Jonathan Costa-SaintJohn

Personal

I am a leader with 15+ years experience managing global customer relationships, driving business growth through strategic sales and consultative solutions. Lessons learned throughout my career have proven that we must fuse together Sales and Customer/Relationship Management through evangelizing our organizations products and services. In order to procure an appropriate, result oriented solution, which above all is customer friendly.

Riding the Revenue Wave – Managing Client Acquisition and Attrition

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Posted on 2010-04-02

Managing customer acquisition and attrition is a fine-balancing act for most organizations, while for others it’s a horrifying feat. With sales and business development at the top of almost every company’s agenda, it is surprising how many companies have little, if any, internal intelligence on client attrition.

Managing client attrition and acquisition in order to achieve sales growth requires more than just knowing which customers have left the organization, it also requires understanding why and where they go. This understanding is important and required in order to target replacement customers at a lower cost of acquisition and/or at the same or higher margin. However, let’s not forget that at this stage there is merely a replacement of a lost client, meaning that from the start the sales organization is spending more at a decreased profit margin (client attrition erodes profitably even if clients are replaced at a one to one or...

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Retaining Customers Add 10% - 25% to Bottom Line

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Posted on 2010-03-01

The numbers behind the relationships you keep are daunting, and for those organizations that manage their current clients’ experience, the positive impact is downright overwhelming. For the others, well, not so good – in fact not only are the client impact metrics negative, it costs an organization without a relationship strategy nearly three times as much just to get to an even state of zero – meaning no client erosion or equalization.

Over the last three weeks I have met with several CEOs and other senior managers within several sectors; Technology, Human Resources Outsourcing (HRO), Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), and Staffing and Recruiting, and most shocking is that most of them — not all — have little to no strategy in play to protect their current client base, but indeed have strategy and execution plans for new customer acquisition. In fact, their burn rate for new sales outpaces their customer retention programs by five times.

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Remember Me?

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Posted on 2010-02-25

It seems so long since we have seen each other, and truthfully I forget what you even look like anymore. I vaguely remember the day we tied the knot, signing that contract that, frankly, took too much time to read, never mind understand. If your asking yourself if I am bitter, no I am not—I am just lonely, with new problems and challenges and trying to solve them all on my own. To cure my loneliness I went out, and can you believe it? I found an organization, one that is just perfect, and a great sight for sore eyes. Oh, and they have a solution that makes yours look…well, I won’t go there. What I am trying to say is…the last problem we worked on was Y2K, which was a dud. But, you were shiny and new, full of excitement, firing off solutions one after the other. I was overwhelmed with anticipation, and now…well, you know. It’s time I call it quits— so if you want you can come by and get that “solution” of yours....

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Blending Your Company’s Hunters and Farmers to Increase Revenue Now

1 comments 1,417 reads

Posted on 2010-02-25

Trying to learn more about what companies are doing today to grow revenue, I took a look at jobs posted at Linkedin and SalesLadder.com and noticed something very interesting. Most companies listed were seeking junior- to mid-senior-level salespeople—you know, the “hunter” type.
Most interesting about these listings is that the companies advertising are spending money on hiring new salespeople to find new customers. Further, none of the same companies were hiring (or at least advertising for) any account managers, relationship managers, or business development people—the “farmers.” The statement is loud and clear—“We want new sales”—which is clearly appropriate; new revenue and new clients are a must for any organization. I do see the approaching “duh” factor – nonetheless, what follows might seem stupidly simple – however, few organizations have their attention drawn in this direction.

Ask...

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