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ACKNOWLEDGMENT: This is a precis of an article by Mary Larson, vice-president of Mercer Management Consulting, which originally appeared in The Mercer Management Journal.
Having the right people in the right place at the right time, doing the right things with the right customers is the enticing prospect held out to a company which manages to boost the effectiveness of its sales team.
Optimizing value
A salesforce effectiveness (SFE) programme can spur profitable growth by optimizing the value companies deliver to their most critical customer segments, while at the same time enhancing the efficiency of the entire sales operation.
Initially, the programme develops insights into customer requirements and relative profitability. It then aligns the sales process, to ensure salespeople are spending the maximum time possible influencing the key decision makers of the highest-potential target customers. A company should then create a profile of the customer base. This involves segmenting customers by the product and service attributes they want and determining the long-term profitability of each segment.
This kind of information cannot be captured in customer surveys or questionnaires because it goes beyond who the customers are and their historical buying patterns to determine what customers need and how these needs might be evolving. In contrast, conventional segmentation can place two apparently similar merchants in the same category, when in reality their sales, delivery...