At one point or another, an opportunity will present itself that on the surface looks great. Let’s say a high profile company that you would love to do business with has a need for a service or product similar to what you sell. The potential is huge and closing the sale would cause your company to grow by 25%! Sounds great right? Not always.
Many companies fail because they didn’t take the time to properly asses how this type of business would impact them, their staff and most importantly, their other customers.
You need to ask yourself some very important questions.
..
– Will the business be profitable?
– Will you be able to deliver quality?
– Is it aligned with your core competencies?
– Is it aligned with your stated strategies or business plan?
– Will it cause you to loose focus?
– Will it negatively impact your integrity in some other area?
– Will it dilute your abilities to provide value and quality to your existing client base?
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If the sale is not very profitable, and it goes sideways on you, because it is so big it could very quickly deplete your financial resources. If the sale requires you to move away from your focus and expertise, you run the risk of diluting the quality of everything you do.
On the other hand, if you have done your homework and are confident that you can deliver a lower profit but large sale, when you succeed, you will position yourself very well for similar future opportunities. As well, if you have to bend a bit and move away from your main area of focus but have a solid plan to ensure your existing business is not affected, then you will also have effectively widened your scope which allows you to engage new markets or market sectors.
The key is to think it through and not let your emotions influence you too much.
By the way, the same is true if you have an existing client that is having a negative impact on your business. Years back, I had a high profile client that represented about 10% of our revenue. They were not a fun group to deal with and would daily place unreasonable demands on our staff. After several meetings to try and smooth things out, I finally took the director out to lunch and politely told him that he should start to look for another re-seller to do business with. He was astonished; I was firing him as a customer. It all went well as I handled it tactfully and gave him sufficient time to find another re-seller so there was no impact to his daily business needs. The impact on us however was dramatic. My staff was happier, less stressed out, had way more time to deal with the other 90% and still had time to find new business that more than exceeded what we had walked away from.
© Gil Namur, 2009
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