Gerry Tabio has 35 years experience in helping media companies grow revenues.  Last week the talked about the only 2 factors that contribute to reliable sales growth.  Today he talks about the importance of bringing creative ideas to key accounts.

You’ve noticed that top performers often have lots of small accounts.  Why is this and what’s the solution?

The problem is not necessarily that the salespeople have too many small accounts. The biggest problem is that they can let those small and medium-sized spenders distract them from paying attention to the accounts that can really contribute to growth, which are the Key and New Key Accounts.

The second issue is that managers sometimes mistakenly think that the way they are going to mitigate the churn in their Key Accounts is by chasing new business. As I mentioned above, we have lots of data that shows that traditional new business efforts create lots of small clients that don’t contribute to growth. Sure, they make management feel like something is happening because of all the activity, but at the end of the day, they just use up company resources and distract the sales organization from the important work of retaining and growing big clients.

We believe that the smartest way to look at small and medium-sized spenders is as potential Target Accounts. Small and medium clients should be reviewed by managers and sellers on a regular basis to spot the ones that could be much bigger if the sellers paid extra attention to them and grew them proactively.

One final thought: What’s the best way to take advantage of the data to grow an out of home business?

Since our very first experience with out of home, we have been impressed with the very high caliber of creative ideas they bring to their clients.

For example, recently, we were teaching a workshop to a group of sellers from an out of home company, and we were surprised at how quickly they sorted to coming up with creative ideas to help their clients achieve their marketing objectives. Even in reactive situations, when they could have simply responded to an RFP with media specs, they were very comfortable coming up with additional fun and creative ways to enhance their clients’ campaigns.

This natural inclination towards creative ideas can be especially valuable when applied proactively by the sales organization to grow their Key and Target Accounts. When they come across a Key Account that is already growing, they should present ideas to encourage further growth. Conversely, Key Accounts that are shrinking should be approached with ideas that will, at the very least, stop the bleeding.

That same proactive individualized approach can be applied to selecting and growing new Target Accounts.

To learn more visit creativeresourcesgroup.com or email sallybeamer@creativeresourcesgroup.com and gerrytabio@creativeresourcesgroup.com.

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