Your time,
your organization's resources and your revenue forecasts must reflect your
interactions with various people in very different business relationship
categories. In order to fully identify your organization's sales process, you
must understand these five groups.

 

·                    

Suspects:
Generally speaking, suspects are individuals or organizations who fit some
pre-qualification filter or list of criteria.
 

·                    

Prospects:
These are the individuals or companies who you've already contacted by some
method and who comply with the criteria necessary to become suspects.

 

·                    

Customers:
They currently buy from you. The key word here is "currently." Effective CEOs
know that a customer is someone who is providing contributions to the top line
right now.
 

·                    

Business
partners:
They not only buy from you currently, but also prosper from their relationship
with you in a way that clearly surpasses what your product, service or solution
does for them. That means, for instance, that you might share critical
knowledge, strategic resources, leads, prospects or even customers for mutually
beneficial reasons.
 

·                    


Distributors:
These are individuals or organizations that take your products, services and/or
solutions, add some kind of direct or indirect value, and then resell them.

It might be
a good idea to stop reading and take a moment to list the who's who of your own
selling process. What are your different categories of potential business
relationships? Who are the most important members of each category?