Customer Service

Often customers that demand the most from sales staff, buy the least. These customers consume too much of a salesperson’s time with small problems, complaints or requests.

“It always seems that the ones who bring in the least profit, complain the most,” says Timothy Lucas, president of Star Maintenance Supply Co., a San Gabriel, Calif.- based distributor. Those types of accounts are also the ones that need the most attention, Lucas adds.

Since distributors spend valuable company time and energy working with customers, the key becomes figuring out what customers are worth the extra time.

“All customers are worth some of your time, but all customers are not created equal,” says Len D’Innocenzo, president and CEO of CRKInteractive Inc., an Andover, Mass.- based learning provider that offers online and traditional training solutions.

Customers that ask for free services or more discounts, says D’Innocenzo, are fine if it’s a significant account, but if they aren’t, then salespeople need to learn to say “no.”

Learning to actually say no and figuring out who to “cut loose” can be a challenge, even if it’s a newly gained client.

Lucas tells about a contract cleaning account that didn’t pay its bills for about a year. “We held on that long hoping it would get better,” says Lucas.

Although the cleaners were delinquent on payment almost right from the beginning, Star Maintenance tried to give them the benefit of the doubt. As a result, Star Maintenance is now more selective about who it does business with and hasn’t had a problem like that since.

Before deciding who is not worth your time, first determine what customers are. Valuable customers are generally a company’s best existing customers that do most of their business with the company, are satisfied, and do little or no business with a competitor, says D’Innocenzo.

Salespeople often waste time with customers with little growth potential since these customers can exhaust salespeople’s time with questions. “Just because a customer or prospect will talk to you doesn’t mean they are worth your time,” says D’Innocenzo.

The most beneficial way to avoid wasting time with the wrong accounts, says D’Innocenzo, is to ask yourself — the distributor — these questions: Where should I spend my selling time? Which of my prospects and customers offer the best opportunity today, tomorrow, and next month? Which prospects and customers will give the greatest return for my selling time?

After research has been conducted and a distributor has met with an end user, they should be able to determine what customer is not worth the effort and move on to other accounts.

“Time was a main catalyst in deciding when enough was enough,” says Lucus.

There are no regrets in the decision to get rid of the non-paying cleaning firm. “They [the building service contractors] went to someone else… to ruin their business, I guess,” jokes Lucas.