There was an old saying in Sales: The moment you win a new customer is the moment you start losing that customer.

The job of the account team was simple, deliver great products and services, deepen trust, and retain the relationship for 5–10 years… at least until your champion got promoted.

That world is gone.

In today’s volatile business environment, turnover is constant. Restructuring. Layoffs. M&A. PE ownership. “Strategic realignment.”

In many industries, 70–90% of your direct customer contacts may change within 2–3 years.

As part of a Commercial Leadership program I’m building for a pharmaceutical client, a sales manager told me:

“You spend years building trust, winning the business, growing the account. Then one day, you find out your customer was escorted out of the building. And now every competitor is flooding the zone, discounting, and trying to reset the narrative with their ‘latest and greatest’ product.”

That’s not bad luck. That’s the new normal.

So the question isn’t if your direct customer will leave.

The question is:

Are you proactively preparing for it?

Here are five ways to do exactly that.

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Five Business Acumen Tips That Separate Order-Takers from Trusted Advisors

Senior executives do not need another product pitch. And quite frankly, they don’t care about your product pitch. They need clear business solutions. When you’re sitting across the table from a CEO, CFO, BU President, or Chief Commercial Officer, the evaluation criteria shifts toward real business solutions that have measurable short-term and long-term impacts.
They are not asking:

• “Does this have good features?”
• “Is the team responsive?”
• “Can you send a proposal?”

They are asking:

• “How does this drive sustainable revenue?”
• “Does this improve margin or manage costs through efficiency and productivity?”
• “Does this reduce enterprise risk?”
• “Does this align with our strategy and capital priorities?”

If you want to impress a senior-level buyer, business acumen is not optional. It is the price of entry to the opportunity. Business acumen in sales is what separates order-takers from trusted advisors when selling to senior executives. 

Based on our research and years of experience designing, developing, and delivering award-winning business acumen skill-building solutions, we are pleased to share five specific ways to demonstrate it with examples.

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As the calendar turns to August and the dog days of summer are upon us, the last thing many Sales leaders are thinking about is that big Q1 2025 Sales Meeting. But you know it will be here sooner than you think and the last thing you want to do is scramble to throw something together at the last minute that doesn’t excite, motivate, or train your team to sell more.

The reason I am writing this blog is that we have several innovative and thoughtful clients who are already planning their January and February 2025 national sales meetings and have asked us to develop business simulation workshops to be integrated into their agendas.

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One of the biggest challenges facing sales professionals and customer account teams around the world is the conversation about raising prices due to the global supply chain crisis and increases in raw material costs.

During the past few months, I have delivered several major Strategic Business Selling™ sales training programs to sales teams within several industries including specialty chemicals, high-tech, specialty materials, consumer products, and coatings and paints.

Throughout these engagements, the moods have been dampened as a result of the pending price issues and I have been asked to help by sharing best practices and tools that can help develop the skills to have that incredibly hard conversation with customers. It is my pleasure to share with readers of this blog the full content of an approach that can help direct and support having the raising price conversation.

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