For a good number of the Vice Presidents of Sales, the economy is forcing them to rely upon cross/up-selling current customers to generate anywhere from 10% to 50% of their annual quota. One of their big concerns is the increase in customer attrition. Given the current cost and difficulty of acquiring new customers, customer attrition is not only making it very difficult to meet sales quotas but it is also eating into the company’s overall profitability.
An old idea that is gaining new popularity among sales managers is the idea of using customer feedback tools (surveys, Twitter, etc) to help identify customers who are likely to defect to the competition and rescue them before it is too late. Although not fool proof, I’ve seen companies identify and rescue 6,300 customers over a single year representing over $2.2 million in recovered revenues.
Care needs to be given to basic survey administration best practices to avoid the problems of survey fatigue, useless data, and to ensure at-risk customers are contacted in a timely and proper manner. For tips on avoiding the most common customer feedback pitfalls, see Bob Thompon’s post “Five Voice of the Customer Pitfalls.”
