As businesses grow, more people are in contact with the same customer and as time progresses, bits and pieces of customer data starts to reside in different parts of the organization. It becomes increasingly difficult to obtain a unified version of the true customer picture and different people relate to the same customer in different ways, trying to relieve different customer pain points based on their version of the customer truth.
There has to be one version of the customer truth that everyone can relate to otherwise we end up with a dissatisfied customer. So, integrating customer data into one place is a necessity regardless of the size of our business.
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Some years ago, one of my clients had a very interesting way of segmenting his sales staff. It was his belief that many salespeople, especially those that are in “outside sales,†do not do what is expected of them because they are put in sales situations they are not comfortable doing. While he did not express it as the opening post of this subject as hunter, harvester and gatherer types, his formula did try to put such types into the selling they would best perform. He did not set territories as do most firms. He categorized his sales staff into:
* selling new products to new customers,
* selling new products to current customers
* selling old/current products to new customers
* selling old /current products to current customers
I was fascinated at this format and, of course, quizzed him on the pros and cons. His reasoning was some people:
* worked best seeking out new customers when pioneering new products.
* worked best selling new products but did not like the prospecting side of selling but were at ease calling on the firms current customers
Neither of these two, however, even though they might do it, their heart was not it, did well at selling old/current products.
* worked best following up once a new customer had been added to the firms customer base and bringing the firms other products to the customer’s attention.
* worked best doing follow up sales to current customers.
Both were not stars, but they offset the weakness of the other two categories
There were two positive results of this setup. He was not asking his sales staff to do what they did not do well. The other that he found that he had a steady growth in new customers that more than offset the natural drop in his customer base and his repeat sales increased at a steady rate.
There were two negatives of categorizing the sales staff. One was that as the business’s market increased, either his sales staff had to travel further and make more calls or he had to add a larger sales staff to take care of the expanded territories. The other, which eventually faded, was that the turnover from a salesperson of one category to one from the other category for each customer would lessen the salesperson-customer relationship. With some, the real relationship ended up being with the “selling old/current products to current customers†salesperson and the customer.
From what I can remember, his form of compensation varied with each category all the way from commission+bonus, commission only, to salary+bonus, to straight salary.
There is still another way that can be very productive. When the quota for a month, quarter period, if the bonus is prorated among everyone in office, sales support, operations and the sales people, those not in sales will, each in their own way, put pressure on the sales people to get out and sell. In addition, they will be alert for clues for additional sales because they may get a pice of the action. I have seen it work in both the retail and business-to-business industries.
While this may not work in its exact format for all firms, taking a look how to adapt it to fit one’s business, their products and, most important, their customers may help solve the age old question posed in the start of this thread.