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Important Core Protection Strategies
Competitor Analysis
QUIZ: What is the number 1 cause of customer objections during the sales process? (answer below)
- Does your organization really understand the competition?
- Is your understanding of your competitors actually useful to your sales people, and does it really help them to sell?
- Can you produce a detailed dossier on each competitor, and if so, what information does it contain?
- In its current form, do you believe your competitive information helps your sales reps to achieve higher hit rates at higher margins?
The lack of specific information about competitors' product attributes, and how their products or total offering meets or doesn't meet your customer needs, is the number 1 cause of customer objections during the sales process.
With comprehensive competitor analysis dossiers at their fingertips, your sales reps will proactively position your products in front of the competition early on and throughout the sales process, thus preventing the customer objections that drive hit rates and margins down.
Don't wait until proposal and pricing time to perform your "competitor analysis" and "competitive positioning". If you do, then your margins and hit rates will suffer.
If you've been thinking about implementing a more active competitive analysis program, but simply haven't had the time, I can help. Call me and we can work together to implement a system that actually helps your reps to increase sales and margins. We will measure the results!
Call me at (502) 310-1207 or email STrunkett@SalesRaceHorses.com
Customer Value Dossier
- Is your product line a high value product for which customers pay a premium price?
- Do you depend upon customer Engineering and/or Operations Departments to "specify" your higher priced products against the competition?
- Do you frequently find yourself fighting the "price war" with Procurement Departments because your competitor is cheaper?
- Do your customers cycle staffers through their Procurement Department, and are you frequently challenged to re-educate Procurement personnel about the added value of your premium products?
There are multiple aspects to your products and the way you do business that enable you to create added value for your customers that justify your higher price. Maybe you simply "have a better mousetrap."
But more likely, you offer significant intangible value that is either known or perceived by certain plant personnel. Maybe you have 24/7 technical service that your competitors lack. Or maybe you have a consignment inventory program at the plant. Such intangibles are often a mystery to the Procurement Department, and therefore, they are unaware of much of the value you deliver.
Let me help you to overcome this challenge, and I can help you to maintain your premium pricing position while reducing customer turnover.
Don't wait until it's time to renew your long term supplier agreement when your customer threatens to award the contract to your competitor. If you do, it's too late.
I can help you to compile and document the quantifiable value that you create for your customers, and to implement a communication program that will effectively "Competitor-Proof" your customer!
Call me at (502) 310-1207 or email STrunkett@SalesRaceHorses.com
Relationship Mirroring
- Do your sales reps have excellent personal relationships with their customers?
- Do you ever worry about losing a customer in the event that your sales rep resigns to go to work for the competitor?
- Do any of your reps "protect" their customers and contacts as if they were "personal possessions?"
Personal customer relationship in this business are extremely valuable and important. But contrary to popular lore, relationships do not sell.
What ultimately sells over the long range is irrefutable economic value...the value that is created by your organization, your products, and the multitude of systems and processes you have in place to communicate and deliver the value you create.
Relationships represent a trusted channel of communication between customer and supplier, and are one - albeit important - component of the value you create.
Most industrial manufacturers depend upon a single relationship channel when they abdicate sole contact responsibility to a single sales rep. The long range strength of this single channel is tenuous for many reasons:
- The rep could resign
- The customer contact will be promoted or will take another job
- The relationship could simply go sour
A relationship mirroring strategy enables your organization to develop multiple trusted and collaborative channels of communication with your customers.
If you've been thinking about innovative ways to strengthen the organizational loyalty of your customers, or if you've ever been nagged by the worry of your sales reps going to work for the competition, let me help you to develop and implement an important core strategy called relationship mirroring. This strategy will effectively complement many of the other strategies discussed to effectively "Competitor-Proof" your customer!
Call me at (502) 310-1207 or email STrunkett@SalesRaceHorses.com
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Customer Service Metrics & Training
- Would you like to reduce your customer turnover?
- Do you define and measure relevant customer satisfaction criteria?
- Are the criteria that you measure really the same criteria on which your customers base their emotional and financial satisfaction (and hence their buying decisions)?
- Are you measuring satisfaction criteria for the multiple influencers in the buying process?
- Is your primary method for receiving customer feedback to simply respond with a fire drill after the salesman or customer service agent receives a call from a dissatisfied customer?
Many industrial manufacturers recognize the benefits of ongoing training for their sales reps, while often failing to invest the necessary resources in monitoring customer satisfaction following delivery in a regular and ongoing manner.
Rapid response to a customer complaint is critical, yes...even your competitors know that, and they probably even do it well...just like you. Rapid response to problems is expected, and doesn't differentiate you from your competitors.
If you've been thinking about more proactive processes for monitoring and maximizing customer satisfaction, but haven't had the time or resources to implement them, I can help.
Since few manufacturers successfully implement such systems, proactive customer satisfaction monitoring and management will differentiate you from your competition.
Call me and I can help you to develop and implement customer satisfaction metrics, processes, and training that will measurabley reduce the customer turnover that comes from the "Death of a Thousand Cuts."
Call me at (502) 310-1207 or email STrunkett@SalesRaceHorses.com
Customer Referral Index
- Do you know what your customers are saying about you?
- Can you answer this for the multiple influencers in your customer's buying process?
- If one of your customer contacts were asked to put his or her reputation on the line by reviewing your company, would you receive an enthusiastic recommendation or a deadpan response?
Your most credible witness to the value you create comes from the people who use your products and do business with you. By systematically soliciting personal feedback from your most influential business contacts, it shows them that you care about their success, and that their personal opinion of you and your business is important.
When you proactively manage your customer opinions, you effectively create an army of potential business promoters.
If you've been thinking about more proactive processes for collecting, documenting, and publishing high-impact business testimonials, but haven't had the time or resources to implement them, let me help. I can help you to design and implement non-invasive processes that will enable you to continuously monitor and manage customer referrals.
Call me and I'll also show you how these processes can actually increase customer loyalty while creating an endless stream of high-impact customer testimonial pieces.
Call me at (502) 310-1207 or email STrunkett@SalesRaceHorses.com
Case Studies and Success Stories
- Does your organization have any product applications or customer projects for which it is especially proud of the results?
- Do you have customers who are eternally grateful or loyal to your company because you helped them overcome a previously insurmountable problem?
- Are all of the influential players across your customer's organization aware of the role you played in their success?
- Do those influencers know enough of the details of the successful project so they tell the story to others within their own organization?
Testimonials and Success Stories are a common tool for developing new customers. Many testimonials fail to target another very important audience: The customer who is the very subject of the testimonial itself.
You can help your project sponsor to market your company internally to his peers and superiors through the publication of internal case studies targeted at the customer organization.
If your project really had a big impact on the customer's business, you can help your sponsor to receive the recognition he deserves. In so doing, you solidify his loyalty to your organization, while potentially assisting him in progressing up the corporate ladder.
Call me and I can help you to implement a program for publishing customer-targeted case studies.
Call me at (502) 310-1207 or email STrunkett@SalesRaceHorses.com
Strategic Price Reduction
- Do your customers complain about escalating prices?
- Does your competitor threaten the long term strength of your customer base through aggressive pricing?
- Are you doing everything you can to drive down your own COGS?
Stategically timed price reductions can have a substantial impact on long term customer loyalty. And if executed as a coordinated company-wide strategy, they can even generate increased margins and profits.
With many third-world countries rapidly achieving higher levels of technology and manufacturing quality, global sourcing opportunities abound. These sourcing opportunities have created the potential for a new stage of revolutionary reductions in manufacturing costs.
Cost savings, in many cases, can be so significant that it may be feasible to roll out strategic price reductions to your most important customers. In a world where price increases are the norm, your organization will establish itself as the irrefutable leader in value/cost ratio.
Let me assist you in facilitating an impact analysis to determine how strategic pricing reductions may support your core protection strategy.
Call me at (502) 310-1207 or email STrunkett@SalesRaceHorses.com
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