B2B Indirect Sales and Customer Metrics/Profiling

Mark Orsborn
Member
Picture of Mark Orsborn

Posted 06-Apr-2005 12:33 AM
Dear Graham,

I work for a manufacturing supplier who resells only via channels. These channels hold the end user point of sale data and on the whole have been reluctant to share it (it's a historical issue and one that is being worked on). One of the many challenges I face is that the business management believe we have a "leaky" bucket of customers (end users) and I have been asked to run a project to quantify it.

As a bit of background, our CRM program was put in place to capture end user information and create a "pull" effect. As far as I can gather (I joined the business last year), the sales team focus was changed from the channel to the end user when CRM was implemented. The end user data we capture includes items such as activities (sales visits, phone calls etc) and opportunities and as such cannot be considered to be 100% complete or accurate (we have been working hard to clean and supplement it using an external company). We have many metrics around our sales pipeline (opportunities) and where we spend our time (activities) but we don't have key customer metrics such as retention, churn etc. I have got the results of a recent loyalty survey however I find the information very static and want something more dynamic and meaningful. It is all very well and good knowing x% of our end user customers are inferred to be loyal but we need to know who they are to keep them that way—or do we? Is it more to do with the channel than and their loyalty rather than end user loyalty?

My big question is where do I start the project? Should I try and start with the channel (maybe even just one branch) to see if I can work with them and their data on a win/win basis to understand exactly who buys our products, how often etc or should I start by analysing our CRM system data? We do have an order management system that captures our direct sales (to the channel) so could that be used to predict likely end user behaviour? People in our company often talk about obtaining point of sale data from our channels (of which there are many) but the complexity of obtaining it, cleaning it, storing it and working with it are not understood, in fact I don't think it is a workable situation—at least not right now.

Having read many of your posts, numerous CRM books and other related articles, it seems to me that our situation is very similar to a car manufacturer as they both work with their dealers and also end user customer data, and I would be interested to find out how we can emulate their CRM success in our environment.

Any advice you can provide would be very appreciated!

Many Thanks.

Graham Hill
Guru
Member

Posted 06-Apr-2005 09:01 AM
Mark

The best way for me to start to think about helping you is to understand a bit more about your business and the way you go to market.

Can you tell me some of the following. The more you can tell me, the better I can help you. I don't need to know any names if that is a competitive problem for you.

• What is your business?
• What do you sell?
• Are there additional things that are sold after the 'sale', e.g. training, configuration, services, financing, etc?
• What do your products cost (order of magnitude)?
• How profitable are your products (ditto)?
• What channels do you use for selling?
• How many sellers (resellers) do you use in each of the channels?
• Do most of your sales come through particular channels/sellers?
• Who are your customers and what characteristics do they have?
• What requirements do they have related to your products?
• How many customers do you have?
• How many are new customers vs repeat customers?
• How long is a product in use before it needs replacing?
• How are products marketed, through which channels and by who?
• How is post-sale customer service provided, through which channels and by who?

This is probably enough to be getting on with.

We can start a dialogue once I know something about your company situation.

Graham Hil
Independent Management Consultant