It's not the size that matters....

Companies big and small make buying decisions everyday. Obviously the big ones usually make bigger purchases than the small ones. To the everyday sales rep who wants to make commission, it would make sense to dream big and go for the big fish. Bigger sales mean bigger commission. However, Sales people can get too caught up in a big deal and forget about everything else. They are very susceptible to what I like to call... BIGDEALITIS (yes I know it's cheesy)... it is a nasty condition with terrible symptoms. Those symptoms include: loss of prospecting motivation, loss of focus on customers in the small to medium sized category, lack of follow up on some sales cycles and an inability to focus on anything other than the one big deal.

We get our hands on the whale and don't realize how many fish we are missing in the meantime. We lose focus on everything but the big deal we are working on. Unfortunately, it is a very common theme with many sales people. Even if the big deal is won, the sales person will have a tremendous amount of work ahead of them to build their prospect base up for the next month or quarter. For everything that was gained in getting the big deal, there may be as much lost in the process.

In most cases, the other prospects that the sales person was working on before they started working the big deal are either gone or put off by the lack of contact. It can take a lot of time to rebuild the sales cycles that were already on the go. This creates even more problems because there is no time to build new prospects... All in all the sales person will be lucky to break even after winning the big deal.

What if the big deal is lost? Well, the sales person is in a world of hurt. They have lost some of the old sales cycles, have to massage the rest of them back to life and have to find a way to build new prospects at the same time. All the while having to recover from losing the only deal they paid attention to for the past who knows how long.

How do you avoid BIGDEALITIS. Stay focused on ALL of your sales cycles no matter how big or small they are. Always treat every prospect the same way. They are all important. Every big company started small. Never stop prospecting. Prospecting is the life blood of a sales person. It is the only way to be consistent in sales. By keeping focus on ALL of your sales cycles and maintaining a good prospect base you will always have backup to cover any lost or slow sales cycles.