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Stop Reaching For The Low-Hanging Fruit

Written by: Will Turner

Article Overview: Time spent on poor-fit clients will keep you from focusing your sales efforts more effectively.

Stop Reaching For The Low-Hanging Fruit

Easy sales don’t necessarily make good sales. Many businesses and salespeople are guilty of going after low-hanging fruit. It’s those sales opportunities that are ripe for the picking with little effort. Isn’t that what we all want? Before you succumb to your temptation and start plucking away, make sure you don’t end up with a bitter after-taste.

Low-hanging fruit is often not as good as it appears. It looks plump and delicious, but after one bite of the fruit, you’re spitting out worms. In a sales scenario, that’s the equivalent to making a sale to someone that you later wish you never did. Most salespeople are too interested in making the quick sale that they don’t slow down to fully assess the potential client and the situation on the front end of closing the deal. This can easily result in one of two scenarios.

The first scenario is that you and the client never fully engage. Because you short-changed the sales process and failed to understand what was important to the client and why, you don’t have much of a relationship. While you can always try to build a stronger relationship after the sale, and you should; you may find that it’s too little too late. The client may not be interested, you or the client may be too busy or you may find that you really don’t have a lot in common.

The second scenario is even harder to overcome. After you start working with the client, you discover that your solution is not a good fit for what is needed. Or you find out that your client is the type of client that is never satisfied. This realization usually comes about when your new client calls to complain, which may be an ongoing and regular occurrence.

In fact, if you have clients that are thorns in your side, you can often track their origin back to your failure to fully assess the client on the front-end. You got excited about closing the deal and you short-changed the sales process. You didn’t ask all the questions you should or you dismissed the red flags you noticed and hoped they would go away.

The problem with these ill-fitting clients is that they demand your time and keep you from focusing on those clients and prospects that are the right fit for you. And because they are not thrilled with your products or services, they will never send you referrals or give you positive word-of-mouth advertising. In fact, it’s more likely that they’ll make damaging and derogatory comments if they bother to talk about you at all.

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