If you have a business relationship with someone and they leave their company, then you lose that connection and potentially future business. But there’s an opportunity here, an opportunity to create TWO new relationships: a relationship with the company they moved to and a relationship with the person who has replaced them.
Anyone who is in sales knows that following people that you have a relationship with can turn into new opportunities, and finding their replacement is an opportunity to forge a new relationship with new possibilities. The most common scenario is that contacts change jobs and your relationship with the company withers. That’s because your relationship is with the person rather than company.
If you have a product or service that’s embedded into the company, then a new person will take over but be careful to build a relationship as the company can always change suppliers.
Imagine, every time a contact moved you have the chance to create two new opportunities rather than worry about a relationship that’s lost.
How do you know when a contact has moved?
- Some contacts email their suppliers when they leave, in which case you can actively find the person replacing them, set up a new meeting and start a new relationship.
- Somebody calls you from the company to say they are the new contact. Great news! You can immediately start to converse and build that relationship.
- You call the contact only to find they left sometime ago. You now must introduce yourself, establish the relationship via phone call, send some mailing communications and possibly set up a meeting.
- Your emailing software notifies you of a hard-bounce, very likely the person has left (but not always as sometimes email deliverability can be blocked). Give the company a call and start the process of establishing a relationship.
- You have a direct mailing that’s been returned. Give the company a call and start the process of establishing a relationship.
Where does a contact move to?
If they retire then there’s no opportunity going forward.
If they join another company but in a completely different sector, then it can be useful to contact them if your product or service is applicable to their new industry.
If they join a company in the same industry, and they have a similar role then this is great news. Assuming their previous experience with you has been good, a call could very likely create a new opportunity sooner or later.
However, if they have a different role, it’s still worth calling then as you can ask them who’s responsible for the area you’re interested in.
B2B Database Degradation
B2B databases degrade at 22% per annum, primarily due to people moving jobs. Unless you can keep a track of all the contacts that change, it’s going to be impossible for your sales or service teams to track them all.
Either hire administrators to track them or hire a third-party who can take all your email bounces, returned mail contacts, known missing contacts and track them for you.
Summary
Missing contacts are a sales opportunity. As all salespeople know, contacting someone you know is a million times easier than contacting someone you don’t know.
Contacts changing job can be a lucrative new sales channel!
