Working with young companies sometimes demands good nerves or a good wine cellar. Ok – or both.
Some months ago, I had a customer who asked me to get them more clients and sales in the machinery and pharmacy industry. Their sales pipeline was below ten companies for a product with a typical deal size between 50K$ and 5Mio$. All of their projects were in a stall – good meetings, nice emails, but nothing which took the projects to the next level. Their investors got unrest, and their yearly revenue was in the six-digit range after nearly four years in the market. I was hired on a fix fee and commission base.
According to the old salesman joke, when two of them meet at a diner in the evening, and one asked. “How was your business today?” He answered, “Great people, inspiring discussions, good chats, many new ideas.”
“Well,” said the first one, “I also had zero sales.”
I reactivated 22 customers in three months and took half of them to the next level: discussing and writing an offer. Two of them were highly interested in an urgent start, and I asked for their budget. 2 Mio$ from the first and nearly 4Mio$ from the other one! After discussing some milestones and details with them, I contacted my customer with the good news.
“I should have told you earlier, but we will no longer sell our product. We found out that it would be better to have some long-term strategic partnership and see what comes over after 18 to 24 months with our clients. We are sorry for you but don`t need your help anymore.”
My first idea was they bypassed me and went directly with the customers. But after I contacted two persons I trusted there, they told my customer put all projects in a stall with them.
Six million Dollar on the table and a nice commission for me. But my customer changed his mind and business model randomly.
How would you have handled it? Would you be calm and cool? Look for other suppliers?
