Study: firms look to existing customers to grow top lines

Sales managers increasingly look for opportunities to build revenue from existing clients rather than the development of new customers, says a study by Reno-based Miller Heiman.

The sales training company surveyed 3,435 sales leaders worldwide last autumn and found that more than 78 percent of them believe their staffs are successful at retaining business from current accounts and more than 57 percent believe their staffs are good at generating incremental revenue from existing accounts.

Both figures are up by about 25 percentage points from year-earlier figures.

But Miller Heiman analysts noted that generating new revenue from existing clients isn't always easy.

"A majority of sales leaders are under increasing pressure from existing accounts to trim prices, while being asked to provide more service and support," the company's staff wrote.

In fact,Miller Heiman said the ability of sales managers to respond to those pressures will be a key factor for companies' growth and profitability this year.

The survey also found that sales managers increasingly pursue sales approaches that focus on solving customers' problems rather than focusing on product-driven approaches.

And Miller Heiman found that sales managers generally are less concerned about staff development, largely because many poor performers are gone.

"In our conversations with sales leaders throughout the world we are reminded that difficult selling environments expose poor sales talent," the company said.

"Companies were quick to identify and move out poor sales performers."

In other findings, the Miller Heiman study showed that final decision-making about purchases continues to move higher into executive suites, although the trend may have slowed a bit compared with 2003.

That's just part of the challenge facing sales professionals.

"Sales cycles are not getting shorter.Many sales professionals actually believe they're getting longer," said the study.

"Increasingly, industries are being treated as commodities by their customers.

It is still difficult for sellers to clearly establish differentiation."

The survey also found high amounts of skepticism about the usefulness of customerrelationship management systems.

"Universally, sales leaders report CRM had little or no impact on contributing to improved sales performance,"Miller Heiman analysts said."There is no correlation between an organization's ability to achieve world-class sales excellence and their utilization of CRM."