our company. For example, it must be clear the size of businesses that can be financed and how many days can it be financed before they pay. On mi particular case in which what I am selling is knowledge, it is very important to meet the client and see if it is possible to implement new ideas because otherwise the project will be a failure.
Taking into account what I have just stated, it is very important that our sales force understand these guidelines. They are the first employees that get in touch with our possible clients, therefore they will be able to notice difficult situations that can turn out in problems. Devote time and effort in clients that are not good for the company makes them loose time but even worse makes us end up on projects that will harm our company. However, our sales force must learn to be very polite and intelligent when they discard these projects and clients because even if today we are not interested in them, maybe on the future we will, and it is better to keep the doors opened.
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