Sales Test

As account manager, you will be taking over a difficult customer with whom your company has been struggling to expand your business. This customer currently has the largest market share in your region and is expected to grow their strong position. However, your company’s previous account managers had not been able to build a good trust-based relationship with the customer’s key stakeholders and has even lost some business over the last few years.

Your company’s top management still strongly believes that you should be able to grow your business with the customer if you make the right approach. How do you approach this customer?

You are a salesman for Dynacad Industries. Dynacad’s products are computer-aided design (CAD) systems that are sold into a variety of industrial companies. Though you had CAD experience in a previous job, you have been with Dynacad for 14 months and as of yet have not generated much business.

You are under pressure to produce when suddenly you are assigned a promising account that had been the responsibility of Jack Cutting. Jack had to retire suddenly because of severe health problems. The order that Jack was working on was for Dynacad’s largest and most expensive system, and would amount to a sizable deal for the company.

As you reviewed the customer’s needs and the model being proposed, you realized that this system is overly large and complex. However, the system you think would be a better fit for the customer costs far less than the larger, proposed system. What do you do?

This is your first meeting with a potential new customer. The person in charge of the meeting, Laura, seemed agitated and closed the meeting with a statement that she believed your product was not needed.

What are the best courses of action now?