Customer focus

Many companies today have a customer focus (or customer orientation). This implies that the company focuses its activities and products on consumer demands. Generally there are three ways of doing this: the customer-driven approach, the sense of identifying market changes and the product innovation approach.

In the consumer-driven approach, consumer wants are the drivers of all strategic marketing decisions. No strategy is pursued until it passes the test of consumer research. Every aspect of a market offering, including the nature of the product itself, is driven by the needs of potential consumers. The starting point is always the consumer. The rationale for this approach is that there is no point spending R&D funds developing products that people will not buy. History attests to many products that were commercial failures in spite of being technological breakthroughs.[3]

A formal approach to this customer-focused marketing is known as SIVA[4] (Solution, Information, Value, Access). This system is basically the four Ps renamed and reworded to provide a customer focus.

The SIVA Model provides a demand/customer centric version alternative to the well-known 4Ps supply side model (product, price, place, promotion) of marketing management.
Product     →     Solution
Promotion     →     Information
Price     →     Value
Place     →     Access

The four elements of the SIVA model are:

1. Solution: How appropriate is the solution to the customer’s problem/need?
2. Information: Does the customer know about the solution? If so, how and from whom do they know enough to let them make a buying decision?
3. Value: Does the customer know the value of the transaction, what it will cost, what are the benefits, what might they have to sacrifice, what will be their reward?
4. Access: Where can the customer find the solution? How easily/locally/remotely can they buy it and take delivery?

This model was proposed by Chekitan Dev and Don Schultz in the Marketing Management Journal of the American Marketing Association, and presented by them in Market Leader – the journal of the Marketing Society in the UK.

The model focuses heavily on the customer and how they view the transaction.

Online Banking:

Customer satisfaction in online banking, while on the rise, still trails online retailing by five percentage points, 78% vs. 83%, according to Larry Freed, CEO

Concept of Marketing

“Marketing” is an instructive business domain that serves to inform and educate target markets about the value and competitive advantage of a company and its products. “Value” is worth derived by the customer from owning and using the product. “Competitive Advantage” is a depiction that the company or its products are each doing something better than their competition in a way that could benefit the customer.

Marketing is focused on the task of conveying pertinent company and product related information to specific customers, and there are a multitude of decisions (strategies) to be made within the marketing domain regarding what information to deliver, how much information to deliver, to whom to deliver, how to deliver, when to deliver, and where to deliver. Once the decisions are made, there are numerous ways (tactics) and processes that could be employed in support of the selected strategies.

As Marketing is often misinterpreted as just advertising or sales, Chris Newton, in What is marketing? (Marketing Help Online, 2008), defined marketing as every strategy and decision made in the following twelve areas:

* Identifying and quantifying the need in the marketplace
* Identifying and quantifying the target markets
* Identifying the optimum cost effective media – online and offline – to reach the target markets
* Reviewing the priorities of the product offering in your overall product mix ‘matrix’
* Identifying and developing the most effective distribution channels, be they wholesaler networks, partnering alliances, franchising, or any number of conduits to the market.
* Testing different ways of packaging the concepts or products to find their most ‘easy-to-sell’ form
* Testing to find the optimum pricing strategies
* Developing effective promotional strategies and effective advertising and supporting collateral, offers, and launch strategies
* Developing and documenting the sales process
* Finding the optimum execution of the sales process – through testing of selling scripts, people selection, supporting collateral, skills and attitudinal training, tracking, measuring and refining
* Ensuring that sales projections reflect realistic production capacities
* Developing nurture programs to optimise the lifetime value of the customer

Sales Funnel Constraints & Bottlenecks

I hadn’t thought about the sales funnel specifically in this way as an indicator of bottlenecks.

In my view I had seen prospects clambering out of their own choice or being lured away by an enticing competitor rather than being blocked by a constraint.

I don’t know why.

I talk and write about “helping the prospect to buy” and advocate relentless follow-up but what if your own actions are causing the prospect to become stuck, clinging on to the sides of the funnel as if attached with crampons and a safety rope.

What if the customer thought you made some promise and you haven’t followed through?

What if you sent the brochure but it was lost in the post?

You are waiting for the customer while the prospective customer is becoming increasingly impatient with you.