Para acabar com o deixar dinheiro em cima da mesa - parte Ib

Continuado da Parte I.

Ainda sobre a primeira regra, para acabar com o dinheiro deixado em cima da mesa das negociações, "Rule One: Replace the Discounting Habit with a Little Arrogance", retirada de "Pricing with confidence - 10 ways to stop leaving money on the table" de Reed Holden e Mark Burton, vamos encontrar um tema recorrente aqui no blogue:

"One of the problems that leads to discounting is salespeople and managers who look for every opportunity to sell something. They don’t stop and ask whether any particular customer or order is good or bad for the business. This is one of the root causes that leads to excessive discounting: selling to customers who don’t and will never value the things you do as a firm. To make matters worse, these may be the customers who switch vendors, complain about everything, and extract all sorts of extra services that they don’t pay for. Why do we continue to serve them? Because we are trained to satisfy the customers, whatever it takes. Whether it’s smart—in other words, profitable—to continue to serve individual customers rarely enters the conversation."

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"The correct response is to take a step back. Within the global view of possible markets, identify which customers and markets you cannot serve at a profit. If some customers are marginally profitable, but others are significantly more profitable, is your company better off serving the former, or are you better off focusing resources on the more profitable opportunities? It’s a matter of defensive strategy.
It’s simply better for you that unprofitable customers are served by your competitors. It’s one less burden for you and one more for them. It’s important to determine which doors you do or don’t want your salespeople knocking on. If you don’t identify these doors, salespeople will waste their time and sell to customers that don’t value your offerings."

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The reality is that serving a large percentage of customers represents a loss for the business. The challenge, of course, is for a company to distinguish between the customers it can serve at a profit and those it cannot."

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"Because they are desperate for business, most managers don’t want to fire customers. We don’t like to do it either. The goal, of course, is to convert unprofitable customers into profitable ones. Before making a unilateral decision, we recommend that you have a candid conversation with the customers. Tell them why the relationship is not sustainable in its present form and let them know you are prepared to end the relationship. Some percentage of those bottom customers (larger than you may think) will understand and offer to keep doing business with you on some new terms."

Tantas e tantas vezes voltamos ao tema, ele é decisivo: quem são os clientes-alvo? Que procuram e valorizam?
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Como é a curva de Stobachoff da sua empresa? Qual a  percentagem de clientes com os quais a sua empresa perde dinheiro? Não tem clientes que geram prejuízo? A sério? Kotler e Byrnes apontam para cerca de 40% a quantidade de empresas americanas com clientes que dão prejuízo.