Your best customers?
Sometime ago, a client of mine in the healthcare industry gave my team and I a very simple assignment: " Increase the sales"!
The client, a subsidiary of a fortune 100 company, was wondering why its USD 100 Million yearly revenues were not lifting up.
This case was actually quite complex and very interesting. We'll see today one of the issues:
Looking at how the client had segmented its market, we found out that only two groups were so far identified. The "best customers" that were driving the sales and the "others" still not converted to a big purchaser status. To our client's credit, the technology was rather new and leading edge in the field of healthcare with actually very little customer data.
After collecting data and conducting a finer analysis, I found out that their market segment was actually constitued of 4 groups: the current "Heavy consummers", the biggest purchases, who were actually driving innovation, research, and whose main focus was to drive technology to even higher levels. The "Pragmatists" who were not specifically doing research but were closely following recent developments, trying to see how to adapt the technology to other forms of applications. The "Strugglers" who were trying to to see how to use the new technology, improve their skills with little information and noone to really turn to. And then, the "Total beginers" craving for any type of information, not even knowing where to start with.
Once these typologies were identified, it was quite easy to address their needs and consequently drive up the sales.
The biggest purchasers, the group that had all the company focus, were actually only making the technology extremely exclusive rather than making it accessible to more! Their interest was research and they had little time for the common user... No need to say that the focus then shifted to the "Pragmatists" who were more apt to develop the use of the technology.
The little conclusion of this very nice case was: you biggest customer is not necessarily you best customer!...
The client, a subsidiary of a fortune 100 company, was wondering why its USD 100 Million yearly revenues were not lifting up.
This case was actually quite complex and very interesting. We'll see today one of the issues:
Looking at how the client had segmented its market, we found out that only two groups were so far identified. The "best customers" that were driving the sales and the "others" still not converted to a big purchaser status. To our client's credit, the technology was rather new and leading edge in the field of healthcare with actually very little customer data.
After collecting data and conducting a finer analysis, I found out that their market segment was actually constitued of 4 groups: the current "Heavy consummers", the biggest purchases, who were actually driving innovation, research, and whose main focus was to drive technology to even higher levels. The "Pragmatists" who were not specifically doing research but were closely following recent developments, trying to see how to adapt the technology to other forms of applications. The "Strugglers" who were trying to to see how to use the new technology, improve their skills with little information and noone to really turn to. And then, the "Total beginers" craving for any type of information, not even knowing where to start with.
Once these typologies were identified, it was quite easy to address their needs and consequently drive up the sales.
The biggest purchasers, the group that had all the company focus, were actually only making the technology extremely exclusive rather than making it accessible to more! Their interest was research and they had little time for the common user... No need to say that the focus then shifted to the "Pragmatists" who were more apt to develop the use of the technology.
The little conclusion of this very nice case was: you biggest customer is not necessarily you best customer!...
posted by Gilles Daquin at 3:16 PM
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