The phrase Let’s talk turkey has a variety of origin stories. Some historians say that it may have begun as a way to remind people to speak politely, but over time took on the mantle of establishing that the participants of a conversation or negotiation should speak plainly. We use the phrase when we want the other party to know that it’s time to get to the bottom line. As you look forward to 2022, this is a good time to think about the bottom line for your sales teams and how they interact with customers. Let’s talk turkey about firing customers, avoiding discounts, and remembering to invoice to close the loop on the sale.

The idea of firing customers isn’t a new one, but it’s taken on more relevance over the last two years. Every organization is trying to balance processes to support sales team members and keep up to date on what’s available to sell. For sales team members who have always been remote, the challenges of the last two years may have involved more intrusions in their home office added to tracking down where their customers were located. For team members usually in the office, there may have been a move home that began as temporary and became longer lasting. They may have returned to the office full or part-time or reworked their relationship to remain working from home. In all cases, communication lines to customers may have been disrupted.

As much as we want to say “yes” to every job, take every order, and watch the cash roll in, today’s market begs us to be more surgical. An assessment of your customers, what they buy, the margins on what they buy, and how they pay is the first step to understanding which customers to keep and which should move on. It is hard, soul-searing work. It may be that clients with long histories no longer contribute to the bottom line but consume more resources than makes sense. You may also find that customers who buy products with a healthy margin could use some upselling and cross-selling attention.

Use this time to identify the best path for every customer relationship.

While looking at the customers and what they buy, pay attention to discount rates: the official discounts and the post-sale discounts. Discounts seem like a way to reward customers and build a relationship, but when used that way, the wrong infrastructure is built. Customers begin to see discounts as being owed to them, and that isn’t healthy.

In some companies, the discounts are encoded in the system and part of the fabric. They are built into the estimating system. No one gives them a thought. That is all money that is being left on the table. Start by looking in your estimating systems for default discounts. Sit the sales team and their managers down for a turkey talk about discounts. What is allowable, and what practices should be stopped. Take default discounts out of the equation.

For example, if sales team members can tell accounting to add an additional discount to a job due to some problem during production, stop that. If a discount is warranted, that decision should be made at a higher level; it may be better to offer a discount on future work.