It is common to meet marketing and / or sales managers who make the following reflections: «The market is moving fast, I have the feeling of being behind the events with hardly any time, information or tools to react. The pressure I receive for the results, makes me drive the sales force on impulse and sometimes I also find them puzzled. As time progresses, I depend more and more on that “ball” that saves the results, and the worst thing… is that I don't know when or how or with whom it will happen. ”
Unfortunately, our environment is increasingly competitive and any of us find ourselves on the street with better-prepared, more agile, more attractive competitors for the customer, with lower prices, better service or better product quality. Added to this is the feeling that it is too late, we have no reaction time, and the drop in sales makes us make more and more hasty decisions and therefore more risky.
In this increasingly common environment, it is sometimes difficult to concentrate resources on planning, since there is a tendency to develop a series of commercial actions that lead to short-term sales results, almost always sacrificing the long-term.
More and more companies are seeing the Marketing Plan, as the document that guides the marketing and sales activity of a company and that "enlightens" people in that area to achieve the desired objectives.
However, reality tells us that sometimes, the Marketing Plan becomes a document that describes a statement of intent with little level of detail, being the true reflection of a poorly defined strategy and with no or little differentiation compared to its competitors. Due to this, many sales managers find that, after having made a considerable effort in resources in its elaboration, said plan ends up being one more report in the archive, less and less consulted and that ends up being useless since The reality of the market advances in other ways.
"We propose to start with something that should be our best valued asset and what usually gives the best results in the short term: current customers."
In this situation, what to do? Do we return to the initial situation? For companies that are in this situation - and at the same time that an in-depth marketing plan is being developed - we propose to start from something that should be our best valued asset and what usually gives the best results in the short term: current customers.
Obviously, the ideal situation is to know both current and potential clients, but because the level of complexity to know both types of clients is high on many occasions, whenever it is necessary to prioritize -as unfortunately it usually happens- it is convenient to start with current clients since results can usually be achieved in a shorter term.
If we ask any marketing and / or sales director, do you know their clients? The answer is usually yes. But if we ask for a greater degree of specificity and that you give us all the information that your clients have, we will probably find ourselves with little, disaggregated and insufficient information to carry out a minimum analysis and, what is almost worse, without being anywhere site that is not in people's heads or on different agendas.
If the knowledge of the clients is the first step to know what they expect from us and therefore, the basis to generate a good level of satisfaction, the question is: Do we know what our clients expect from us?
To get an adequate knowledge of the clients, and as a guide, let's ask ourselves some questions about our clients:
How much can you buy me?
From this we must identify those characteristics that allow me to identify their purchase potential.
As an example, in the case of business clients, there could be some such as: size, sector, number of workers, internal structure, present suppliers, etc. In the case of private clients it could be the purchasing level, family structure, work, hobbies, preferred brands, etc.
What do you value about our product or service?
In this sense, we must identify what motivates them to acquire our product or service: price, product quality, brand, degree of customization, degree of collaboration, speed of response, image, innovation, etc.
If you buy product / service X, could you buy product / service Y?
This, technically known as cross-selling, is knowing whether our customers for a certain product / service are direct customers for other products / services in the company's portfolio and are not currently buying for any reason.
In which channels do you want us to offer it to you?
Here we must identify which channels are the closest and most valued to interact with the client: personal presence, internet, telephone, letter, etc.
What are your future needs going to be?
Obviously, not only do you have to worry about the current situation but also the trends in their behaviors, so it is essential to identify all those characteristics that allow us to identify their evolution, and therefore, their future purchasing trends.
As we can see, this is just a very simple way to start elaborating a detailed analysis that allows us to design an adequate knowledge strategy for our clients, adapted to our activity and from there do a deep segmentation task that makes us discover business opportunities.
After this analysis work, we will ask ourselves : How can I manage all this information? For this, it is essential to have a CRM customer relationship management system. Said tool must have the following characteristics:
- Have all the information centralized in one place Have simple, powerful and agile segmentation tools Have all the information easily accessible Allow to enter the data comfortably and quickly Adapt to the needs of each user Facilitate the control of the sales force Have quick access to history of each client Track sales opportunities Manage marketing campaigns Power analyze sales area data Integrate with other applications of your company Allow access from any point Power adapt to your company's processes Be scalable to the growth of your company Power coordinate marketing areas, sales and customer service Allow knowing the profitability of each customer Streamline responses to customers
In this work environment, the segmentation of our clients will provide us with the "light" for the Marketing Plan to gain "new life" and become the element that the sales manager needs to guide him in his daily relationship activities. with the market.
