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Many companies have lots of old and new customers listed in their databases. Many of those firms may be unassigned or unknown to your current sales representatives. Dump the listing and offer it to your sales group.
Offer the list by zip code order. In order to reduce travel, cut sales expense and increase salesman efficiency, sort this customer dump by zip code and allow your sales people to choose customers within their area. Concentrating efforts within a smaller area should allow more customer face time and cut sales costs per sales transaction.
Capitalize on current relationships. Some salesmen may not want to only choose those customers in their zip code because they have a list of customers they have dealt with for years. If this is the case, they should return to those buyers that like them.
Be flexible on customer assignments. Regardless of how your sales manager decides to split up accounts among your sales representatives, give the whole listing out to each sales person first and let them see good customer fits for themselves. They will fare much better when allowed to choose who to call on.
Various methods of customer selection:
- Area: A sales person might want to choose customers that are concentrated within one area which allows frequent visits, closer monitoring, far better service and hopefully higher sales commissions.
- Company: One salesperson may want the customer database dumped and sorted by name so that all of the ABC Company locations are assigned to him since he knows the company well and has sold previously to dozens of their branches.
- Zip Codes: One salesperson might want to select customers from all zip codes on the northwest corner of Indianapolis or another might want everything south of I10 in Louisiana, Alabama and Georgia.
- Existing Relationships: Some seasoned representatives who join your firm armed with a fat customer list will not necessarily want to be assigned to unknown customers if they can begin producing sales on their first day with your firm by relying on current known entities. Let them call on who they know first and offer more assignments later that build off that listing.
