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Opportunity: The Mirror Image of a Customer

Posted by SMstudy® on January 11, 2016 | Marketing Strategy (MS)

Keywords: Opportunity, Analysis, Feedback

Opportunity: The Mirror Image of a Customer

The ever changing market trends and varying demands of customers have propelled companies to think out of the box and foray into market each time with new, updated or upgraded offerings that would outplay its rival products/services. In an attempt to capitalize on market, companies deploy numerous instruments and analytics to measure their efficacy level in several aspects of business. The latest being what we call “Opportunity Analysis”. As marketing professionals say “every non customer is an opportunity and it remains an opportunity till he/she becomes your customer.” So basically every customer as well as non-customer is opportunities. So if a casual conversation converts into sales conversation and that ultimately turns into a lead and further a customer/client, it’s called winning a customer and vice versa.

Customer win/loss analysis is a process of understanding why sales opportunities are either won or lost. A careful win/loss analysis is a cost-effective and less time-consuming tool to understand how customers perceive value. The perceived value by different customers is the deciding factor whether you win a customer or lose.  While customer need analysis is the most basic arena where sales people are often taught upon, but marketers argue it is not always the need that gives rise to a sale.

The process for win/loss analysis starts after a sales opportunity has been won or lost. A meeting is held with important stakeholders and includes the sales, product, account management, and customer service team members. After this meeting, the win/loss analysis interviewer must know the details of how the lead was generated, the events that took place during the sales process, and the product or products discussed. Customer interviews also need to be scheduled immediately after the opportunity has been won or lost to ensure maximum recall from customers about their experience in the sales process.

Here comes the customer feedback which is of utmost importance as the resultant responses devise the sales strategy for future. The customer feedback may be collected regarding customer perception in the areas such as

  • Performance of the corporate sales team: Company must know what role its trump cards played in the sales process. After all corporate sales team is the interface between customer and the company and loopholes in the same might result in downfall of future sales.
  • Marketing materials: Here the focus in on marketing assets that the company has. Feedback on the same helps in improving quality of Marketing Assets, Company has to offer.
  • Sales process: Feedback on the sales process is the stepping stone for future sales strategy. Profiling, generating leads, presentation, negotiation are some of the major areas where customer feedback counts a lot.
  • Product features: Customer feedback on product features informs seller analyze the product’s sales value proposition and whether seller needs to reposition the product with additional features or continue the existing one with regular up gradation.
  • Comparison with competition: This is something where the customer’s feedback drives the marketing strategy experts contrive better action plan to deal with competitors.
  • Pricing: Negative customer feedback on pricing can only be partially side-lined if the company is offering optimum value in comparison to its competitors at a given price and the product has some unique sales value proposition (e.g. i Phone). But if the customers feel availability of another product with same features and utilities at a cheaper price, then it is nothing less than a warning bell for the seller.

Customers change and so does their perception and demand. It’s important for sellers to consider each potential customer as an opportunity.

"To learn more about Customer Win/Loss analysis and related analytics, visit “www.SMstudy.com”.

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