Here's what to do to create a revenue stream -cont'd

I found this at Total Sales Success. It's a blog managed by Tom Hackelman, a Graphic Communications Growth Consultant for Xerox in the Triad area of North Carolina. There is a detailed power point at his site that gives much more detail. It's definitely worth the click. In the meantime, here's what Tom says you have to do. It sounds about right to me.

1. Identify and communicate a consistent and specific value
that your business brings to your customers.
2. Based on the characteristics of your top twenty percent
of accounts, create your ideal customer and focus your
efforts on securing more of those accounts.
3. Create and implement a sales process that is
measurable, has expectations and is consistently
inspected.
4. Stop recruiting subpar talent. Only hire superstars. Hire
the best, hardest working talent. And let go of the
baggage.
5. Create a goal-oriented sales organization that is
committed to growing, changing and reaching new levels
of performance."

My only quibble might be to move number 2 to the number 1 position. If a suboptimal sales process exists, number 1 is actually the hardest thing to do. If sales could really "identify and communicate a consistent and specific value that your business brings to your customers," they probably are already in pretty good shape.

The easier thing is to identify their 20% top customers. It means making a list from accessible information. If it were me, I would measure activity/revenue/and culture (are they good people to work with?) Then figuring out the threads that unite them is pretty straight forward. Then focusing on getting more like them is not that hard.

If you are a hunter, you have to know whether you are hunting for geese, whales or mice. If you are a farmer, it's good to know how to fertilize your crops.