Services
Koru offers a number of sales improvement services in six key areas:
Customer Relationship Management
Over the past twenty years or so ever more sophisticated techniques have been devised to reduce or manage companies' costs. Whilst the benefits of continuing cost management are clear, many businesses have reached the limits of cost cutting alone. This is increasingly recognised both by senior executives themselves and by their professional advisers. There is now only one way to go - increase revenues, and a key part of this drive is to improve the productivity of a company's salesforce.
In a bid to increase sales productivity, many companies have invested heavily in CRM systems over the last 10 years, especially in Sales Force Automation and the hoped for gains have sometimes been slow to materialise, non existent or even the opposite – decline rather than gain. Koru's experience of the introduction of CRM systems to sales organisations offers independent help to our customers whatever stage they have reached; before they buy, to select the right system at the right price; during implementation, to ensure deployment is both rapid and cost effective; and after deployment, to make sure that sales productivity gains are realised. For detail of our services go to Customer Relationship Management.
Key Account Management (KAM) is a systematic process for managing key interactions and relationships with critical accounts. Writers sometimes quote the Pareto Principle to describe strategic accounts: 20 percent of the customers generate 80 percent of the revenue/profit. It's usually an apt comparison, although the numbers can vary dramatically if the supplier's strategy has targeted emerging or medium-sized accounts. Nonetheless, key accounts tend to provide a disproportionate share of a supplier's revenue/profit.
The supplier's future tends to be intertwined with these accounts' success. With customers whose contribution is that critical, KAM can play a crucial role in a supplier's marketing strategy. That's why successful KAM tends to be a company wide initiative, systematically and proactively delivering strategic solutions to multiple contacts at targeted key accounts, in order to capture a dominant share over time.For detail of our services go to Key Account Management.
There is no doubt that sales productivity is becoming a bigger and bigger issue for most business to business organisations. The demand for good sales people far outstrips supply and those companies that make a conscious decision to treat sales as an investment will undoubtedly be the ones that succeed. There are many definitions of sales productivity as there are issues which have a negative impact on it. However, many organisations are not aware that they can increase both sales capacity and capability without increasing their sales headcount or making “act of faith” investments in training, sales techniques and methodologies or new IT systems. Go to our Productivity page and assess your current sales investment and take time to think about the results.
We are often asked the difference between training and learning and in essence we describe training as a one off event and learning as an ongoing process. Training is generally ineffective without practice and reinforcement and learning is all about these two key criteria. More>>
Interim Sales and Sales Management
There are many issues driving the increased use of interim sales managers and people. The increasing demand for good people against a supply that is unable to keep pace is just one. This alone is driving up the cost of acquisition and retention of people and there are plenty of head hunters chasing your best performers. Interims are a good way to help of filling short term gaps, hard to fill positions or just to buy you time while you find the right person. There are other good reasons why interims are a good use of your sales budget; click here to find out more.
The IT services industry in the United Kingdom is vastly fragmented and hugely competitive. In the UK alone there are in excess of 2000 IT services companies; they range from one man lifestyle businesses to global players like IBM Global Services. They provide everything from the provision of a single PC to business consultancy. However, apart from the big names, which can use brand and reputation as a differentiator, many sell on price, relationships, and/or service quality. No one is going to own up to having poor service quality or poor customer relationships, so often the common denominator in the industry is price.
For services businesses, which are 100% people driven, price should really be an unacceptable basis for doing business. This is especially true when, according to iProfileStats and ATSCo, average IT salaries increased by 15% in the last year.
All businesses have to sell and compete to make an acceptable profit, and this is where Koru can help. We have over 50 years of experience marketing, selling, and profitably managing in the IT services sector. We have used this experience to develop a number of services that help our clients sell more, sell better and sell faster. For detail of our services go to IT Services Sales Strategy.