Partnership Progression

You call everyone a customer — even people who've never bought from you

An interesting thing happened to me when I first got into the industry. I was trying to figure out a way when I was training salespeople how to distinguish A, B, and C customers. But in my mind, I also had prospects, leads, and suspects. I had these other categories, and none of my sellers understood what I was talking about — because everyone in the industry uses the term customer for anyone who would ever buy Ready Mix. Ever.

I would hear these stories like, "Steve, I was talking to this customer..." and I'd go, okay, how much do they buy from you? And they would say, "Oh no, they haven't bought from me in years." I'm like — but you call 'em a customer. It just didn't make sense to me.

So what I had to do was come up with a naming convention that allowed me to understand their world and communicate the right way. Because if they're talking to a prospect — someone who doesn't buy from them and never has — well, that's maybe a different conversation than somebody who is an ongoing customer.

So I came up with a model that helped me do this. I break down all the customers you work with into five categories. And I want you to follow along with this.

Industry terms this page covers

If you came here searching for one of the terms on the left — you're in the right place. I just renamed them so we can talk about them usefully.

The five buckets — and why I start in the middle

I'm not very linear. So I'm going to start at number three — right in the middle.

🟡 Bucket 3 — Quote & Hope

Here's the group I call the Quote & Hope group. Now, I didn't come up with this term — I heard it from sellers. They'd tell me, "Steve, I'm quoting this job that I'm hoping to win."

And I'd say, well, are you gonna get it? And they'd literally say, "Well... I hope so."

The customer tends to shop around. They're very price driven. So I might win it if I'm low. But I don't know if I'm gonna win it or not. Sometimes they pick me, sometimes they don't. It just puts me in this Quote & Hope bucket.

Think through your customers right now. Do you have some that buy from you every so often? It's not consistent and you're not really in control of it. They ask for a quote and then maybe they buy from you, maybe they don't. That's the Quote & Hope bucket.

🔴 Bucket 4 — Quote & Nope

Lower than that — worse than that, if you will — is the Quote & Nope bucket. This is kind of just me being silly again; one of my students actually came up with it.

"I've got a lot of Quote & Nope customers." That means I quote them, and I actually don't get the work. I've had stories of sellers that tell me 20, 30, 40 quotes go out to the same customer and they never get the work.

You may have some of those in your group of customers, in your territory. You may have some you're just quoting and you basically never get the work. Some of them you might want to quote, just to be a secondary supplier if they need it. Some of them you might want to put the quote in their hands just to send a message to the marketplace. And you may not even want the work — maybe you priced it too high on purpose.

I'm not being judgmental about why they're in the bucket. I just want you thinking: which bucket do they belong in?

⚫ Bucket 5 — No Contact

I used to call bucket 5 no quote, but I'm going to call it something different here: No Contact.

This means we don't do work with them. We don't give them quotes. They either don't know about us or we don't know about them. Or maybe we cut them off, or maybe they broke up with us years ago and they don't even ask for a quote anymore. They're in my No Contact list. Don't own 'em. Don't quote 'em.

In my world, I would've called these prospects or leads — but we're going to call them No Contact customers. No work.

🟢 Bucket 1 — Partner

So what's better than all of that? I had to come up with a term for a customer who always works with me. The A customer. They don't even really put out a lot of requests for quotes to other suppliers — they just work with me.

I came up with the idea: why don't we call them Partners?

We've got a partnership. I win all their work, and it's a win for me. They actually pay my price. You may have some of those customers — they just buy from you, they don't shop around at all.

🔵 Bucket 2 — Last Look

But some of your customers are in bucket 2. You're going to notice this term because it's important, and it's also the subject of the next page.

I call it the Last Look bucket. These are customers where, yes, I can win the work, but I have to lower my price. They actually call me and say something like:

"I want to work with you, but your price is too high. Can you do something about it?"

You may also hear it as: - "Sharpen your pencil on this one." - "Can you take another look at it?" - "See what you can do." - "You're $3 off here, $2 off there — you gotta beat it or match it or I'm not going to be able to work with you."

When I first heard the term Last Look, it pained me. Wait a second — you actually have customers who will call you and tell you to lower your price or you won't get the work? And sellers go, "Yeah, happens all the time." And I'm like — okay, what do you do? And that's when I got intrigued. At first I hated it — until I realized it's time for us to negotiate.

The whole Last Look conversation is its own skill. → The Last Look conversation

The line — above vs. below

Here's where the model gets real. There's a difference between Partners + Last Look customers on one side, and Quote & Hope + Quote & Nope + No Contact customers on the other. I draw a line between them.

Above the line: Partners and Last Look customers. The people up here know your value.

Below the line: Quote & Hope, Quote & Nope, No Contact. The people down here don't know your value.

When I say value, I don't mean because you're cheap. Your value is something different. The above-the-line customers actually want to work with you for some reason. Last Look customers want to negotiate; Partners don't even negotiate — they just go, "Hey, take care of me, we're good."

The difference between above and below the line is a single question: do they know your value?

That's what the Partnership Progression actually tracks. Not how much they buy. Not how long you've known them. Just: do they know your value?

Classify them as they are TODAY

One pitfall before you do the homework.

A customer might have been a Quote & Hope before, and then something happened, and now they're a Quote & Nope. I want you to think of it in terms of where they're at today — not what they used to be, and not where you wish they were. → Classify them as today

Homework — classify your book

Take your customer list. You may have 10, 20 — I've had sellers with 150 customers — and I want you to categorize them.

For each one, ask:

• Are they a Partner? They always work with me, don't negotiate.
• Are they a Last Look? We're negotiating price, maybe schedule. Could still be a partner, but really I'm thinking about price.
• Are they a Quote & Hope? Sometimes you get 'em, sometimes you don't. You really don't know what makes them tick.
• Are they a Quote & Nope? You send quotes all the time, never get anything. Or someone you want to work with but broke up with. Maybe credit cut them off.
• Are they No Contact? You haven't met yet, or you don't work with them.

Build a spreadsheet. List out who's who. In the next pages we're going to figure out how to move them up.

Where to go next

• The Last Look conversation — what to do when a customer says "I want to work with you, but your price is too high"
• Moving a customer up the progression — the mechanics of getting a Quote & Nope to Last Look, a Last Look to Partner
• Classify them as they are today — don't miscategorize based on history or hope
• The Bidding Matrix — how pricing strategy changes by bucket
• The 3 Buckets of Questions — the question framework that finds the value they care about

Source: training video "2-Partnership" — full teaching from scratch. Supporting examples drawn from the live-coaching corpus.