Customer Plan - Just the Numbers

When asking for the customer plans, I am constantly amazed when all I’m shown is an excel spreadsheet of forecast numbers, supported by a three month deal promo plan. Sounds familiar?

Even, sales teams – where the customer is a ‘way of life’ – tend to reduce plans to numbers. Often, this is because they’re responding to the demands of finance or senior management. It’s also a function of the planning process, which we’ve all endured in one shape or form.
While the planning process drives relationship development, it’s intrinsically focused on delivering the numbers, not on developing the relationship. This is fundamental stuff. We all know the numbers flow from a ‘Goldlilocks zone’ relationship.
That’s why we’ve re-orientated the customer planning process and focused on the areas which drive relationship development and mutual value. An amazing part of the doctoral programme is the continual discovery of nuggets of insight, and joining then up to further our understanding of B2B customer relationship development. This has lead to a totally new way of working with the customer planning process.
Emphasis has switched from a purely linear numbers approach to a more holistic one that drives relationship and value development simultaneously. In this way, the customer plan has real, tangible meaning for the sales team as it’s based on customer related activities: things that you can do ! Yet, it still meets demands of finance and senior management as the number are still there

If You only do one thing… make sure you have more than numbers in your customer plan.

Have a view on this? Tweet to @customerattune or Tweet to @MarkHollyoake

Dr Mark Hollyoake

Mark is a co-founder and Director of Customer Attuned Ltd. He holds a Doctorate from the University ofSouthampton, his thesis focused on Trust as a dynamic within business to business customer relationships.

He is an expert in B2B Customer Experience and Customer Management. This includes CM strategy development; execution of improvement plans (incl. organisational modelling for customer management); programme design; and partnership & alliance development.

Mark's applied work across FMCG, industrials, medical devices, financial services, business services and construction has led to organisations making, significant improvements to their customer management. A large focus of this work has been moving organisations up the Trust Ladder to enable them to benefit from reduced cost to serve, while continuing to innovate and deliver mutual value.

Mark is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and Member of the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management. He holds an MBA in strategy from Henley Business School.

Latest posts by Dr Mark Hollyoake (see all)