Strategic Customer Management (SCM) is a company-wide initiative, focusing on building strong and mutually beneficial relationships with a company\u2019s most important customers and partners. Effective SCM programs create loyalty, stimulate growth, enhance profitability, and lead to innovative solutions. A successful program requires a commitment from senior management to ensure the necessary corporate and organizational shift has time to establish itself.<\/p>\n
4 REQUIRED ENABLERS TO STRATEGIC CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT:<\/strong><\/p>\n To bring this approach to life in any organization, we have identified a series of four required enablers. The absence of these can make the journey to full activation difficult:<\/p>\n VISION<\/strong> LEADERSHIP<\/strong> MULTI-FUNCTIONAL APPROACH<\/strong> BE DELIBERATE<\/strong> FROM OK TO OUTSTANDING, START WITH INSIGHT Good Luck and Good Selling!<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Strategic Customer Management (SCM) is a company-wide initiative, focusing on building strong and mutually beneficial relationships with a company\u2019s most important customers and partners. Effective SCM programs create loyalty, stimulate growth, enhance profitability, and lead to innovative solutions. A successful program requires a commitment from senior management to ensure the necessary corporate and organizational shift […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":858,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[26,25,23],"class_list":["post-297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insight","tag-homepage","tag-sales-leadership-academy","tag-strategic-selling"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nVision and direction must be understood by all parties involved.
\n\u2022 Organizational goals and desired outcomes must be well articulated.
\n\u2022 You must understand your customers\u2019 goals and desired outcomes, and they too must be well well-defined.
\n\u2022 To gain this understanding \u2013 you must \u201cPlay Catch\u2122\u201d, essentially having strategic two-way effective dialogue with the key people in your customers\u2019 organizations, to create alignment.
\n\u2022 Both of these plans must be shared within your organization and each \u2018contributor\u2019 must have a clear role in achieving them.<\/p>\n
\nLeadership is a key enabler.
\n\u2022 A motivating C-level story or narrative must be developed that engages the organization in the approach.
\n\u2022 Senior leaders from both companies must be fully enrolled and engaged in the development of this working relationship.
\n\u2022 Alignment from senior leadership (CEO. COO, CFO, etc.) must be visible.
\n\u2022 Concepts must be cascaded down through the organization to the next levels of management (executive VP\u2019s, Directors, Managers, etc.) along with clear strategies, tactics and timing for this approach.<\/p>\n
\nA multi-functional approach looks like this:
\n\u2022 The Sales team\u2019s role is to orchestrate the experts in their organization to work effectively with the customers.
\n\u2022 Sales team members must work internally to map out a multi-functional approach, so that all key functions are aligned (likely entails having a \u201ccharm campaign\u201d with all multi-functional stakeholders).<\/p>\n
\nBe deliberate\u2026\u201dWin with the Winners\u201d.
\n\u2022 First, decide who the focal customers are\u2026 and determine what the criteria is to qualify as a \u201cWinner\u201d.
\n\u2022 Then, develop an action plan for the top customers which considers: \u00a0who they are, who\u2019s growing\/declining over next 3 years, etc. \u00a0Also needed will be a plan detailing how your remaining customers (15-20% of business) will be managed.
\n\u2022 Staffing- once you have designed what the roles or \u201cboxes\u201d in the org chart should look like, it is time to put the best people into the right boxes.
\n\u2022 Having a top-to-top meeting with each of the top \u201cWinner\u201d customers (i.e. CEO to CEO) allows everyone to gain alignment to the concept(s) and appropriate metrics.
\n\u2022 Once you have your \u201cinternals aligned\u201d, you then proceed to developing a more micro-level plan, i.e., a tailored SCM (strategic customer management) roadmap for each of the \u201cWinner\u201d customers.<\/p>\n
\nTo lead and engage your organization into more strategically aligned relationships with customers, first assess how you stack up in these four areas. Then, establish a plan that gets you from \u201cOK\u201d to \u201coutstanding\u201d in each of them. These are practical areas which are key to embracing a more strategic approach with customers. It\u2019s going to be hard work but know that the effort is worth it once you build it into your culture.<\/p>\n