Archive for November, 2008

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What’s your ideal Customer Profile?

Sunday, November 30th, 2008

If your business is good, and orders are coming in, it often feels like you might not have to the time to take a step back for a spot of analysing. Well, many very successful organisations are sending their management teams on management training courses to better their analytical skills. One such field worth looking at is your customer base.

Customer profiling is one example. This author knows of a Small to Medium Enterprise company that but profiling to great use. They provide Information Technology (IT) products and support services. They identified, by looking at the sales frequency, history and profitability of their client base, that their ideal customer would have less than 50 employees, a network of over 15 computers, be within a 35 mile radius, and employ two or less IT specific staff.

By taking this data and investing in some marketing studies to mine this information (they used an external telemarketing company) they were able to directly market to this sweet spot. Eventually, they turned away a business if it didn’t fit these criteria, because they had calculated the low return of this type of client in a cost-benefit analysis exercise.

No matter what the size of your company, chances are you’ll be able to pick out your best customer profile. Channel your sales and marketing people to target this profile, and consider cutting back time spent on the chaff.

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Promotional Gift Marketing

Saturday, November 29th, 2008

The principle of reciprocity is a strong one. Charities send millions of envelopes a year to households in an appeal for donations. They usually enclose a pen ‘as a gift’, in the hope that it encourages the individual’s in-built programming for reciprocity to kick in, and make a contribution.

Corporate gifts are a vey popular method of communicating with your customer, showing them they are valued, and encouraging them to be reciprocal. You can send them out seasonally (typically Christmas), or to mark promotions or special events. They keep your name visible in the customer’s office, and thanks to Chinese imports, they’re cheap.

It might not be top of the list on a crack commando sales training course, but it has a certain charm to it, especially if the gift is actually useful! This author knew of a personal assistant to a high level director of a corporate company. She kept her ‘special’ gel mouse mat on her desk for years, insisting it reduced her RSI strain. And yes, the mat was emblazoned with a stationery supplier’s logo. Guess where she ordered thousands of pounds worth of stationery from each year?

You could use anything from pens and paperweights to executive cork screws. Make sure they don’t ‘look’ cheap – they’re a reflection of your company.

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Four principles of a healthy organisation – Effective Control

Friday, November 28th, 2008

This is the last in a series of articles dedicated to identify four core principles or qualities that every organisation should possess if they want to survive and thrive in today’s competitive environment.

Whether you’ve undertaken a sales training course, a management training course, or a soft skills training course, one or more of the these four principles will underpin your learning experience.

So far, we’ve looked at:

  • Effective Planning
  • Effective Organising
  • Effective Leadership

Finally, we turn to the principle of Effective Control.

This is a management function which can yield phenomenal results for an organisation. The evaluation and monitoring of the company’s output or outcomes is critical to meeting key goals and objectives. The first three principles are not sufficient to ensure success, without effective control there are no measurements that can be taken, and no adjustments that can be made.

There are some simple questions that come into play for Effective Control:

  • Do we know what we’re trying to achieve? (outcome)
  • Do we know how to track the progress? (measurement)
  • Is it where we want to be? (comparison)
  • If not, what can we change to make it happen? (adjustment)

Effective Control is an iterative process; it’s a continual process that is fundamental to the long term success of any organisation.

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Four principles of a healthy organisation – Effective Leadership

Thursday, November 27th, 2008

The growth in management training courses and personal development training courses suggests that companies are increasingly looking for a competitive advantage in the marketplace by investing in individuals.

The boundaries of management are becoming blurred, as can be learnt by understanding new techniques, cultures and practices being developed and refined all over the word (see article on Ouchi’s Theory Z of Motivation as an example).

That’s why in this series of articles on the principles of a healthy organisation we are now looking at an un-changing, predominant and necessary quality:

Effective Leadership

This is all about vision, motivation and inspiration to focus a company’s or individual’s effort to achieve the best levels of success.

It’s a misnomer to suggest that people are born leaders. Leadership is quality someone displays through their actions, and their actions are informed by the decisions they make. If these decisions are informed by the desire for clearer vision of company goals, high motivation of employees and empowering inspiration, then Leadership will shine through.

All managers and key staff responsible for subordinates can display leadership qualities. However, an organisation benefits from a figurehead or core team to ensure it looks to the future.

The company ship needs capable people in the engine bay to provide power the vessel. The captain needs to know where the ship is headed and how best to navigate the seas.

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Customer Service Excellence Scheme

Wednesday, November 26th, 2008

In an effort to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and excellence of public services, the Government has a scheme for Customer Service Excellence. It was designed to provide a “practical tool” for delivering customer centric service to a high standard.

The Customer Service Excellence Standard focus on areas which research has indentified as most important in the customer’s experience; staff attitude, information, professionalism, delivery and timeliness. It also encourages a greater understanding of the customer’s experience, and effective measurement of their satisfaction.

The scheme focuses on three key elements:

  1. As a driver of continuous improvement
  2. As a skills development tool
  3. As an independent validation of achievement

Organisations are encouraged to undertake the scheme’s self-assessment tool, to measure current levels of customer service offered, and identify areas (and methods) for improvement.

The scheme wishes to support and encourage the skills development of teams and individuals to improve their customer focus, enabling them to build on their experience and deliver better results.

As a method of celebrating their success, and having a benchmark for excellence, organisations are encouraged to seek formal accreditation to the Customer Service Excellence Standard.

The scheme is not limited to the public sector, and any UK based organisation whether in the public, private or voluntary sectors are offered the opportunity to participate.

Organisations that have invested in management training courses to improve their customer service levels could benefit from participating in a government backed scheme.

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Special Event Sales

Wednesday, November 26th, 2008

Many businesses are looking to extend the way in which they can reach a new customer base, or target a particular demographic of customer. There are various direct and indirect methods that a company may be able to investigate to get new business.

Special events may provide an opportunity to see, test or discuss a company’s product or services. Some of these events may require investing in a sales training course or soft skills development of some kind if it’s a new field/venture for your company.

Here are some examples of special events you might find useful:

Sponsorship

If you’re business has profiled its customer base, and that customer base say for example fits the demographic of theatre goers, it may be worthwhile looking at arts sponsorship programmes. The world’s largest foreign exchange specialist Travelex, have been sponsoring London’s National Theatre with ‘£10 tickets’ since 2003, to great media publicity.

It doesn’t have to be so grand; as long as the event gives you a positive and congruent public image, and exposing you to the right customers, you’re selection could be as varied as charity fetes, dog races or the local Santa in the shopping precinct.

Demonstrations

Give people the opportunity to see and experience your product or service. A perfect example would be cookery demonstrations, but could be to promote your latest labour saving device.

Trade Shows

This is a booming industry and an idea opportunity to cross network. Some of these events attract thousands of consumers. Say you’re an outdoor clothing manufacturer; you could exhibit at one the UK’s many equine events. If you’re a CCTV manufacturer, you could exhibit at a Mother and Baby exhibition. The opportunities and types are vast, and they’re a great source of new business.

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Who are your best customers?

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008

In a previous article (see What’s your ideal Customer Profile?) we looked at the power of profiling your client base. Many businesses haven’t even got that far, since they don’t have a clear idea of who their best customers are.

The 80/20 rule or Pareto’s Principle can be applied to a lot of aspects of commerce. Often eighty percent of your company’s sales will come from twenty percent of your customers. Do you know who they are?

You need to indentify this rich stream, and spend more time on them, and less on the other eighty percent, because it’s often these poorer relations that will squeeze your resources.

As many who’ve attend a management training course or sales training course will attest, it’s the customers who bring in repeat business with a decent gross profit, and who are loyal, that cost you the least to look after, and they should be identified.

They are many different ways of calculating best customers, from simple comparison of total revenue divided by frequency of orders, to more sophisticated formula to work out a customer’s ‘lifetime value’

That’s why many businesses are investing in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems to identify, monitor and track their vast range of clients.

However, it’s not good enough to simply identify your best customers; you need to develop strategies to keep them as well.

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Four principles of a healthy organisation – Effective Organising

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008

Businesses (and management training courses) are beginning to focus more on core principles to reach goals, and not on a rigid set of procedures and dictums. This is enabling key staff to chart a straighter course for navigating their companies through the choppy waters of the economic slowdown.

In a previous article, we look at the critical need an organisation has for effective planning. Let’s look at another core function:

Effective Organising

Once a company has clearly identified a set of goals it wishes to pursue, and spent time planning ahead, the next steps is allocating the resources necessary to achieve those goals. Thus, effective organising comes into play and people, money and equipment is distributed in the best way possible by management and key staff.

It’s interesting to think about the Organisational Chart at this point. Most people think of it as a pictorial or diagrammatical representation of the hierarchical structure of a company, and its chain of command. However, as its name suggest, it should be used to ‘Organise’ the company staff. Typically in today’s fast-paced environment, management and leaders regularly re-structure Organisational Charts to better ‘organise’ the company to meet new challenges.

Adaptability, flexibility and responsiveness are three strong qualities a company needs to have for Effective Organising.

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Four principles of a healthy organisation – Effective Planning

Monday, November 24th, 2008

Let’s look at four sound principles of a healthy organisation, starting with the first:

Effective Planning

In many small and or growing companies, the process of planning falls by the wayside. Too much time is spent dealing with the day to day juggles and challenges, and frankly, fire fighting. There is little congruence, no shared vision, and therefore no collective strength. The company ship is drifting like the QE II into a Solent sandbank.

As any worthy management training course will tell you, a business needs to have a clear set of goals, which accurately reflects what’s important to its success. These goals need to be disseminated throughout the organisation. When this occurs, it’s much more likely that managers and staff alike can act pro-actively, with clear prioritisation, and consideration of how they need to allocate their precious resources.

It’s therefore a key function of management (at different levels, depending on your organisation’s hierarchical structure) to develop these goals and begin planning ways in which they are going to meet them.

Has your company got, or is actively working on a long term business plan?
When was the last time, that schedules were arranged for key thinkers to review and formulate a planning strategy?

Planning is the core engine behind successful organisations. Remember the following (watershed friendly) version of an old phrase:

Paltry Poor Planning = Paltry Poor Performance

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Are you maximising your online potential?

Sunday, November 23rd, 2008

Gone are the days when simple advertising in the local publication, national press or even television was enough to build customer loyalty. We live in an information age where the internet has revolutionised the way we reach the marketplace.

The internet and the way it’s used for marketing is constantly evolving. When the World Wide Web was just becoming popular, having a website akin to a company brochure was useful. It’s not any more. Content is not enough. You need to work harder to compete against the plethora of pages that are just a click away.

Marketing and sales training courses recognise these challenges and opportunities and devote an increasing amount of time to advising you how to build a better presence for your company online.

Out of every hundred pence spent by Mr or Mrs Consumer on retail products, seventeen pence is spent online. Analysts predict this percentage is going to rise dramatically. Indeed, studies suggest that by 2010, £72bn will be spent by consumers shopping online.

It doesn’t matter if your company doesn’t sell directly on their website. What is important to understand is that technology and the growth of high speed broadband in the home and office is giving you more marketing opportunities than you could ever have imagined possible even a few years ago.

Are you maximising your online potential?

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