Jul 22, 2009 | Demand chains, Management, Sales
Customer focused has become a cliché, it appears in a wide range of material, usually it seems, written by people who have never interacted with a customer in their lives.
So how do you measure customer focused? Here are some basic things you need to know before the expression will be more than a cliché:
- We know the characteristics of a loyal customer, not just the social economic, but the behavioral drivers they experience
- We understand the relative value of our value proposition to different types of customers.
- We measure customer profitability over more than just one, or one periods transactions.
- We know why we lose customers, and actively manage the loss of unprofitable customers.
- We know how much it costs to attract, and retain profitable customers.
- We know where we sit on a customers “value curve” the trade-off customers make between the relative cost and utility of our products, Vs the opposition.
- We set out to measure the “advocacy” of our customers for our products.
- We collect data from non customers who use opposition products, and we understand them, and the attraction of the oppositions offer Vs ours.
- Everyone in the firm recognises that it is not just sales people who have the responsability to serve customers, but everyone in the firm has a role in providing that service, from the CEO to the cleaner, and they all rely on continued customer support for their employment.
When you are well advanced in all of the above, you will be reasonably able to call yourselves “customer focussed”
Jul 21, 2009 | Demand chains, Management, Marketing, Operations, Sales
How long will it take for the politicians in this country to forge an acceptable compromise amongst all the interests in the carbon debate, and take meaningful action.? Probably forever, and we will end up with the proverbial camel after all the compromise, and that will suit nobody.
Enter the game-changer!
Wal-Mart, the biggest retailer in the world by far, turning over more than $US450 billion, more than most countries, has changed the game. Last week, they announced they would put carbon footprint information on display labels for all products sold in their stores. Suppliers will be required to assemble the information from their supply chains as part of their trading relationship with Wal-Mart
No recommendations, just the information, and consumers can make up their own minds.
The implications are mind-boggling.
In one decision, by one company, the nature of the debate about climate change has been turned from one seeking a political, emotional and academic compromise to a very simple choice for the Wal-Mart supply chains, do it or face deletion from their largest customer. Multi-national suppliers, Colgate, P&G, Unilever, Mars, and many others, will suddenly have another marketing lever to use in their marketing activities, across the world. Suddenly, weasel words in media grabs from pollies are even less meaningful than they usually are.
In Australia, Woolworths follow closely the steps taken by Wal-Mart, and what better way to put added pressure on its arch-rival Coles.
Suppliers to Woolies had better get ready!
Jul 19, 2009 | Management, Marketing, Sales, Strategy
On the surface, these appear to be the same coin, different sides, albeit three sides?.
Not so in business.
Foresight is often little more accurate than the musings of the gypsy at the local fair, whereas hindsight is capable of being 100% accurate.
Modelling has become the commercial equivalent of the crystal ball, offering the capacity to predict the future, but relies on the assumptions accurate in the past (seen with the benefit of hindsight) being consistent into the future, usually better than rubbing the crystal, but often not much.
Software has given us the false sense of security that comes with reams of paper with numbers all over it, and we often forego the benefit of experience, wisdom, and plain common sense, lured by the sirens song of the “certainty” generated by the numbers .
Bring back the value of common sense, and suspicion of anything that smacks of certainty when predicting the future, and we will all make better decisions.
Jul 16, 2009 | Management, Marketing, Sales, Strategy
Planning for your business takes up a lot of time and resource, which is often hard to allocate, particularly in small businesses.
It is a bit like the planning that goes into your daughters wedding, many things seem trivial at the time, but when it goes right on the day, aren’t you glad you did it?
Think about the cost (to your sanity and peace of mind) of stuffing up the flowers, or the cars on the day, and consider the relative value of a bit more planning.
Many small businesses do not spend the time planning, they are so busy getting stuff done that the time is not easily available. Often when they think about it, much of the activity that takes all the time is fixing things that have gone wrong, or take more time than necessary, that could have been mitigated by a bit of planning.
You plan your daughters wedding to the last detail, shouldn’t you do the same for your business?.
Jul 13, 2009 | Sales, Strategy
The sales job has changed substantially with the emergence of the web.
In the past, many sales people were mobile, human brochures, the keepers of the information. No longer.
Most of the mundane information on specifications, performance, competitive advantages, and so on is freely available on the web, often out of your control, in customer and consumer forums for important products or large purchases.
Sales professionals now have to assist the customer to a solution to their problems and competitive challenges, which is much, much harder than being a human brochure.
Are your sales people up to the task?
Are you giving them the appropriate support and information
Are they spending their time in a manner that will give you a return on your considerable investment in their time and training?
Jul 12, 2009 | Marketing, Sales, Strategy
A short time ago I purchased a new pair of black “Julius Marlow” shoes from a major retailer. Within a month, the body of the right shoe had separated from the sole, hardly a reasonable result from a purchase worn around the benign environment of a carpeted office.
I contacted JM, owned by Pacific Dunlop as I discovered, via the web site, after some searching, but OK so far.
Eventually, I got an automated response to my note of complaint, which required me to engage in more automated “discussion” with the web site, by which time I was pretty annoyed.
After several more automated responses with me becoming more specific about where I would like to stick the machines micro-processors, a very pleasant young lady rang me. Potentially a step forward, but a bit late, and to get anywhere I had to invest the time to take the shoes back to the store I got them from (I’m sure the staff will be pleased to see me) along with the proof of purchase. Not an option, so as an alternative I could bundle them up and send them, at my cost, to Melbourne, where they would “look at them” .
So, JM failed to deliver what I had paid for, and reasonably expected, having worn many of their shoes over my life. After they failed, they expected me to spend more of my time, and money, to further satisfy them of their failure, with no notion of any outcome to me. The final indignity, after the final email from me, was an automated response that quoted the “incident” number, followed by the words “Incident resolved”
Through this saga, I was reminded of the work by economist Ernst Fehr, and an experiment well known as the “trust game” which seemingly identifies a biological link between peoples behavior in getting revenge against those who have dudded them, even when the revenge behavior appears on the surface to be well over the top.
The point to all this is if you set out to communicate with customers when they are a bit off put, and fail to meet their expectations in that communication, and the ensuing resolution, a bit off-put can turn into behavior that seeks to extract revenge for the dudding, and in the world of the web, that revenge has the potential to stuff your brand very quickly indeed. Imagine, I made short video of obviously brand new JM shoes with the sole half off and putting it on you tube with some creative fun being had, sending it to a few friends, and having it go viral. How much damage could that do to the brand (but probably unfortunatley not to the dills responsible) who stuffed up a simple communication with a long term and relatively loyal customer?
