In this post we look at solving the critical business problem of managing the customer buying cycle, and how tools — simple to advanced — can help sales people support their customers. In a repeat run rate business, customers are buying many categories of products and replenishing supplies and inventory on a weekly basis. With so many transactions from customer orders that reps must contend with, it is easy to forget about the customers who are NOT ordering, who are ordering less or not ordering the core high-value products any more. While we are a predictive analytics company and have a solution to offer here, we also explore with customers and prospects who are starting out this question: What is the right fit for their needs? Here are three options in the order of features, scale and cost, with pros and cons we’ve discussed with them: SALES PROCESS SOFTWARE Primarily focuses on mechanically guiding rep actions through a rules engine: “call today … email next week … follow-up in 3 days.” Stand-alone or blends with CRM. Pros: Most simple/easy to follow, ideal for a small team within a larger sales force. Cons: Does not consider customer attributes and responses or historical sales data, and is not predictive. MARKETING …Read More
Tag Archives: Customer Retention
Why you should put some sales tasks on auto-pilot
For any airplane pilot, the auto-pilot is a valuable companion. It can automate routine tasks such as maintaining altitude and direction so you are free to focus on the next tasks needed to reach your goal destination. Airplane auto-pilots can handle many tasks for the pilot. They can: Follow programmed climb and descent rates to pre-set altitudes Turn the plane to a specific direction Line up for landing on the runway Execute missed runway approach procedures, like climb away from the ground if the runway approach lights are not visible But amazing as auto-pilots are, aviators are aware that the auto-pilot does not fly the plane for you. You are still always responsible for reaching the goal destination. Business analytic tools – particularly those with predictive methods – can function a lot like an auto-pilot. They reduce workload, prioritize tasks and standardize best practices so you can focus on things the auto-pilot doesn’t do: continuously improving human performance, anticipating hazards far in advance, and staying ahead of the navigation tasks. Like auto-pilots, how can analytics contribute to sales enablement and productivity? REDUCE WORKLOAD: Pilots joke that flying is a long span of boredom followed by moments of panic. Perhaps like all the sales activity during the final days of the quarter? In flying, reducing mundane workload is a …Read More
Customer life stages, predicting customer outcomes and applying corrective actions: Three metrics to measure ROI
Customer life stage is the standard bearer of segmentation. Customer stages like “new,” “active,” “lapsed” and “lost” serve an important purpose by grouping customers into homogenous, manageable clusters for marketing, value measurement and investment decisioning. However, these definitions have limitations that you should consider and correct prior to sales applications. Here are key limitations and how to overcome them. Measurement windows are too broad: Most of these segments have a 6- or 12-month horizon for comparison. A “new” customer stays in that segment for 6 months, often regardless of spend or activity, whether based on total spend or number of orders. Similarly, a “lost” customer is usually defined as any spend in the past 13–24 months, but zero spend over the past 12 months. As you can see both the time and revenue windows are very large, and that dilutes usefulness. Regarding time, this can be a few weeks or up to 24 months, and regarding revenue, the measure can be a few hundred dollars to several thousand. Corrections: Create smaller segments for sales applications with sub-definitions. These can be arbitrary to follow a business threshold (i.e., 6 months or $2,000) or they can segment eligible customers into equal percentages, like 50-50 or 33-33-33 percent. Another option is to create “run-rates” based on …Read More
Three tips to making the difficult B2B sales calls
This post was inspired by a recent entry on The Sales Blog that discussed how it is easy to do the enjoyable things, when instead we should focus on things needed to improve sales results. Such as, resolving customer problems. Problems with a customer don’t go away, unless the customer goes away. So from our quantitative perspective, how would we suggest making it easier for salespeople to engage in difficult conversations? Three ways this could be done: Mix up the servings. Segment your customer portfolio based on buying cycle. Ensure that the salesperson is calling on all segments in some proportion that reflects both gains in immediate sales and long-term relationship. Use the CRM system to set up call blocks that are driven by analytics, to ensure consistent actions across the entire sales force. Demonstrate the loss from not making the call. Salespeople hate leaving money on the table. To show how much could be left behind, define a customer segment to call first as suggested above. Then identify actual sales revenue from sales calls made previously to a similar customer segment. Use this revenue figure to establish a per-customer baseline of incremental sales generated. Multiply this figure by number of customers in your “to call first” segment. Use …Read More