Am I wrong to think, "It's hard to put lipstick on a pig?" Sales can do something, but there's no substitute for actually <i>bringing</i> some unique value. Many companies <i>are</i> middle tier suppliers and are replaceable. No amount of sweet talking is going to change that. Maybe this advice is only for those companies that are in that top echelon.
Discussed at the time:<p><i>We don’t have unprofitable customers, just unhappy accidents</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20069301" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20069301</a> - June 2019 (16 comments)
Interesting to apply this to the logistics industry, specifically with freight movement costs. A company might use Joe's Trucking for 80% of their shipping needs, but Joe doesn't have trucks that can take a last second shipment to an important customer. So the company calls Hank's Trucking, who specializes in those last second fulfillment.<p>Both Joe and Hank enjoy the account because both fall into the upper-right quadrant in the article: they're tuned to keep the company's account high margin, and the "drop size" (volume of shipments in this instance) works fine for both outfits. Joe wouldn't want to only do two moves a week for the company, and Hank wouldn't want to do 50.