There are many major differences when dealing with commercial accounts as opposed to personal. Initially it all starts with getting the lead. Now for personal this could be done by referral, advertising and the such. You really can't just go out and see people. You do have the advantage of lead generating lists. My experience is that they just don't work. For peronal...rely on referrals and push as much as possible. Commercial on the other hand is a different beast.
When dealing with Commercial accounts at the start, you need to qualify leads as well as find them. This is difficult because they will generally not call you, there really isn't much advertising for you to push the commercial and generally the referrals are sparse. What you need to do is start either making phone calls or visits. This is a personal opinion of which you prefer. Through my many years of sales (general & insurance) experience I find I get the best results by visiting the business.
When making the phone calls I really can't get anywhere with the potential customer because they always "have something else going on" or "too busy to talk right now." I might be able to get a very few qualifying questions in before they get off he phone. The other thing with a phone call is that you cannot see the business or employees, etc.
I love visiting businesses because you can tell so much by seeing it first hand. I can see how they take care of their business, themself, their customers and how they react to me. I believe I'm skilled at reading people to an extent and reacting to their actions. The first thing I do when walking into a business look at the atmosphere...pick out things that you like/dislike. I walked into a salon the other day and noticed the counter seemed to be falling apart...interesting. Next try to find out your contact...if your contact is "unavailable" then get as much info as possible from the one you are talking to as well as their name. This is your initial contact and your relationship builder. The way you act and treat them will come through when they talk to your main contact. If you are mean to this person then don't even attempt to go after this business anymore.
While in the business...take notice of things such as the type of customers this business gets, is it busy, is it professional, relaxed, did you get a good vibe when you walked in? Search out if they have a business card, if they allow other people to leave their business cards around, who has left their cards and others they do business with. These are all signs of the business and owners character. The other thing is that you might do business with people they do business with. Use this to your advantage. If you come out with a general vibe of the business and contact name then you had a successful visit. If you got more then that...maybe even a meeting. Then you hit the jackpot.
Out of all phone calls, expect 1 out of every 5 to give you some info and 1 out of every 30 to give you an appt. The thing is that you don't know anything else about this company and they don't know you. When you visit expect 1 out of every 3 give you some info and 1 out of 20 will give you an appt. The major advantage of visiting is that 1 out of every 1 you can at least find out some info about the business if you are observant.