How Customer-Centric Is Your Firm (Branch)?

Amazon’s mission: be the “Earth’s most customer-centric company”. And, they increasingly are!  Your firm can grow faster and more profitably through next-level, customer centricity.  How? Make sure all employees can answer and act on the following questions.

Customer-Centric IQ Questions

1. What percent of your net-profits do the top 10, and the top 10%, of your customers give you respectively?
2. Within your top 100 accounts, can some customers be sorted into niches based on what common goods they buy, and how (peculiar service needs) they buy them?
3. What specific, service metrics do your most profitable customers (and best niche of customers) desire?
4. Do all employees know (by heart):
   1. The top-5, most net-profitable customers (perhaps in your #1 most net-profitable niche of customers)?
   2. Your top-5, most-promising, net-profit-growth, target customers?
   3. Why and how to all work to improving specific service metrics for these accounts?
   4. How to dynamically give both preferential and exceptional service to top 10 accounts?
   5. How they, and all stakeholder groups, will economically benefit from doing all of the above?

Customers vary in their purchasing maturity and effectiveness.

The least are price buyers. Wiser ones want basic service-excellence guaranteed before focusing on price. And, 2-5% of your customers (usually large and/or fast-growing due to innovation) are looking for a supplier to partner.

They would like to move down the buying/selling cost-curves together on a win-win basis (like McDonald’s with its distributors). But, it takes a consulting team to believe, speak, and sell these solutions. A rep’s role on the team will depend on what each customer prefers (customer centricity!)

1. Can the team explain how you identify, target, and sell these accounts effectively?
2. Does everyone believe that: by inventing better service-value for best customers, you can better – retain, penetrate and potentially partner – these accounts?

Necessary: Ambition, Analytics and Execution Plan?

Are you curious and brave enough to improve on existing management beliefs? Then, get customer and SKU profitability analytics to answer – directly and indirectly – the quiz questions. For a generic, execution-plan, request my “Core Renewal Roadmap” (bruce@merrifield.com)

To put both the analytics and roadmap together with live energy: schedule with me a virtual demo or attend one of my seminars (www.merrifieldseminar.com). If you can’t attend one of the initial three, request my seminar slide deck. And/or, be in touch about helping to bring the show to your city.