quinta-feira, dezembro 27, 2007

Uma vez mais: cuidado com os seus clientes.

Eles não são todos iguais, já aqui (Incluir no Balanced Scorecard um indicador da rentabilidade dos clientes ) e aqui (Retenção de clientes ) abordámos o tema.

Entretanto descobri este artigo de John Quelch, onde o tema é novamente abordado. Como penso tratar-se de um tema fundamental, para fugir ao pântano do stuck-in-the-midlle, para onde o querer ser uma Arca de Noé nos conduz, aqui vai a ligação, e alguns sublinhados meus:

"The most overlooked investment a marketer can make in advance of inevitable commoditization is a customer relationship management system that permits computation of the profit margin associated with each customer, based on price-paid less cost-to-serve. Companies need to invest in these information systems early to have the information readily at hand once margins start being squeezed.


But how do you survive if you find yourself in a commoditizing industry characterized by me-too products, overcapacity and frequent price cuts? How can you make money?

1. Decide which customers you do NOT want to serve, try renegotiating prices with them and, failing that, fire them.

You will lose market share but improve profitability.

2. Compensate your salesforce on profit margin, not sales revenues. A volume-based salesforce will sign up any customer, regardless of profitability. That’s OK early in the product life cycle but not in maturity. "

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