Overview
Customer Stratification is a critical business process that every distributor should adopt and execute well to achieve greater profitability. Best-in-class distributors categorize customers based on various factors, but customer stratification has long been an unexplored area for most distribution companies. Not anymore. When you educate your staff about the customer stratification best practices, they will have the tools, knowledge, and motivation to establish and sustain this important business process.
The Customer Stratification Program will:
- Demonstrate the customer stratification model;
- Provide exposure to customer analytics,
- Help you apply it to your company data and use for your company.
You will get hands on experience analyzing customers, develop and apply a practical-best practice approach to cost-to-serve customers. The program will also help you understand the concept of “What to do?” and “How to do?” for applying customer stratification to various business decisions such as pricing, marketing, inventory management, sales force compensation, etc.
Benefits
- Understand the differences of value between your customers
- Classify your customers with confidence
- Determine “cost-to-serve”
- Optimize sales force time investment
- Increase your customer retention and revenue
- Maximize your gross margins systematically
- Leverage existing system information for better decisions
- Maximize ROI on sales resources and enhance customer service
Customer Stratification has the power to enable us to transform our company from being product-driven to customer-driven. It has helped us understand our customers in greater detail, enabling us to optimize our selling resources, which will result in an improved ROI.”
-Don Schalk, President and COO, C.H. Briggs Company
Who Should Attend?
- Sales and Marketing Managers
- Business, Branch and Regional Managers
- Pricing Professionals and Business Analysts
- Marketing Professionals and Data Analysts
- Distribution Management Professionals
- Anyone who communicates or works with customers
Deliverables
- Slides as a course booklet
- Workbook for exercises and activities
- Customer Stratification Book
- Optimizing Distributor Profitability book
- Certificate
Required Materials
Laptop with Excel 2007 or later
Key Customer Metrics You Track at Your Firm
Customer Data From Your Firm
Calculator
Schedule
Day 1: 8:00am-5:00pm
Day 2: 8:00am-5:00pm
Day 3: 8:00am-5:00pm
Day 4: 8:00am-5:00pm
Course Outline
Motivation and Trends
Not all customers are created equal. Should you seek to understand customers better? If so, do you have relevant, reliable, and quantifiable information routinely recorded in their IT system on a periodic basis? How should you stratify your customers? These vital questions will be answered.
Customer Stratification
Best-in-class companies categorize customers based on various factors, but customer stratification is still an unexplored area for most companies in wholesale distribution. This is not the case in other industries, such as airlines, hotels, retail stores, and other service businesses.
Best Practices to Stratify Customers
Best practice techniques stratify customers into core, opportunistic, marginal, and service drain. Core customers are profitable customers that transact in high volume on a regular basis. Opportunistic customers are also profitable customers who buy infrequently when their regular supplier stocks out. Marginal customers buy infrequently in low sales volumes and require either low prices or high service levels. Service drain customers are high-volume customers who consistently require higher levels of service while demanding low prices.
Analytics
The program will provide exposure to customer analytics. It will help you understand and apply analytics to your company data in your business setting. You will get hands-on experience analyzing customers using your company data, developing and applying a workable best practice approach to cost-to-serve customers.
Customer Strategies
Once you rank your customers you can understand the concept of “What to do?” and “How to do?” for applying customer stratification to various business decisions such as pricing, marketing, inventory management, sales force compensation, marketing, etc.
Implementation and Roadmap
It’s time to move away from the “gut-feel” and “art” approach to ranking customers and adopting a scientific data driven comprehensive and holistic approach. You will be given a 10 step prescriptive plan to implement customer stratification right away.
Learn the Methodology. We will provide you with Instructions and an Examples
