Account Scorecard Tool

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To say that customer-manufacturer relationships are complex and multidimensional understates the challenges most manufacturers face. Account manages and their teams negotiate with multiple parties, work around constraints (of customers and manufacturers), and respond to competitive surprises. Within the context of multiple customer relationship challenges, Sales Leaders' must make decisions about scarce  resources, in the face of uncertainty and achieve positive returns on investment. To support our clients in these challenges, DHC has developed an account scorecarding tool that takes in evidence from multiple sales relationship dimensions that matter to a manufacturer and puts customers on a comparable basis; the tool creates a common score by making consistent trade-offs across dimensions.

We develop the tool by first identifying for each client "what matters" in the comparison, ranking or segmentation of their customers, for example, size, potential, profitability, strategic alignment or partnership status. We develop metric to measure each factor. While the exact metric for any client situation will vary, our templates and data sources address a wide variety of client situations, including:

·         objective measurement of direct and indirect shipment or point of sale data

·         survey responses by account team members, or account managers

·         objective of measurement of strategic milestone achievement, for example, number of or days since the last top to top meeting, customer visit to plants for facilities or implementation status for key initiatives

·         custom metrics to measure customer performance or compliance with category standards, competitors strategy.

Lastly we transform the raw data sources into comparable measures across customers.  Doing so allows disparate data sources to be combined and weighted in the manner meeting management's objectives, with the additional benefit of allowing comparison and grouping of customers as needed.

Once in a Sales Leader's possession a variety of challenges can be addressed, for example a Sales Leader could:

·         measure customer performance by segment and identify the causes of winning customer segments

·         allocate scarce trade promotion funds to most deserving customers, or

·         identify key customers strategy designed to move customers from a less to more desirable activity segment

·         establish customer plans and strategies in consideration of a weighted and multi-dimensional profile

These tools are implemented though basic Microsoft Excel and database tools.  With minimal training, sales operations departments can update the tool and implement new scoring mechanisms as management priorities change, making the scorecarding tool a current and relevant device to the changing marketplace.

Contact us for a demonstration