Τρίτη 22 Μαΐου 2012

Sales Channels Are Driven By The Client

Many years ago the only channels that most organisations would use would be the direct and indirect sales channels. The promotion of the product would be carried out by marketing in the form of advertising campaigns, newsletters, direct mail, exhibitions, seminars, etc.

As technology became available and affordable companies employed web sites and e-marketing campaigns trying to drive interested parties to engage so that they could be pursued as leads.



The biggest revolution today is that technology is not only available and affordable to companies, but to anyone. That allows for innovation not only in companies but in other institutions and by budding entrepreneurs such us Mark Zuckerberg, and his classmates at Harvard University, Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, and Chris Hughes. Another is Twitter founded by Jack Dorsey.

Both Twitter and Facebook have given enormous power to ordinary people to communicate with each other. The extension of this is that the same people are talking about products and services, things that are the ‘rage’ that you must have, e.g. iPhone, or venting their feelings about awful experiences to warn others and by doing so letting the offending company know in a very public way.

In business we are embracing the use of media such as Twitter and Facebook, but the biggest challenge is how to integrate them into one cohesive strategy that is supported by systems that not only are used to store the information received, but can manipulate it and use it as sales and marketing, and customer service intelligence to improve products and services that are being offered and ultimately to grow the business.

The challenge for system suppliers is to produce CRM, sales performance management, sales force automation, revenue performance management, marketing management systems that are adaptable to the changing ways that the client wishes to go to market, whether the client is reviewing or buying products and/or services. There are systems on the market that are catering for the new channels and the use in generating awareness, interest, and business. It is getting a system or systems to deal seamlessly with the whole client process from marketing, to sales, through to customer service that is presenting problems. There are companies that capture information from their web site, but have another system to capture information about their marketing campaigns. Then there are companies that have an additional sales management system.

Many systems that are implemented today seem to be rigid in structure that is if one was to compare them to a shape they would be represented by a cube. What is needed are systems that help businesses manage all of the client facing process seamlessly, both from the selling and buying point of view, and also adapt to the different channels that the clients are using during the process. In this case there can be a specific shape at any one moment, but it can change depending on the behaviour of the market and the clients. It can be a cube, but it might have to be any given shape at any given moment. The system needs to be based on a framework that can easily be manipulated to take any form at any time.

The reason for this is that the client is running the show, especially how he wishes to be engaged, and we have to be receptive to it both internally and externally of the business.

http://www.symvolli.com/

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