Sales and Marketing - Developing Customer Engagement
Client Organisation:
Engineering Services
Position
Consulted with Directors of the company
Context
In order to trigger a new phase of business growth an engineering service company wanted to ensure that their customer engagement and marketing approach was optimised. The focus was on attracting as many business leads as possible and ensuring that they were engaging each of their potential customers in a manner that maximised conversion of leads and penetration of existing accounts.
Objectives
The initial objective was twofold:
- To ensure that the information gathering processes at the first and subsequent points of client contact were adequate to collect all available relevant information.
- To ensure that the subsequent on-going communications and marketing communications with clients reflected back the relevent information that had been gathered - that the company services were approriately positioned.
Format & Duration
An on site consultation with use of the LAB Profile tool for generating a 'Psychographic Profile' of the target client base. This process took approximately 4 hours, with review of five existing clients that represented the type of clients the company wanted more of. This took account of the clients:
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This 'Psychographic Profiling' exercise was followed by an off site independant review of marketing collateral including web and hard copy materials.
A 'mystery shopper' approach was taken to assessing the current process of handling incoming enquiries from prospects and existing customers. The purpose was to ensure that the telephone handling process adequately captured enough information to give an understanding of what was actually most important to each unique client as they called - the foundation for influencing throughout the sales process.
Outcomes
New marketing material was created that addressed the principle criteria that the majority of customers had, the content and detail of the website was scaled back to ensure that information of interest was easy to find. A number of very simple questions were implemented at the start of the sales process which ensured that actual needs of clients could be better understood.
The changes were not extensive, but required a small amount of staff training, and resulted in a process that gave the company a much greater understanding of what their customers actually wanted. In turn this meant that they could talk in more credible terms and ultimately, when necessary, negotiate better fees.
Additionally it became clear that one of the things most important to the company about their clients was that they were consulted as experts not just safe hands to excute an existing plan. Although there were plenty of steady fees for the 'safe hands' jobs the feeling was that they too often had to compromise their own standards in delivery on these jobs. The marketing material was therefore constructed to appeal to clients who wanted technical expertise and input as part of what they were buying.
Comments
Many companies find themselves negotiating solely on price for delivery of products and services. Without knowing what, other than price, is important to a customer it's difficult to put forward any credible negotiation. And yet the act of eliciting what is of greatest importance is relatively simple and can be done conversationally at the first point of contact. Furthermore when those criteria common to most or all clients are recognised these can be used as the basis of a marketing drive.
The first point of contact with a customer is when they are likely to start deciding whether or not they will choose a company as a service provider. Asking the right questions at the outset demonstrates credibility and allowing a customer to talk about what is most important to them initiates rapport which underlies any successful relationship - regardless of context.