How To Bag The Elephant Without Losing Everything Else In The Bag

This blog post was contributed by my friend and mentor, Steve Bookbinder


Ask the experts:

Q. My partner and I are involved in a marketing company and have an idea for a way to market our services to big brands. If we were to land one of those accounts, the opportunity would be big. How do you think we should get started with this new initiative?

A. I have spoken to literally thousands of salespeople who have some kind of bag-the-elephant sales idea and I find most make two mistakes in their approach that dooms the entire effort. First off, let me state that I am generally in favor of any sales idea that, if successful, would allow the seller to dramatically increase their average-revenue-per-sale, provided that the servicing of that account were possible without causing you to lose any clients you would prefer to keep.

Big projects mean more time management
The first consideration, when going after the BIG sale is that it can take up alot of your time. Forget about servicing; the sales process would no doubt involve many meetings, many emails, and the creation, rehearsal and presentation of many documents that will be needed to support the sales effort. Therefore, a seller is best advised to only have one or two of those size opportunities in their funnel at any given moment.

Therefore, the trick to adding a new, BIG initiative is to make sure that it is only one of many sales initiatives in your funnel. I prefer to set up my funnel by Source of Deal Flow/Business Line, not simply a pile of various prospects. This way, I can concentrate my sales time and efforts on the lead source/business line that requires AND DESERVES the most attention. The alternative would be to forsake all other lead sources for a month or two while diving into the most exciting thing in the funnel--the new, BIG idea. Once you come at the new project from the mature-responsible (scary term, no?) position of making sure nothing is dropped by adding a new thing, you automatically craft an approach more likely to work. Absent this concept, I can easily see a seller pouring themselves into researching leads, cold calling and expensive marketing--with the opportunity cost being attention paid to all of the other older initiatives, "boring" smaller sales opportunities and prospects-in-motion being shoved to the back burner.

Who do you know? Who do they know?
So, how should you go after the one-off BIG customer? By deliberately limiting the time you will put against it! And, by finding a way in that doesn't require time consuming cold calling. If you have a BIG idea, the first thing you need to think about is who you know (and who your contacts know) that will get you a fast introductory meeting. If you are starting from scratch, you will be far less likely to ever achieve success by only spending a fraction of your time working it, but far more successful than putting all your eggs in the one “BIG sale bucket.” Take a second look at your plan. Are you considering launching a marketing effort that will involve convincing total strangers that:

a. they need the service you are suggesting they buy?
b. that you are the right person/team/company to supply that service?

That already sounds like a big number (in terms of lead gen, prospecting and cold calls) game with lots of time lost trying to get someone - anyone - to meet with you. Not a good way to go if you already have anything else on your funnel. (Which you should; you always need a balance of prospects that would enable you to get the smaller, faster sale.) By approaching the sales idea from a starting point of more easily securing the first meeting through contacts, you can focus on the quality/strategy of that meeting. Improving that first meeting means you will more likely get something going--or at least another meeting that could lead to success.

The one-off big idea is less valuable, in my view, than a new lead source called "the BIG sales lead source." Therefore, you need to get your first client so you can finally get the second one. Now, you are in business. Now you have deal flow. And you have it all - the potential for the BIG sale as well as the smaller, boring sales, that you need to pay your bills day-to-day while you are waiting to get rich.


Steve Bookbinder, of Steve Bookbinder Associates, is a full service agency focused on sales and improvement through consulting, training, speaking and web services.
Jeff and Steve are writing and speaking partners and co-present Be Your Own Coach workshops based on their book "How to Be Your Own Coach" (www.byourowncoach.com)