Page 117 - DMGT308_CUSTOMER_RELATIONSHIP_MANAGEMENT

Customer Relationship Management

Notes  Increased loyalty and cooperation from your operational team
 A better aligned and motivated R&D team
 Full support for your ideas, product and service developments, and campaigns from the
finance guys
 A supportive and engaged senior and non executive management
 All the benefits of an integrated commercial ‘community’ fully aligned and working
together
270º – The Suppliers

Why Market to the Suppliers?

“They’re our suppliers for goodness sake. They should be grateful for whatever orders we give
them. It’s them that should be marketing to us not us to them. We control their success. It’s them
that should be worried about our issues and challenges not us about theirs.”
Well not necessarily. You’ll know from your own point of view that when your customers deal
considerately with you, you tend to work harder for them. If they are loyal to you, you tend to
be more loyal to them, more involved with and interested in them. So it will be the same for
your suppliers.

If you want them to work with and support you, to offer you the best deals on their products and
services, to see you as a key customer that they admire and like and want to go the extra mile for,
then you need to convince them of your worth (and that means much more than simply the
order value). You need to tell them about your successes and to sell them the idea of seeing you
as one of their key customers. You want them, too, to believe in your future. Where possible you
might want their help and support in your campaigning, in offering you discounts and special
deals and in giving you exclusives and even financial support. To do all of this you need to
market the benefits of doing business with your organisation to them and keep doing it so that
they too support you in all you are doing.
All of this is especially true for organisations involved in wholesaling, distribution or who are
a providing a channel to the consumer. As you can only be as good as the products that are
supplied to you and the organisations that supply them, then you are completely dependent on
them. Without their wholehearted support your business will always be held back and your
potential limited.

360º – The Stakeholders

You may well recognise this term. It simply refers to all of those who have a stake in your
organisation. At first sight you may be thinking that this merely means your shareholders, but,
in fact your stakeholder group is almost certainly wider than this. In fact the term ‘stakeholders’
classically refers to:

1. Staff
2. Suppliers
3. Shareholders (and the analysts that advise them)
4. Other investors and backers (banks and bondholders)

5. The local communities in which you operate
6. Unions

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