Sales Channel Strategy for Business Success Pt 1

Capture and Use Detailed Market Information

A broad and deep understanding of the market is critical to the creation of a sustainable market position. Winning marketers have developed a ‘map’ of their market, including the most actionable segment definition, profit potential, buying behaviours and decision processes, size, outlook, needs, expectations, competitive dynamics and sourcing preferences. The market map provides an objective context for internal discussions regarding strategy alternatives and resource allocation decisions.

Accelerate the Planning Process

Markets are changing faster than ever before and so must your planning process. You cannot get caught in the never ending cycle of analysis planning that is characteristic of many organizations today. The planning process of the future is one that is decision centric, rather than analysis centric. The planning process should be designed to use the existing body of knowledge of your organization. Senior managers should be more involved, and involved earlier, in your annual planning process.

Rather than a management meeting to culminate a lengthy analysis conducted by several layers of the organization, the plan should be initiated by senior management. Use the senior management meeting to kick off the planning process and define the strategy, then let the organization validate the assumptions. The result will be a quicker developed plan, much more reflective of current market reality, and one in which senior managers are much more invested.

Streamline Your Organization for Speed and Flexibility

Effective market management will require speed in decision making and flexibility in action. An organizational structure that supports this will consolidate channel management under one group within the organization.  In addition, consolidating all products, programs, and channel relationships will serve to enhance your market power.

Regain the Power of Your Brand

One of the most vital tools you have to retain customer relationships and power in the marketplace is your brand. Therefore, you will be well served to reinvest in establishing brand value. This will be done by clearly articulating the value your brand stands for and consistently delivering against this value. Brand value will be a powerful tool to secure your market presence.

Win at the Local Level

A local market management philosophy may be the single biggest factor that separates the winners today. Customers have a wider range of channel choices than ever before. Information is more widely available. Customer segments are using these choices and information to evolve their buying behaviours in different ways and at different rates. The result is that the ‘map’ of local markets is likely to vary widely, and the most appropriate channel strategy is likely to vary significantly from market to market. The successful marketer will recognize these differences. Local market managers will be given the autonomy and flexibility to customize the local channel strategy to local conditions.

Corporate policies serve as a set of guidelines and programs serve as a menu from which the local manager designs the unique channel mix to optimize share and profitability. Winning marketers have recognized that it often requires different skill sets and compensation for the local market manager operating under this model versus a traditional sales capacity.

http://www.adversityovercome.com

http://business-success22.blogspot.com

Boost Profits In Four Simple Steps

One of the most common mistakes companies make when they are trying to boost their profits is to try and get new customers. Typically this behaviour is a reflection of their history. When they were new, they probably had zero or just a few customers. To survive, they had to get more. Getting new customers made sense.For companies that are out of survival mode, and are instead trying to boost their profitability, acquiring new customers is not the best strategy.

Studies by Cap Gemini and Gartner Group have shown that depending on the industry, it costs 3-7 times more money to acquire a new customer than to get an existing customer to make a new purchase.The best profit boosting opportunities lie in optimising the relationships you have with your existing customers. Here are four simple steps to do just that.

Find and Strengthen Your Pillars

Do you know which five of your customers contribute the most to your bottom line each year? Can you name them off the top of your head? Can all the employees in your company name them? If not, that is a problem to be addressed, and addressed quickly.

Depending on the size of the organisation, a loss of any of the top five customers can range from serious to catastrophic. These clients are the pillars supporting your company. Think of your business as a structure sitting in the middle of shark infested waters. Five pillars are arranged in a circle and your business balances on top of them. What happens if one or two of those pillars shrink. What happens if one of them goes away completely?

Part of the key to optimising profits is securing your pillars. If you look at the amount of time your organisation spends on customer service, and break it down by customer, would you find that your “pillars” are the five customers who get the most service?Most likely they do not. “Problem” customers usually command the most attention, followed closely by efforts to get new customers. Change that. Focus a proportionate amount of attention to customers based on how critical they are to your business.

Take the resources being applied to the problem customers and focus them on the pillars. Task those people with making your relationship with the pillars so strong, that they will never crumble. Challenge them to find ways to help the pillars be successful. Be a pillar to your pillars. 

Inventory Your Offerings

Starting with your pillar customers, take an inventory of all the products and services that you currently provide. Rank them in order of profitability. When all the offerings have been identified, categorise them from one to five. Ones should be the twenty percent of the offerings that are most profitable. Twos will be the next twenty percent, on down to five, which will be those products and services that are in the bottom 20% in terms of profitability.

Now comes the interesting part. Create a grid with clients across the top, and offerings down the left side. Arrange the clients in order of how much they impact your bottom line. The client with the most impact should be the first one, and the least impact client should be the last. For the offerings, which are on the left side of the grid, keep them in order of most profitable to least profitable.When you have finished creating the grid, go through and for each client put check marks on the products and services you provide for them. This is your profitability map.

Attack the Gaps

Look at your pillars. How are you doing in terms of providing your full suite of offerings to them? Any boxes without checks represent an opportunity for you to solidify your relationship. Start with the offerings that are ranked low and not being used by your pillars, and focus on getting those blanks filled in.Now look at the rest of your map. Where are the check marks? Where are the gaps?

Every gap represents an opportunity to boost your profits. Start with the more profitable clients, and try to fill in all the ones and twos. Educate those customers about the additional products and services you offer. Find out what needs they have and identify ways you can fill them. These efforts will not only strengthen your relationship, but it will also make them more profitable clients for you.

Learn From your “Lovers”

As you are implementing the above step, take another look at your graph. Find the five customers who use the greatest percentage of your products and services. These are the customers who just love what you do. They represent a tremendous learning opportunity.There is some reason or group of reasons that these customers love you so much. If you can find out those reasons, you can apply that knowledge to the way you interact with the rest of your customers.  

Perhaps a particular salesperson has figured out something that is really working. Maybe the account representative or customer service contact is particularly good. Whatever the reason is, you need to know.Interview those “lovers” and learn from them. If they say it is because of a particular person in your company, interview that person and find out what they do that is working so well.

Within those interviews lies profit boosting information. Gather it and then apply the learning to the way you interact with your other customers. Again, start with the pillars and then work your way across the customer list.Most organisations acquire customers by filling a single particular need. The key to boosting profits is not to go out and get more of those customers. Find and strengthen your pillars so that your organisation is well supported, inventory your offerings, fill the gaps, and learn from your “lovers”.

These four steps are the way, to boost your profits and to ensure business success.

http://www.adversityovercome.com

http://business-success22.blogspot.com

Providing Excellent Customer Service Part 1

Customers and clients are becoming increasingly disenchanted with the merely adequate. For them, extraordinary service is the rule, not the exception. Anything less and they’re happy to vote with their feet and their wallets.

That makes extraordinary service necessary, not just desirable. And that, in turn, mandates a strategy to help ensure that your business matches that special service standard on a daily basis.

For business success you need to help your business establish and maintain an ongoing climate of service excellence.

Define What Extraordinary Really Means

It’s an easy term to toss about, but knowing what exceptional service entails is essential to establishing the procedures and the mindset with which to achieve it.  So, delineate what extraordinary means, is it lower price?  Keeping appointments on time or making certain that telephone service reps always say “please” and “thank you”?

By knowing precisely what is merely good enough, and what takes your business beyond that, you get a firm handle on what you need to do to hit that goal on a consistent basis.

That means calling a customer to let them know that the van they are expecting is going to arrive on time. “We pledge to arrive on time, in a clean shiny truck, with two friendly uniformed drivers,” but so can anyone.

What makes it unique is if the truck crew call the customer 15 minutes ahead of time, and let them know they are on time.  This has a huge impact on the customer.  Calling ahead sets exceptional expectations, even if they are running late, the customer appreciates the call in advance.

Ask If You Are Not Sure

Many companies may find it understandably difficult to genuinely pinpoint what extraordinary service really entails. So, do some legwork. Conduct focus groups with customers to see what they really value. Ask your complaints department, if you have one, to identify topics that are frequent targets of dissatisfaction.

Often, you may find extraordinary translates to a holistic grouping of issues, not just one product or service.  Being extraordinary means offering someone a truly exceptional experience.  The quality of something may be good, but it’s the overall experience that will really define customer loyalty.

Allow Your People To Be Extraordinary

Saying you would like to have extraordinary service and actually carrying it out is a tough nut without the necessary authority. 

One of the biggest challenges of providing a consistently top-drawer performance is shifting conditions.  What’s appropriate for one customer may not work with another. 

For instance, one customer may be so dissatisfied that a partial refund may be in order.  By contrast, other customers who are a bit less peeved may be happy with a problem solved without any sort of refund.

So, allow employees reasonable freedom of choice to read a situation and react accordingly.  For instance, giving employees a budgetary allotment which they can use, as needed, to address refunds or other unexpected costs associated with giving customers the benefit of the doubt.

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© James Chapman http://technorati.com/tag/Business+Success

Business Processes and the Leadership Decisions

Medium to large corporate organisations are having to change their approach to business because of the demands of their most important Customers, especially if these Customers are Industry Leaders and operate globally. These Customers are only willing to do business with the companies that have effective Business Processes and demonstrate good Leadership Decisions. 

If we look at what makes up the major component parts of an organisation, then we discover the following:  Structures – People – Products – Systems – Information – Customers – Relationships and Knowledge. What connects all of these are the Business Processes, which are determined by Leadership Decisions. 

All organisations use Business Processes to administer their companies, but careful analysis of the Business Processes, which connect the major component parts of an organisation, are necessary to determine their effectiveness and to see if they reflect good Leadership Decisions. 

First let us take Structures – should they be Rigid, which will mean the company could be slow to act, or Flexible, allowing the company to be quick to respond to their Customers needs, or should they be Aligned with your Customer’s Structures, which will mean a more ‘Connected’ relationship and many mutual benefits. 

The selection of your People – very careful consideration should be given to this activity and as to who should perform this function, the company’s human resources department, or an outside agency, or should the board of directors make the final decision, especially for Top Management positions, Customer Facing sales positions and Customer Service support positions. 

And how do you decide on People payment – against what criteria, by Performance and measurable value to the company, by surveying your Customer’s and determining their Satisfaction with the People that your company provides to them, or with a Bonus for significantly overachieving, in the duties that your company has asked them to perform. 

Then there is Product Selection – should your product portfolio be Innovative, which will mean a lot of investment in research, design, development and time to market, or a range of Standardised products that are of consistent high quality, or Specialist products that are influenced by your Customers requirements, or maybe even a mixture of all three. 

What is the determination of Product Pricing – by the Volume that your Customers are forecasting to purchase, or by the current Turnover of sales with them, or list pricing with a Discount for their continuity of business. 

And then we come to System Selection – the technological recommendations should be closely reviewed by top management to ensure close adherence to your company’s Business Processes and policies, and then selection of the most appropriate Systems by Value, Functionality, Availability and Security. 

Information and data gathering – the oxygen of all serious business organisations, this can be with a dedicated Marketing Department project, or by careful usage of Internet research and by the many trusted Personal contacts that your company has established. All organisations forget, until they are reminded, that the biggest source of Information that they have is with the People that they have in their own company. 

A very important Business Process and one that needs to be very firmly underpinned by your company’s Leadership Decisions, is the activity of Customer Selection – should they be determined by the Industry that they represent, or the Potential business that they may do, or the Past Spend that they have made. If there is not enough attention paid to this Business Process by your company’s Top Management, then the penalty will be in higher costs, lower profitability and loss of respected Customers who do not wish to be associated with your company’s choice of Customers Selected. 

The choosing of Relationships is fundamental to your overall business success – do you choose, Good Customer Relationships that have mutual trust, Bad Customer Relationships that spend a lot with you, but don’t trust you and would easily go to your competitors, if you did not give them their discount, or Political Customers who you must have a relationship with because of who knows them high up in your company, even though they cause more trouble and effort for your business, which increases costs and inevitably spend much less with your company than they should do. 

Last, but not least is Knowledge – the life blood of your organisation, there are many sources for the acquisition of Knowledge, but this needs to be accurate and accumulated from trusted sources such as the Knowledge that is provided by your Customers, gathered from within your respective Industry, and even from your Competition.  Knowledge is an intangible product, but if you share it with your Customers it is seen as a sign of respect and gives your company the reputation of being an Industry Expert. 

The Leadership Decisions are an integral part of each of the Business Processes and can make a huge difference to the success of an organisation and to the continued support of its shareholders, who decide on the ultimate longevity of any company.

© James Chapman Business Leader Coaching

http://www.adversityovercome.com

Business Success – Free Email Consulting

Following on, from the successful launch of Business Success, the Free Business Advice Service, that already helps businesses, no matter what their size, to be more successful.  

The company, Adversity Overcome, which is famous for its ‘success secrets for business’ and for training organisations and their people to overcome adversities and be more successful, is now launching a new Free Email Consulting Service. 

James Chapman, CEO of Adversity Overcome said “Business Success has a mission to provide information, insight, knowledge, direction, suggestions, hints and tips, which will ensure that your business endeavours are more successful.” 

He went on to say, “We have a strong conviction to contribute more and more richness to our clients’ lives and businesses.  We focus on giving you value with Business Success.” 

Powered by Google, Blogger and Feedburner, Business Success provides its Free Business Advice Service and now a Free Email Consulting Service, wherever and whenever it is needed, 24 hours a day. 

From today onwards, business success is going to be a lot easier to achieve for any business, thanks to this new service from Business Success.  Success or failure in business should not be because a few words of timely business advice have not been given. 

Business Success:           http://business-success22.blogspot.com 

Adversity Overcome:        http://www.adversityovercome.com

Business Success – Free Business Advice

From today onwards, business success is going to be a lot easier to achieve for any business, no matter what its size may be. 

The company, Adversity Overcome, which is famous for its ‘success secrets for business’ and for training organisations and their people “How to Overcome Adversity and Be More Successful” is launching a new free service, called “Business Success” 

James Chapman, CEO of Adversity Overcome said “In this information age, success in business should not be determined by the money in the hands of a few, but by the information in the hands of many.” 

He went on to say, “Success or failure in business should not be because a few words of timely business advice have not been given.” Business Success, which is powered by Google, Blogger and Feedburner will be a free business advice service, available wherever and whenever it is needed, 24 hours a day. 

From now on, a search on Google for ‘business success’ will bring you just that. Success in business brings profitability to organisations and monetary, lifestyle changes to individuals. 

Business Success:           http://business-success22.blogspot.com 

Adversity Overcome:        http://www.adversityovercome.com