Читать книгу Sales Growth - Baumgartner Thomas - Страница 12

Translating detailed analysis into insights is not a novel idea in itself. Nor is it sufficient for capturing micro-market growth ahead of competition. What turns insights into sales is how the front line is managed in the micro-market. The sales executives we interviewed stressed the need for appropriate resource allocation and actionable tactics for sales teams or retail stores to fully exploit the new opportunities.

These sales executives also work very closely with other parts of the organization to capture the most lucrative customer opportunities in micro-markets. This means realigning sales, marketing, and sometimes even noncommercial resources such as customer service or supply chain. Of course, not all resource allocation decisions are at the discretion of the head of sales, so cross-functional collaboration is critical to extract the full value of the micro-market pockets of growth.

Marketing plays a substantial role both in generating micro-market insights and in applying them in the field. For example, an Asian telecommunications company discovered that about 20 percent of its marketing budget was being spent in markets with the lowest lifetime customer value. The company reallocated its marketing budget to the most lucrative part of its markets, which represented more than two-thirds of its opportunity. It did not stop there. It also recalibrated its customer acquisition goals. Targets were reset at the micro-market level based on the market potential rather than being spread equally across all markets. The result: targets rose 10 percent – and were met. What made this initiative so successful was the active collaboration of the marketing, sales, and finance groups in the pursuit of a clear, overarching goal.

The executives we talked to believe that assigning resources from their own sales organization based on previous demand patterns is quite literally yesterday’s game. At the chemicals and services company, one sales rep spent more than half her time 200 miles from her home office, even though only a quarter of her region’s opportunity sat there. This was purely because sales territories had been assigned according to historical performance rather than on growth prospects. After going through the micro-market analysis, the company realized the mismatch. Now, the rep spends 75 percent of her time in an area where 75 percent of the opportunity exists – within 50 miles of her office (Figure 2.3).7

Figure 2.3 Redesigned territories better match rep time with opportunity

This might sound simple, but making this transition required painstaking work. Dedicated analysts were required to create opportunity maps for every sales rep in the company and to identify accounts for reallocation. There was of course a very real risk that the company could lose accounts that had deep relationships with reps being reassigned. Therefore, it designed detailed action plans to reduce attrition for each migrated account. The entire process took about six months, but reps now spend more time selling and less time behind the wheel.

Some companies have used nontraditional sales techniques to exploit new micro-segments. One European integrated telecommunications provider saw a 35 percent increase in call center revenue after just six weeks of actively turning inbound service calls into sales. By analyzing customer data at a very detailed level and developing tailored value propositions, its customer service agents were able to make extremely targeted pitches when customers rang up for general service support (although sales were not attempted if the customer was complaining). Companies from the United States and Canada have seen similar results.