Jun 1, 2009 | Demand chains, Management, Sales
The churn of employees in large companies often creates difficulties in retaining a continuity of relationship with customers. This particularly happens in situations where a buyer has substantial market power, such as a large retailer.
How do you build a relationship in these circumstances where the buyers get rotated on a regular basis, and there is usually a very active competitive environment for the attention of the buyer currently in the chair ?
- Account management personnel need to ensure there is a focus on the value you bring to the customer, not just on the price of the deal on the table being negotiated, or the person currently filling the buying role.
- Do not allow the costs of doing business with a customer to overwhelm the investment needed in your consumers and the brand benefits you deliver to them. Retailers are not good marketers for you, they are interested in their brand, not yours.
- Maintain as many personal relationships and points of contact as possible by engaging as many people in your business as possible with their peers in the customers business. Particularly valuable are relationships around service provision and logistics, removed from the negotiating battlefield.
- Be proactive in all things, rather than reactive.
- Be prepared to say “no”, and be able to do so without damaging the ongoing relationship, rarely easy to do, just easy to say, but it must be done to maintain a sustainable negotiating position that leaves you with appropriate margin. Many businesses have gone broke being “successful” with customers with whom they have little leverage.
May 31, 2009 | Management, Marketing, Strategy
In planning sessions, much time is usually spent defining target markets, reviewing sales histories and projections, new product schedules, what customers were doing with competitors, and so on. Sometimes there is discussion about what truly differentiates you from your competitors, what makes you unique, but not often enough.
Why not take it a step even further, and ask who amongst your customers would be in trouble if you suddenly closed up shop, why, and how long it would take them to find an appropriate substitute.
If you manage to answer those questions, you may have succeeded in defining what makes you truly different in the way that you add value to your customers.
In the event that you cannot identify a customer who would miss you for longer than it took to pick up the phone and call a competitor, you need to consider how you can change this before you disappear.
May 31, 2009 | Management, Marketing, Strategy
Sometimes you come across a web site that intrigues, informs, and attracts you again and again. For me, TED is such a site, and within these sites, there are things to which you return for all sorts of often personal reasons.
On the TED site (amongst many fantastic presentations) is a presentation by Sir Ken Robinson, which is thought provoking, funny, relevant, and informing. I was prompted to watch it again this morning when considering the impact of the $ being spent by the Australian Government on the appearance of Australian schools, (gates, painting, new halls, etc) and the political debate surrounding the spending of this money, summarised as necessary short term stimulus to the economy, and doing something useful with the money. Hard to argue, but most of the money appears to be going to contractors who use it to buy units on the Gold Coast (this assertion came from a real conversation in a pub with such a person, but a sample of one in politics makes a truth, we all know that).
Long term we need to be thinking hard about the sort of education we want our kids to have, and how best to deliver that outcome. A painted class-room is useful, but it does not address evolution of the underlying philosophy of what we are delivering, just the delivery mechanism.
Sir Ken, if I may call him that, asks some questions I would like to see answered. In addition, when you have watched it, you will have seen a sublime example of how to use personal presentation skills at a public forum as a way of making an argument. Not a Powerpoint in sight!!
May 29, 2009 | Sales
Make sure you outperform expectations, deliver in full on time every time, beat any deadline, know their business better than any of your competitors, listen to your market, and communicate, communicate, communicate.
Communicate especially when there is bad news, souring circumstances, or you have a divergent opinion.
At times it may be confronting, but respect and honesty are usually repaid by loyalty and understanding.
May 28, 2009 | Management, Marketing, Strategy
Tough times generally favor making changes that would not be possible, or be very difficult in good times.
People are far more inclined to buy into the notion that “we cannot continue doing it the way we have been doing it” when they can see for themselves that the results that have been coming are not sustainable in a tougher environment.
Use the downturn as an opportunity to reallocate resources to higher return activities, review products, markets, brands, relationships, capital spending, development projects, recurrent expenditure, and yes, people.
Think about a crisis as an catalyst to “commercial triage” and use the opportunity to improve in anticipation of better times to come.
