---
title: "The Clients You Fear Are the Ones You Should Fight Hardest For"
description: "Most salespeople suffer from 'problem phobia' and 'problem client phobia'. The more they fear, the more they avoid. In fact, what you fear may be the most valuable. Fight hard on the problems you fear, and problems will decrease. Fight hard on the clients you fear, and client problems will be solved. Avoidance is human instinct; it may minimize losses, but success lies not in following instinct but in maximizing benefits."
author: "刘春雄"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2017-05-29"
language: "en"
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---

# The Clients You Fear Are the Ones You Should Fight Hardest For

> Most salespeople suffer from 'problem phobia' and 'problem client phobia'. The more they fear, the more they avoid. In fact, what you fear may be the most valuable. Fight hard on the problems you fear, and problems will decrease. Fight hard on the clients you fear, and client problems will be solved. Avoidance is human instinct; it may minimize losses, but success lies not in following instinct but in maximizing benefits.

Author | Liu Chunxiong
Source | Teacher Liu's Forum (ID: liuchunxiong1964)
Most salespeople suffer from "problem phobia" and "problem client phobia".
The more they fear, the more they avoid, unwilling to engage more.
In fact, what you fear may be the most valuable.
**Fight hard on the problems you fear, and problems will decrease.**
**Fight hard on the clients you fear, and client problems will be solved.**
Avoidance is human instinct. Avoidance may minimize losses.
Success lies precisely in not following instinct to minimize losses, but in maximizing benefits.
01
What kind of clients do salespeople like? Of course, good clients.
Then what about problem clients? Most salespeople will suffer from "problem client phobia" and avoid them.
Clients themselves are neither good nor bad, but the way they treat manufacturers can be good or bad.
A client who is good to you may be bad to other manufacturers. So clients have no inherent good or bad.
Client classification management is often discussed. Today, I'll talk about a special classification management.
02
**One type of client is "earning money through you",** even more proactive than the manufacturer, calling to ask if there is stock before the goods are sold—this is a good client.
Because the client is good to you, you are also good to the client.
The client spends more time on you, so you spend more time on the client. Many salespeople do this, and it seems nothing wrong.
Precisely because it seems nothing wrong, the problem is big.
**A client's good attitude toward a salesperson does not mean you are valuable in the client's mind.**
Never mistake the client's respect for you as your real ability; the manufacturer would do the same with anyone else.
03
**The second type of client is "moved only when you push",** so of course, if you don't push, they don't move.
Being able to push indicates that some manufacturers have certain value in the client's mind.
Not moving without pushing indicates that the manufacturer's value in the client's mind is not high. In other words, whether you exist or not doesn't matter—having you doesn't add much, lacking you doesn't subtract much.
Such a market is lukewarm. Such clients are like chicken ribs.
This type of client has value in fighting hard.
04
**The third type of client is "cannot be pushed"**, no matter how you push, it's useless.
Why can't they be pushed? Because they don't care about you.
Why don't they care? Because making money from your product is not profitable.
Or sales have no breakthrough, or they don't see hope.
05
Is there a standard for dividing the above three types of clients? I found there is.
Whether a client cares about you actually has standards. Roughly two standards:
**First, the "position" of your sales in their total sales;**
**Second, the profitability level of your product at the distributor.**
For example, in a certain year, my research found that when a certain FMCG's monthly sales exceeded 80,000, the client became the first type; when monthly sales were 50,000, the client was the second type; when monthly sales were below 30,000, it was the third type.
Of course, the above is not an absolute standard; it varies according to the industry and the company's position.
06
Marketing has no one-size-fits-all method, but marketing does have laws.
**Marketing has commonalities, but solving specific problems requires understanding individuality.**
For the above three types of clients, my plans are: let go, fight hard, and give up.
As long as the client has the willingness, you let go. This applies to the first type.
After letting go, are you at ease? Although you let go, if the client has problems they cannot solve themselves, they will proactively find you. So, rest assured.
For the third type, if it is a problem of the client's own ability, you have only one way: give up.
If the client's ability is not a problem, you must fight hard.
For the second type, you have only one way: fight hard.
**The purpose of fighting hard is to turn them into the first type, and then you can let go.**
07
Finally, let's talk about how to fight hard; this is the key. Let's start with a case.
Once, I investigated the full-month work schedules of 20 salespeople in a company. Each salesperson had an electronic work diary, and management was very good. I found that salespeople's work roughly had three modes.
**The first work mode: cyclic visits.** On average, each salesperson had 7 clients, spent 22 days per month in the field, visited one client per day on average, and made about three rounds of visits per month.
This type of salesperson accounted for the majority and was very common. Statistics showed that each such salesperson collected 10,000 yuan per day (the company measured performance by collections).
**The second work mode: salespeople stayed with key clients (the first type in this article) for about 7-10 days, then made one round of visits to other clients, and spent the rest of the time solving problems.** This type of salesperson also collected an average of 10,000 yuan per day.
**The third work mode: salespeople visited clients once a month, spending about 3 days with each client; those three days were for fighting hard.** This type of salesperson collected an average of 30,000 yuan per day. Of course, this type was very few, but they were all excellent salespeople.
To be honest, I was very surprised by this statistical result. I gave the results to the company's marketing director, and he was also very surprised.
08
What I call fighting hard is not arguing, let alone fighting, but through fighting hard, letting the client see hope and find solutions.
Here, I need to talk about the third work mode of the above salespeople: what did they do in those three days?
In those three days, it was not to listen to the client's complaints, not to wait for the client to raise problems, but to find solutions together with the client, and to enhance the company's position in the client's mind.
**I once proposed the concept of "first recommendation" for clients. What is "first recommendation"? It means when the client promotes products, they think of you first.**
Clients have many products; they can only recall 20-30. If your product is not the "first recommendation", the outcome will definitely not be good.
**How to achieve "first recommendation"? It is to do "three effective activities" together with the boss.**
Here are three keywords:
**First, "do it together with the boss"**; doing it alone is useless, and doing it with only the client's employees is also useless. The boss must participate on-site and experience life on-site;
**Second, "at least three times"**; one time is not enough for memory, and the impression is not deep;
**Third, "effective"**. So-called effective means having results, having sales, breakthrough sales, sales the client didn't expect, sales the client can't forget even if they want to.
What is fighting hard? I think this is fighting hard. Fighting hard has technical content.
Why does the third work mode require three days? Because one day or one time cannot achieve the effect of "fighting hard".
09
Back to the original topic.
Problem clients become problems because of sales problems or method problems.
If it is a problem of the client's ability, then you should proactively give up. You can cultivate a small client into a big one, but you cannot cultivate a client with poor ability into one with ability.
**If the client's ability is not a problem, then the most important issue is that the client does not value you enough, and you have no place in their heart.**
Many of our salespeople are good at customer relations. It can be said that the effect of customer relations is diminishing. Some even say that the better the customer relations, the worse the new product sales.
Because customer relations are good, entering stores and stocking goods are relatively easy. Because customer relations are good, communication with clients actually decreases. Because communication decreases, the client's memory problem is not solved.
**Fighting hard on problem clients is to solve the client's memory and method problems.**
There is a rule: among clients who complain, once the problem is solved well, 85% will become loyal clients.
Communication with normal clients is very little, while communication with complaining clients is the most. Precisely complaints give us more opportunities for communication. So, I have a famous saying: **Client complaints are a good thing**.
**So-called fighting hard on clients is to obtain deep communication with clients and on-site experience.**
The biggest problem in dealing with problem clients is fear and avoidance. In this way, the problems of problem clients will be greater.
Fighting hard is the right way!
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