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GENERATE GROWTH WITH VoC STRATEGIES

GROWTHDRIVING

WITH VoC

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B-TO-B CUSTOMER STRATEGIES

Not all companies are alike, and most organizations can’t identify with the strategies of large, consumer brands often used as case examples. At Walker, we feel the unique nature of B-to-B customer strategies does not receive adequate focus, and that’s why we’re developing a series focused on voice-of-the-customer strategies for B-to-B organizations.

We recognize the unique challenges associated with complex accounts, complicated purchasing processes, layers of supply chain relationships, and other characteristics that affect customer relationships. We’ll address these issues, provide real examples, and cite best practices to help customer strategists.

Join in the conversation! Let us know if you have a best practice to share or a topic to request. You can contact me at pgibbons@walkerinfo.com.

Patrick Gibbons Principal, Senior Vice President

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DRIVING GROWTHAll companies are focused on growth, and right now, it’s a difficult time to grow. Although the economy is showing signs of recovery, spending is still restrained. Procurement has become more powerful, and their focus is on lowering costs, not on building relationships. Competition for every dollar spent continues to get stronger.

But, there is a way to grow in this challenging business environment – let customers show you the way.

One of the most crucial elements to this type of growth is how you manage and leverage your customer relationships. Clearly, companies with solid growth strategies have strong customer relationships at the foundation of their plan. Walker has decades of experience working with market leaders that have successfully leveraged their customer relationships to grow their business.

5 STRATEGIES FOR GROWTH

Whether your focus is on growing relationships, developing solutions, or expanding markets, you can earn more from your current and prospective customers with the five strategies outlined in this paper to enhance your success. The first four – customer retention/cross-selling, innovation, growing market share, and market expansion – are strategies for organic growth, and the fifth is growth through mergers and acquisitions.

Walker applies the adjacent framework to help companies organize their strategies for organic customer-focused growth.

Customer retention and cross-selling focuses on strategies to retain and grow current customers utilizing current products.

Innovation focuses on strategies to sell a broader range of products and services to existing customers.

Growing market share focuses on strategies to sell existing products and services to a broader range of customers.

Market expansion focuses on strategies to sell new products and services to new customers.

This process helps an acquiring company’s management team before, during, and after a merger or acquisition, by providing additional, objective information. The solution arms an acquiring company with critical insights about the target’s’ customers to help accelerate value creation and manage risks during a strategic acquisition.

EXISTING

GROWMARKETSHARE

MARKETEXPANSION

CUSTOMERRETENTIONAND CROSS

SELLING

INNOVATION

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PRODUCTS

ORGANIC GROWTH

GROWTH THROUGH MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS

MITIGATERISK

ACCELERATEGROWTH

INCREASEEXIT

MULTIPLES

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CREATE A FOUNDATION FOR GROWTH THROUGH LONG LASTING CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS

It is well known that one of the most effective ways for a company to grow is to retain and grow the customers they already have. This is the true foundation for growth. Market leading companies have demonstrated that listening to their customers and acting on their insights has a big payoff.

Critical to customer stability in a B-to-B environment is the ability to identify those customers that may leave and those customers that show growth potential. This requires companies to have an effective way to gather insights and segment customers according to these key criteria.

CUSTOMER RETENTION & CROSS-SELLINGCustomer retention and cross-selling focus on strategies to deliver current products or services to existing customers.

STEPS TO GROW THROUGH RETENTION & CROSS-SELLING

• Salvage high risk customers–An obvious place to start is to focus on those customers that are high risk. In particular, if you can align each customer with financial data (revenue, profitability, etc.) you can quickly determine your priorities for action.

•Develop trapped customers – While trapped customers aren’t necessarily leaving soon, they likely will leave if a suitable option comes along. A deliberate action plan should be constructed to develop stronger relationships to increase loyalty and long-term retention.

• Learn from accessible customers – Accessible customers have a good attitude, but may no longer need the solution they have been purchasing from you. Learning from them presents opportunities to sell other solutions that they may not have considered in the past.

• Leverage loyal customers – Loyal customers present terrific cross-selling opportunities. Not only are they likely to increase their spending with you, but they are typically open to considering additional products and services.

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BEHAVIOR

HIGHRISK

TRAPPED

ACCESSIBLETRULYLOYAL

Walker’s Loyalty Matrix is a practical and relevant framework for assessing risk by segmenting customers into four categories based on their attitude toward your company and their plans for future business:

1. Truly Loyal – Positive attitude, plan to continue working with you.

2. Accessible – Positive attitude, but not likely to continue.

3. Trapped – Not committed, but will continue for now.

4. High Risk – Negative attitude, not planning to continue.

B-TO-B SERIES – DRIVING GROWTH WITH VoC

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CONNECT WITH EXISTING CUSTOMERS TO GENERATE INNOVATIVE NEW SOLUTIONS

Sometimes companies are so focused on the pursuit of new accounts they neglect one of the greatest sources of opportunities they have – their current customers. Your voice-of-the-customer strategy can be one of the greatest sources for innovative new products and services to expand your business with existing customers.

Customer-focused companies have discovered many productive ways to generate ideas from their customers. Customer councils, communities, surveys, and many other methods have created an open dialogue for customers to share their toughest challenges and contribute excellent new ideas. It’s critical not only to encourage their input, but to have an approach for putting it to use.

There is no shortage of good sources as the diagram below implies.

INNOVATIONInnovation focuses on strategies to sell a broader range of products and services to existing customers.

STEPS TO GROW THROUGH INNOVATION

• Integrate customer insights – Companies can start by developing key methods or “listening posts” to gather and integrate ideas, thoughts, and even complaints from customers. All of these can unveil new opportunities.

•Deliver insights intelligently – The right insights must be delivered to the right people to prompt action. This ensures new ideas don’t fall between the cracks.

• Identify solutions with potential – With the right people involved analysis can be conducted to understand both the feasibility and potential impact of new solutions.

• Team up with loyal customers – Customers can play a key role in refining new solutions. Your most loyal customers can often become early adopters of new solutions and can provide your first testimonials.

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• Trend Analysis

• Competitive Intelligence

SOURCES

• Quantitative Research

• Qualitative Research

• Customer Database and CRM

• Benchmarking

• Sales Data

• Customer Communities

• Surveys

• Social Media

• Observation and Shadowing

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PROFILE YOUR CUSTOMERS TO TARGET NEW ONES

Why do customers buy from you? More specifically, why do your best customers buy from you? Answering those questions can be the first step to having a voice-of-the-customer strategy that helps you grow your market share.

In any well designed VoC strategy you learn a great deal about your customers. From information you likely already have, you can profile customers to understand the characteristics that are common in your best relationships. Insight from lost customers and/or lost prospects can make this information even richer. These insights can then help you efficiently target the best prospects to pursue and even target customers of particular competitors that may be most likely to be interested in your solutions.

Another under-used source for growing market share is the use of referrals. In one case a software firm found that nearly 1,800 of their customers indicated they would recommend their reseller. Many of them indicated they would even share their contact information to help those that would benefit from the company’s products and services. Following up from this they acquired more than 150 referrals that were used to pursue new business.

GROW MARKET SHAREGrowing market share focuses on strategies to sell existing products and services to a broader range of customers.

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STEPS TO GROW THROUGH MARKET SHARE

• Profile your customers – Go after customers that match the profile of your best-fitting existing customers.

• Target competitors’ customers – Pursue competitor’s customers that match the profile of your best-fitting existing customers.

•Develop referrals – You have customers that say they are willing to recommend you. Make the most of these by having a process for following up on recommendations and referrals.

Profiling your customers based on what matters most to them can help you efficiently target new customers.

Seeking Value Simple Process

Saving Time

Make It Easy

Best Quality

B-TO-B SERIES – DRIVING GROWTH WITH VoC

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IDENTIFY THE BEST NEW SOLUTIONS TO BRING TO MARKET

When the market matures how do you know where to turn next? In today’s B-to-B environment, companies must innovate to survive and thrive. They need to constantly assess their capabilities and pursue solutions that can bring new opportunities for growth.

What’s more, the world is a big place and companies must consider new solutions for markets in geographic areas that are rapidly growing and developing. However, companies often find that these markets have unique needs which present challenges that may never before have been encountered.

Market expansion is all about alignment, and an effective voice-of-the-customer strategy can be an effective means to bring it about. Consider the questions in the framework to help design ways for your customers to assist in developing approaches for market expansion.

MARKET EXPANSIONMarket expansion focuses on strategies to sell new products and services to new customers.

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STEPS TO GROW THROUGH MARKET EXPANSION

It all begins, as it should, with the customer. Companies must often reinvent their business models and processes based on innovation, integration, and collaboration to bring profitable products and services to market.

• Commit to customer centricity in new product planning – Focusing on services with more likelihood of meeting significant customer needs is key to profitable new product development.

• Break down the silos for using customer insights – Partner with key development departments to ensure they are involved and supportive of VoC strategies and are committed to incorporating customer insights in their work.

• Tap into a larger pool of ideas – Customer will lead you to new customers. Read their comments, talk to them, and solicit their feedback. Don’t just rely on the ideas that reside amongst the workforce and business partners.

What are yougood at?

Problems?Opportunities?

How do you get there?

Where do youwant to go?

Expertise

Innovation

CustomerInsights

NewMarkets

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Although often overlooked, the loyalty of the customer base is arguably the most important asset any target company has to offer. It’s important for today’s acquiring companies to direct full attention to this fact by incorporating effective customer due diligence processes before – and integration after – all have signed on the bottom line.

M&A deals can become more accretive through a better understanding of the value of a company’s customer base. After all, companies with more loyal customers demand higher valuations, grow more quickly, are more profitable, and have greater operating leverage.

In today’s marketplace, the need for understanding and mitigating significant risks prior to the completion of any transaction is becoming increasingly important. Informed acquiring companies develop more accurate revenue and cost-saving projections and execute more customer-focused integration plans.

CUSTOMER DUE DILIGENCE CUSTOMER GROWTH STRATEGIES

THEREAFTER90 DAYS POSTPRE-DEAL

Mitigate Risks in Customer Base Accelerate EBITDA Growth Increase Exit Multiples

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STEPS TO GROW WITH M&A

It all begins, as it should, with the customer. Companies must often reinvent their business models and processes based on innovation, integration, and collaboration to bring profitable products and services to market.

•DUE DILIGENCE – As the deal is being negotiated, we help you understand the target company’s customer relationships and market position and how that plays into the company’s value.

•POST-DEAL INTEGRATION – We collaborate with the operating unit to identify and develop specific strategies for growth within the customer base.

•ONGOING INTELLIGENCE – By monitoring and leveraging customer relationships, companies can optimize their return on investment.

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONSGrowing through mergers and acquisitions

B-TO-B SERIES – DRIVING GROWTH WITH VoC

RELATED BLOGSThe following pages include blogs related to the topic of driving growth with voice-of-the-customer strategies. Hopefully these will prompt additional ideas that you can put to use in your organization.

Want more? Visit our extensive collection of blogs at blog.walkerinfo.com. Or check our Knowledge Center to find additional resources including Blog Books, white papers, and videos. walkerinfo.com/knowledge-center

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Over the past few months, I have been facilitating action planning workshops with a client who is in the first year of their customer listening program. Much of our focus has been on educating local teams about the information that they now have at their disposal, and on teaching them how to use customer feedback to identify improvement areas within their business.

The thing is, customer feedback has almost unlimited use scenarios – for any business challenge that a company is facing, there can be a customer perspective. And while the information collected through your voice of customer program may not have been specifically designed to answer the question of the day, it can often be mined for relevant insights.

I was reminded of this at one of the workshops I mentioned. As we were sharing results and talking about opportunities, the country manager realized the information we were sharing might offer insight into a conversation the business was having around competitive strategy, specifically: should this company be more aggressively pursuing growth with a specific set of customers whose strength of relationship with a competitor was in question? They had considered internal perspectives and anecdotes along with comparable situations in other countries, but up until the workshop, they had not had any objective measure of the customers’ willingness to switch.

After learning more about the opportunity they were pursuing, we were able to dig in to their customer feedback and come back to them with a customer perspective. In fact, much of the customer base they were considering targeting was very loyal to the competitive supplier –but there was a pocket of opportunity where this loyalty was weaker. Armed with this information, the team was able to refine their strategy and dedicate resources to the most likely “wins.” We’re looking forward to hearing about their successes!

What questions are you grappling with, and how have you used customer insights to develop your strategy?

Jennifer BatleyVice President, Consulting Services

USING CUSTOMER INSIGHT TO TARGET GROWTH STRATEGIES

B-TO-B SERIES – DRIVING GROWTH WITH VoC

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Have you ever had a two-by-four moment? By that, I mean an “a-ha” experience. It’s like someone hit you with a two-by-four and all of a sudden you have clarity about the situation. You see things in a brand new way.

Recently an executive of a leading U.S.-based distribution organization had a “two-by-four” moment when he reviewed their Customer Loyalty results. His company is pursuing a growth strategy, with the goal of increasing profitability and sales. In an effort to better understand the market position, the VOC initiative included a measure to gauge share of wallet. On first glance their results are extremely positive. They have the vast majority of their customers’ business.

But, wait a second. There is a small portion of business that is going to the competition. That share of business going to the competition is increasing. Furthermore, when you translate the amount of business that is going to other organizations into lost sales – here it comes – they are missing out on hundreds of millions of dollars in potential revenue.

The two-by-four moment: They left money on the table by not pursuing all potential business with new customers.

•Whenacquiringnewcustomerstheytargetedthecorebusiness,obtainingabout90%shareonaverage.

• Overtime,theirshareofwalleterodedasthecustomergrewrelationshipswithotherproviders(e.g.downto80%SOWwithinfiveyears).

Are you maximizing relationships with your customers?

Kitty RadcliffVice President, Consulting Services

A TWO-BY-FOUR MOMENT

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In an effort to keep up with the latest news related to mergers and acquisitions, I am continually educating myself by pilfering through a never-ending inventory of content, online and elsewhere. Recently, I have read a number of very good articles and blogs on merger and acquisition strategies, processes, trends, etc., and many of these articles are very articulate in how they advise completing a successful merger or acquisition.

Most recently, I read an article in Consulting Magazine that mentioned some staggering statistics related to the percentage of CEOs that were interviewed not knowing the clear strategic rationale or the long-term financial contribution that the deal would bring to the company. The article was well done and went on to talk about the right questions to ask and shared many strong points related to today’s mergers and acquisitions climate. However, nowhere in the article, or in many other articles on this topic, was there any mention of the need to clearly understand the customer base that is being acquired.

I realize that many mergers and acquisitions are aligned to a pure financial play or intellectual property or other non customer-related attributes, but for those mergers and acquisitions that have greater strategic implications the goal still remains to impact the multiple or potential market share gain or successful entry into a new market. So shouldn’t it be of primary importance to include a thorough examination of the customer base? Thorough, meaning a deep, fully representational view crossing segments, geographies, and the population as a whole? I have seen, first hand, the fall-out of completing an acquisition without proper due diligence on the customer base. Needless to say, it didn’t end well. This does not have to be the case. Understanding your customers to create competitive advantages begins before and culminates with the completion of an exit with favorable valuation multiples.

Michael GoodVice President, Strategic Accounts

ARE CUSTOMER PART OF YOUR MERGER AND ACQUISITION STRATEGY?

B-TO-B SERIES – DRIVING GROWTH WITH VoC

THE WALKER INDEX™

ABOUT WALKERWalker specializes in customer loyalty and related customer strategies, including innovative approaches to segmenting, valuing, obtaining, serving, and growing customers. Walker’s diverse team of consultants provides tailored, comprehensive solutions to help companies achieve their business objectives and, ultimately, grow shareholder value. Walker’s consultants regularly conduct workshops and assessment programs to help organizations improve their ability to administer customer listening programs.

The Walker Index is a stock index comprised of current Walker clients. Companies are included in the index only during their tenure as Walker clients. Companies attracted to Walker are committed to using the customer perspective as an impactful management tool. The Walker Index indicates these companies outperform the broad markets.

For the most up-to-date Walker Index, please visit walkerinfo.com/consulting

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