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Customer Relationships
Managing relationships is one of the critical success factors in managing sales. What form might relationships between selling organisations and customers take?
There are many forms that relationships taken between selling organizations and customers. The most critical determinant of how the relationships and selling organizations is the business model of the company itself. For those companies whose business models are predicated on solving complex, intricate problems for customers, direct selling relationships are the most common. The reliance on a consultative, relationship-based selling strategy is often used by companies whose business models focus on complex, challenging problems other businesses have. This approach to selling often puts the role of being a trusted advisor at the center of the selling relationship strategies (Czerniawska, 2005).
In companies who have products that rely primarily on price and availability, the selling relationship are focused on direct selling, persuasive selling, and price-based selling (Leibowitz, 2010).
The relationships between selling organizations and customers is also predicated on the products and services being sold, how quickly they change or stay the same, and the pricing strategies of companies as well. For those products that change rapidly and have many substitutes, the direct sell, often...
For products that have longer lives and often have services bundled in to them, the consultative, more relationship-based sell is relied on, again as trust is so critical in these types of selling efforts (Czerniawska, 2005).
A third factor that defines the form of relationship between selling organizations and customers is the level of expertise needed to ensure the products and services are used as effectively as possible. The sales of jet engines by Rolls Royce and Boeing for example is a very complex, very long-term type of selling strategy that concentrates on technical expertise and guidance. The selling relationship as a result revolves around technical expertise and thought leadership in the areas of aerodynamics, jet engine production, and the development of next-generation plane designs. This is a consultative selling relationship given the need for intensive levels of knowledge transfer and one company becoming nearly synonymous to the other in terms of structure and approach to sharing information.
What factors determine the form of relationship a selling organisation should seek to have with its customers?
The factors that determine the form of relationship a selling organization should seek with its customers include the distribution channels chosen for the product or service, the…
References
Fiona Czerniawska. (2005). The New Business Consulting Landscape. Consulting to Management, 16(4), 3-6.
Leibowitz, J.. (2010). Rediscovering the art of selling. The McKinsey Quarterly,(2), 117.
This program helps users include articles that their customers find interesting, and to promote their products and services. This program also includes numerous discounts. The objective of this program is represented by building brands and reaching certain categories of customers (UNFI, 2011). United Natural Foods' customers are represented by smaller, medium, and larger retailers. Some of them are store departments, while other focus on selling organic products. When collecting information
The communication system may be able to facilitate the transfer of information, but an essential component of a CRM system is the transfer of responsibility. Somebody at the company must be responsible for every customer issue that arises. This is the only way that the company can ensure that its customers' needs are truly being met. Because of this need for responsibility, it is essential that customer relationship management
just an isolated or siloed strategy. Gartner's definition is shown in Figure 1. Figure 1: Gartner Group's Eight Levels of CRM Gartner has defined CRM using both purely technologically-based approaches and the processes that occur in any company looking to serve customers. Yet the most important area of this graphic is the interaction of the valued customer experience and organizational collaboration. At the store level of the example of the manager
Consider how Harley-Davidson has created an exceptional brand with little reliance on technology and exceptional execution of their events including the annual rides and the mega-event in Sturgis, South Dakota that draws owners and celebrities globally (Schembri, 2009). A lack of technology is not a death-knell to any customer-centered business, but one that makes customer relationships, trust, empathy and transparency all even more critical than they have been before. Without
Generally, the principal means of achieving that essential integration of functions is through modern data information systems capable of storing relevant information and connecting it in ways that are conducive to promoting sales opportunities. In addition to the functions of information storage and processing, technology also provides a degree of automation that allows the easy accommodation of processes that would be either extremely difficult and time-consuming or completely overwhelming if
Customer Relationships Nordstrom, Inc. has long enjoyed a reputation for providing superior customer service. This paper examines Nordstrom strategies that the retailer employs to build customer relationships and promote customer loyalty. Nordstrom is one of the nation's leading fashion specialty retailers, with 204 stores that are located in 28 states. It was founded in 1901 as a shoe store in Seattle, and today operates 115 full-line stores, 86 Nordstrom Racks, two Jeffrey