There are two primary ways to grow a business: expand existing accounts or acquire new customers. If you’re a sales leader focusing on winning new business, you’re not alone.
According to new research from The Brooks Group, the top three sales leader priorities in 2025 are:
- Increasing customer retention
- Strengthening margins
- Winning new business
But sales leaders acknowledge there are obstacles to accomplishing these priorities. Winning new business requires a different skillset from expanding existing accounts.
To help you coach your sales team on the right activities, here are four steps for winning new business.
Step 1: Research New Accounts
The first step is research. Instead of casting a broad net and searching at random for new prospects, analyze your current base. Look at what your customers have in common: size, industry, location, buying habits, products purchased, etc.
You want to define your ideal customer profile, then look for prospects that are similar to organizations you’re already having success with. This will give your sellers the best chance for conversion.
It’s like when Wendy’s wants to sell their biggest combo meal. They advertise during football games because the audience is mostly folks looking for a hearty, inexpensive meal. Wendy’s won’t run that ad during the Oscars, because their best performing target audience doesn’t watch that show.
Make sure your sellers know the characteristics of your most profitable accounts and how to qualify new prospects that are similar.
Step 2: Understand the Prospect’s Value Construct
Once you’ve built your target list, you can start to engage these prospects. Early on, your sellers will need to figure out if the company’s value construct aligns with your value offering. In other words, is what they believe to be important in alignment with what you have to offer?
In addition to mapping out the buyer’s decision process, aligning is really important. When you try to acquire new business, you want to avoid trying to sell a prospect on a value proposition that’s not important to them.
For example, Walgreens sells a $25 tube of toothpaste. Well, you know what? I’m not going to buy it. My value construct is not in alignment with Walgreens’. Even though it might protect my teeth, spending that much on toothpaste is just not important to me. It’s important to somebody because they’re selling it. But it’s not me.
Another way to think about value construct is the difference between someone who wants to buy a Mercedes and someone who wants a Honda. The Mercedes buyer may not value engineering and longevity as highly as the prestige, comfort, and luxury of driving a Mercedes, whereas someone looking for a Honda may value a car that’s going to last a long time at a lower price point. The value construct is different.
Your sellers must be surgical and methodical when connecting with these new prospects. They need to uncover what’s important to them and be clear-eyed about how congruent or incongruent your value proposition and the prospect’s values are. If they’re not aligned, sellers shouldn’t try to push it. They’ll just be wasting precious time.
Make sure your sellers know how to uncover a prospect’s value construct and that they can align what they’re selling with what that person or organization values.
Step 3: Problem-Solve Quickly
To get ahead of competitors, your sellers have to offer relief for the customer’s problem quickly. They must put the customer’s wants and needs first. Once a customer finds someone they believe can solve their problem, they will focus on that solution and choose it over competitors.
It’s like having to wait three days for a call-back from a doctor versus calling another doctor’s office and being able to speak directly with a doctor who immediately starts diagnosing and treating you. You probably won’t call doctor #1 back because doctor #2 is solving your problem.
Your sellers must be nimble and responsive. Make sure they have the information they need to be an effective representative of the organization.
Step 4: Stay Close to Your Customers
Bill Brooks’ philosophy was that you don’t want to be in front of the customer when you need to sell; you want to be in front of them when they’re ready to buy.
Understand that your sellers’ timelines and offering may not sync up with the customer’s plans and needs. Even if sellers do the right research, find the right prospect, show the value construct, and are responsive, they may find the customer is in an 18-month agreement with a competitor.
Sellers tend to want customers to buy right now. But if a prospect is in a contractual relationship with another vendor, sellers need to keep them on their radar.
As your sales team attacks new markets, remember you’re playing the long game. Advise your sellers to stay close. They may find good opportunities that aren’t on their timeframe now but will turn into closed business in the future.
Make sure your sellers don’t lose track of promising prospects just because they’re not going to close right now.
See how Sales Pipeline Management training can give you proven techniques to build a sales team pipeline plan with clear stages, qualifying criteria, and timelines to win new business.
