As organizations set new priorities for 2010, they must understand how continuing market changes will impact future business in order to keep their momentum going. Enterprises must find ways to balance achieving profitability by containing costs in the short term with delivering on customer needs and extracting the greatest value from a customer in the long term. This will help them weather the crisis without destroying their fundamental value, which is the value of their customer base.
There are four areas companies can easily address to overcome these challenges and help steer themselves toward long-term sustainability. They include:
1. Prepare to serve well-informed customers. You can no longer lure a customer into buying your product by simply comparing it with the competition's offering. In many cases your customers have already researched the product online and discussed it on social media sites. Customers are looking to make better-informed decisions, and since the recession began, they are spending their money more wisely. Successful sales teams must be armed with tailored customer information and be ready to respond to questions on the fly.
2. Integrate sales and customer retention. High levels of penetration in some sectors, like mobile phones, mean that there are few consumers who are not already using your products or a competitor's. You can't afford to lose the customers you have gained. Concentrate on the total customer equity in your desired markets. This means selling products and retaining customers should no longer be separate items on a CEO's agenda.
3. Focus on the short term--in a different way. Many sales organizations live in the moment, focused on closing sales and moving on to the next prospect. In addition, the pressures of meeting the next quarter's numbers push sales teams to sell some customers a product they know isn't suited for them. Companies that can create a trust-based relationship by implementing a customer-focused set of principles, and arming sales reps with accordingly will continue to build value over the long term.
4. Strive to boost sales effectiveness. Sales effectiveness is not just about selling more with fewer people on the payroll. It is also about managing customers across the customer lifecycle with the goal of building loyalty while focusing on cross-sell and up-sell opportunities that arise during interactions to boost the bottom line. Sales effectiveness is especially important to the firms facing increased competition and declining revenue. It can be achieved if every interaction with the customer is seen by staff to obtain one more precious piece of information about the customer. As the picture gets clearer with each piece of new information, salesforce automation tools will guide the team to hit the targets.
Acting on these four pervasive issues will have far-reaching effects. By taking a customer-centric approach and being well skilled in sales planning, sales teams will not only prepare for 2010, but also for the future.
About the author: Yücel Ersöz is a partner at Peppers & Rogers Group. Contact him at yucel.ersoz@1to1.com
This is all great advice, thanks. And you can sum all four of these ideas up in a single word: INTEGRATION.
1. Integrate the customer's point of view into your sales effort, by providing comprehensive information and objective advice to well-informed customers.
2. Integrate the way you, personally, think about customers and prospects. The fact is, a prospect is just a customer with whom you have 0% share of customer, so far.
3. Integrate your sales efforts into the long-term, sustainable philosophy of your company: acting always in the interest of the customer.
4. Integrate the way you treat a customer throughout the life cycle and across all business units to improve sales effectiveness.