Stobachoff rings a bell?

"Your Unprofitable Customers Are Killing You"
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Uma lista de sugestões sobre:

• o que não fazer; e
• o que fazer

Para lidar com os clientes que dão prejuízo! Talvez a sua empresa precise de pensar no assunto. O mundo muda e isso não tem repercussões nas suas contas?

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Stobachoff rings a bell?

O problema não é étnico... talvez genético

Com Byrnes e Storbacka aprendemos que os empresários portugueses não são os piores do mundo, afinal o resto do mundo comete o mesma falha de não se concentrar nos clientes-alvo. Este trecho de Kahneman devia ser motivo de reflexão para todos nós que comentamos os projectos de construção no nosso país:

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"In July 1997, the proposed new Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh was estimated to cost up to £40 million. By June 1999, the budget for the building was £109 million. In April 2000, legislators imposed a £195 million “cap on costs.” By November 2001, they demanded an estimate of “final cost,” which was set at £241 million. That estimated final cost rose twice in 2002, ending the year at £294.6 million. It rose three times more in 2003, reaching £375.8 million by June. The building was finally completed in 2004 at an ultimate cost of roughly £431 million.
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(Moi ici: Lembram-se das estimativas de utilização do aeromoscas de Beja? E do TGV em Portugal? E do TGV em Espanha?) A 2005 study examined rail projects undertaken worldwide between 1969 and 1998. In more than 90% of the cases, the number of passengers projected to use the system was overestimated. Even though these passenger shortfalls were widely publicized, forecasts did not improve over those thirty years; on average, planners overestimated how many people would use the new rail projects by 106%, and the average cost overrun was 45%. As more evidence accumulated, the experts did not become more reliant on it. In 2002, a survey of American homeowners who had remodeled their kitchens found that, on average, they had expected the job to cost $18,658; in fact, they ended up paying an average of $38,769."

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Trecho retirado de "Thinking, Fast and Slow" de Daniel Kahneman.

Cuidado com a proliferação da oferta

Outro mal de muitas empresas é o da proliferação de produtos:
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"Product proliferation is often a function of improving customer service and experience. A customer says they love product A and would buy millions of them — if only you could change the color from black to green.
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From that point on, it’s a slippery slope to where if one customer can make a special request, then another makes a special request. The next thing you know, you’re managing an ever increasing number of SKUs (Stock Keeping Units) and the amount of paperwork and quality system management has gone up exponentially.
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What you may NOT notice is that product proliferation creates a quiet profitability leak . Over time, that customer that said they would buy millions of units, only ends up buying a couple hundred thousand. And in a couple of years, the number of units starts decreasing and before you know it, your profit margin is as thin as a human hair. Even worse, you may not even notice how many products you have that fall into this category. All you see is a steadily shrinking margin."

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E então, nestes tempos de redução na procura, um comercial quer ter à mão muitas referências para tentar chegar e conseguir vender algo a alguém.

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Mas perde foco.

Mas confunde os clientes.

Mas aumenta custos de stock.

Mas não escolhe clientes-alvo.

Mas não treina e aperfeiçoa argumentos de compra.

Mas não mergulha a fundo em cada um dos produtos que vende.
Mas não se especializa nos problemas dos clientes que os produtos/serviços tentam resolver.
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Recordar as lições de Gordon Ramsay sobre a proliferação de oferta nos menus: aqui e aqui. 

Trecho retirado de "Is Product Proliferation Killing Your Profitability?"

Um caso (parte I)

A revista HBR vai publicar proximamente este caso "Case Study: When to Drop an Unprofitable Customer".
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Espero proximamente apresentar os meus comentários ao caso. Contudo, para já, gostava de começar por recortar um trecho do caso e pô-lo à consideração de quem vier ler este postal:
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"With 6,000 SKUs and 2,500 customers, the team had to crunch reams of data
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Just 1% of Egan's SKUs accounted for 100% of its operating profits. The most profitable 20% generated more than double that amount, but the extra gains were canceled out by the company's unprofitable products, which generated losses equivalent to 120% of profits. The customer story was similar: The most profitable 1% of accounts generated 100% of profits, and the top 10% accounted for nearly double that amount. The remaining 90% of customers were either break-even or a drag on the bottom line.".
Os valores são impressionantes. É claro que isto é um caso, mas um caso, para ser útil, tem de ter alguma aderência à realidade. Quando aqui referimos a curva de Stobachoff (aqui e aqui), quando aqui referimos os trabalhos de Jonathan Byrnes, quando recordamos a nossa experiência pessoal, podemos perceber que estes casos são mais comuns do que possa parecer.
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Kaplan, Storbacka e Byrnes não escrevem sobre empresas portuguesas.
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E na sua empresa? Como será o cenário?

Clientes-alvo e rentabilidade

Um bom resumo do livro "Islands of Profit in a Sea of Red Ink", publicado em 2010, pode ser encontrado neste postal "Proitability FAQ" escrito por Jonathan Byrnes.
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Tudo ideias que desenvolvemos e defendemos há largos anos neste blogue:
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"All of our management information and processes were developed in a prior business era. Our accounting categories are too broad to see which accounts and products are profitable and which aren’t – so people simply assume that more revenues equals more profits. Some revenues are very profitable, and a surprising portion produce big losses.
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Como dar a volta à situação:
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"(1) the right information – granular (specific products in specific customers) not aggregated; (Moi ici: Quem são os clientes-alvo? E quais os produtos e serviços que vão ao encontro das experiências que procuram e valorizam positivamente? E qual o mosaico de actividades que melhor servem esse binómio clientes-alvo e respectivos produtos e serviços) (2) the right priorities – first, secure and grow the profitable business, then improve the marginal business, then reprice the money-losers; (3) the right processes – mostly coordinating sales, marketing, and operations to get things right; and (4) the right compensation, especially for sales – matching compensation to real profitability, not just revenues."

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Os pecados capitais:

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"Three big mistakes: (1) assuming that more revenues means more profits; (2) failing to focus attention and resources on securing and growing the business that produces high sustained profitability – this makes a company vulnerable to focused competitors and reduces reported profits; and (3) failing to put anyone in charge of maximizing account and product profitability at the grassroots level (in contrast with putting lots of people in charge of managing budgets).

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In the prior “age of mass markets,” companies sought the economies of scale of mass production, coupled with mass distribution using arm’s length customer relationships. In that era, more revenues really did mean lower costs and more profits. In today’s “age of precision markets,” companies form different relationships with different sets of customers, each with different costs and profits. (Moi ici: Esta é a realidade que julgo mais difícil de percepcionar, ter o grau de abstracção suficiente para distinguir diferentes padrões em função de diferentes tipos de clientes. Há dias uma conversa com um empresário começou com ele a defender que todos os clientes eram iguais, não havia clientes-alvo no negócio dele, todos eram alvos. A conversa acabou com o momento de epifania onde emerge na sua cabeça a consequência dessa prática ...  ) Yet, virtually all of our management information and processes were developed in the prior era, when all revenues really were equally desirable. This is the underlying reason why almost every company has so much embedded unprofitability and why so many managers fail to see and build their sustainably profitable core of business."

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Já aqui contei os casos das empresas industriais que em 2009, apesar de quedas de 30% na facturação ganharam mais ou menos o mesmo... fartavam-se de perder dinheiro com alguns clientes. E outro ponto interessante, esses clientes com os quais perdiam dinheiro, não ficavam com esse valor extraído, porque faliram logo em 2009 ou 2010. Um deles presumo que foi vítima de pedofilia empresarial dado que trabalhava para a indústria automóvel.

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Cuide do seu queijo

"Most companies I know have been running pretty hard lately. And, like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, many feel that the faster they go, the behinder they get."

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O famoso Red Queen effect que mata as empresas através da anorexia.

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Quem está entre a manada tem de correr mais sob pena de não ter ração para viver mais um dia, como todos correm mais ou menos juntos, quanto mais um corre mais os outros correm também... até ao esgotamento, quando já não há músculo e é só osso. Nessa altura ficam apenas aqueles que desde o princípio estavam destinados a vencer, não pela sorte mas pela análise fria dos números, como Cornuallis.

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Cornuallis tinha um exército mais experiente, mais disciplinado, mais bem armado e mais numeroso. Ganhou enquanto os revolucionários lutaram seguindo as mesmas regras... começou a perder e perdeu a guerra da independência quando os revolucionários mudaram as regras do jogo.

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"Especially after the last few years, when chasing business has sometimes been frantic, this is a good moment to stand back and ask yourself some hard questions. One of them might be: What's most important now: growth or consolidation?"

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Um das mensagens que continuo a considerar válida, ano após ano, é: impaciente com os lucros e paciente com a quota de mercado, com o volume. É uma vacina contra a comoditização e uma forma de apostar constantemente na subida na escala de valor potencial.

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Talvez 2012, com o choque que o meio abiótico vai proporcionar às empresas, seja um bom ano para reflectir sobre quem tirou o meu queijo:

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"1. Poor strategic focus.
When you take any business you can find, it's easy to discover that your positioning is now way off course–or non-existent." (Moi ici: Em que é que são bons? Em que é que se podem especializar e fazer a diferença? O que é que os apaixona?)

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"2. Bad customers.
Not all customers are equal. Some are demanding and that helps you become better at your job. But others are demanding just for the sake of it. They Drain your time, attention, and patience, and, in essence, they take far more than they will ever pay for. Pure pursuit of revenue says that you have to keep pleasing them. A more analytic approach would highlight the degree to which some customers are unprofitable and therefore need to be fired."  (Moi ici: Quem são os clientes-alvo? Talvez a pergunta mais vezes colocada neste blogue e nas empresas com que contacto. As empresas deviam ser "obrigadas" a fazer as suas curvas de Stobachoff para terem umas surpresas e descobrirem formas simples de aumentarem o lucro)

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"3. Expensive footprint.
It's tempting to take business wherever you can find it. But a very broad geographical spread can cost you a fortune in time and travel. While it may look as though that customer on the other coast takes just a day's work, in reality getting there takes one day and getting back takes another. Does the income justify that expense?"  (Moi ici: Ghemawat em "World 3.0" visualiza como isto é importante. As relações comerciais são sobretudo com os "vizinhos", a importância da proximidade. Mais perto mais flexibilidade, mais relação e menos probabilidade do preço ser o order winner)

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"4. Valuable time.
Many businesses fall into what I call the revenue/time trap. They are so busy chasing cash that they don't have the time to sit down and invest the time and resources required to develop new products or new markets. Impulsive and energetic, they work hard but never attain momentum." (Moi ici: Aquilo a que chamo drenagem do presente, motivo pelo qual falo não de uma empresa mas de 4 em simultâneo e como isso requer jongleurs nas empresas)

A guerra em curso... ou como a inovação é como as mulheres nas empresas

Quando animo uma sessão sobre "Identificação de clientes-alvo e sua caracterização", para responder à pergunta "Afinal para quem vamos trabalhar?", costumo começar por simplificar a coisa e mostrar um mundo de clientes extremados no preço, no serviço e na inovação. Depois, mostro como cada um desses clientes-tipo tem de ser servido por um mosaico de actividades com prioridades e suportado por culturas todas diferentes.
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A figura 12 deste artigo ilustra a confusão de querer ir a todas e servir todo o tipo de clientes... claro, depois os resultados são espelhados por Byrnes e pelas curvas de Stobachoff.
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A escolha dos clientes-alvo determina a cultura, as prioridades, as políticas, as linhas de orientação, o mosaico solidário, sinérgico, de actividades encadeadas capazes de criar a vantagem do serviço e dificultarem a cópia por concorrentes.
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O pior que pode acontecer, é tentar aplicar o que está na moda numa cultura que serve um tipo de clientes-alvo com bons resultados, numa outra cultura que pretende servir outro tipo de clientes-alvo.
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Ao longo dos anos aqui no blogue referi como exemplo disto a tontice da 3M com o Lean Six Sigma:

• "Não culpem a caneta quando a culpa é de quem escreve" (Julho de 2007)
• "O que revela a leitura dos indicadores de um balanced scorecard" (Setembro de 2007)
• "Eficácia, eficiência, processos e proposta de valor" (Abril de 2010)

O problema não é português, é universal. 

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Jeffrey Phillips em "Innovation and Efficiency – Opposing Forces" expande a minha preocupação e clarifica melhor as consequências nefastas de tantos anos de experiência no corte de custos, no impacte negativo das conversas da tríade nos media. Quanto mais os académicos encalhados se enterrarem no pântano da eficiência, da normalização, do QCD, mais aumenta a energia que tem de se gastar para vencer a energia de activação para começar a competir no campeonato que interessa: o campeonato do valor, o campeonato da eficácia, o campeonato da inovação:
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"Efficiency is winning because, to continue the warfare analogy, all the troops have been trained in the cost cutting and efficiency models and methods. We have ninjas stalking through the business reinforcing Six Sigma and Lean concepts. The coin of the realm is paid out to reward efficiency gains far more frequently than innovation outcomes. Business models, processes and methods are much more attuned to efficiency. As these concepts are reinforced, they remind the rest of the troops to place emphasis on reducing risk, reducing variability, reducing costs. When an officer (read executive) argues for a new battle plan, based on innovation, the majority of the organization looks on in horror. No one is familiar with those tools and methods. They introduce risk and uncertainty, with a very indefinite outcome. And innovation doesn’t reinforce the strengths of the existing business model and strategies – in fact it may weaken or destroy the very fortress the firm has worked so hard to build. While I’ve written this in rather florid language, make no mistake, there’s a battle underway in every firm between efficiency and innovation, and efficiency is poised to win in most organizations."

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Agora, recuem, procurem uma janela para onde possam olhar o horizonte e respondam à pergunta:

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As medidas que o governo mais tem badalado nos últimos meses, relativamente à Economia, condicionam, despertam, ajudam, concentram, que tipo de abordagem, a da eficiência ou a da inovação (eficácia)?

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TSU, mais meia-hora, menos feriados... tudo relacionado com os custos de quem já está implantado... nada  relacionado com a eficácia/inovação!!!

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Os nossos amigos finlandeses (com Maliranta à cabeça) ensinaram-me a primeira citação na coluna da direita deste blogue:

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""It is widely believed that restructuring has boosted productivity by displacing low-skilled workers and creating jobs for the high skilled."Mas, e como isto é profundo:"In essence, creative destruction means that low productivity plants are displaced by high productivity plants." Por favor voltar a trás e reler esta última afirmação." 

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O governo fez alguma coisa para facilitar a vida à entrada no mercado de novos players anónimos? Se não, como é que eles, de cabeça limpa, sem a contaminação da eficiência, podem aumentar a nossa produtividade com a inovação? Nunca esquecer Marn e Rosiello, eles foram o farol que me orientou para a viagem que me deu a conhecer o planeta Mongo!!!

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A inovação tem de ser como as mulheres nas empresas... tem de ser muito, muito, muito competente para passar à frente de um homem com muito menos competência.

Ainda acerca da estratégia

"First, you must choose a distinctive value proposition. Which needs will you serve, which customers, at what relative price? Have you staked out a positioning that's different from rivals? (Moi ici: Quem são os clientes-alvo? Como podemos conjugar aquilo em que podemos fazer a diferença, com as preferências de um grupo com o qual parece fazer sentido desenvolver relações?)

Second, and far less intuitive, you must choose to tailor your activities to that value proposition. Competitive advantage lies in the activities, in choosing to perform activities differently or to perform different activities than rivals. These ultimately are the choices that result in a company's ability to charge premium prices or to operate at lower cost. (Remember, we're talking about quantifiable performance.) (Moi ici: O truque de construir um mosaico de actividades)

The third test of strategy, making trade-offs, may well be the hardest. It means accepting limits — saying no to some customers, for example, so that you can better serve others. Porter explains why trade-offs are an important source of profitability differences among rivals, and why trade-offs make it difficult for rivals to copy what you do without compromising their own strategies. The essence of strategy, says Porter, is choosing what not to do.  (Moi ici: E Terry Hill sobre as encomendas mais importantes)

Fit is the fourth test. Great strategies are like complex systems in which all of the parts fit together seamlessly. Each thing you've chosen to do amplifies the value of the other things you do. That's how fit improves the bottom line. It also enhances sustainability. Says Porter, "Fit locks out imitators by creating a chain that is as strong as its strongest link."  (Moi ici: Esta é a base que suporta a explosão de variedade de Mongo. Quanto mais díspares são as "personas" no mercado, e quanto mais fácil se torna a customização, o serviço à cauda longa, mais hipóteses de mosaicos diferentes, autónomos, auto-sustentáveis surgem... e, como tão bem quantifica Byrnes e ilustram as curvas de Stobachoff, é perigoso para a saúde de uma empresa querer ir a todas e servir todo o mundo)

Continuity is strategy's fifth test. While managers are often berated for changing too slowly and too little, it is also possible to change too much, and in the wrong ways. Faced with the latest New Thing, managers must choose whether to embrace it or not. Continuity of strategy helps companies to make good choices about whether and how to change in the face of turbulence. Good choices will strengthen tailoring, sharpen trade-offs, and enhance fit. (Moi ici: Constância de propósito, alinhamento)

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Trechos de "Jim Collins, Meet Michael Porter"

Been there, done that and... moved on

Este postal é para iniciados... e receio confundir os não-iniciados.
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Uma das primeiras questões a colocar, para iniciar uma reflexão estratégica numa empresa é:
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Quem são os clientes-alvo?
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As empresas que não respondem a esta pergunta, ou que não são consequentes com a resposta, tratam os clientes como uma média, a miudagem, um perigoso fantasma estatístico (ver marcadores).
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Não trabalhar para clientes-alvo significa um passaporte para o stuck-in-the-middle, significa incapacidade para actuar num mercado polarizado, ou seja, o fim da linha para essas empresas que são incapazes de se definirem e de escolherem os clientes preferidos.
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Até aqui tudo bem e estou de acordo com Peter Fader "Customer Centricity":
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"Too many people think that being customer centric means doing everything that your customers want, and that's not the case. Being friendly and offering good service are a part of customer centricity, but they are not the whole thing. Customer centricity means that you're going to be friendly, provide good service and develop new products and services for the special focal customers -- the ones who provide a lot of value for you -- but not necessarily for the other ones. You need to pick and choose. Some customers deserve the special treatment, and if others want to buy from you, that's great, but they are not going to be treated the same.
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You are not going to ignore customers. You are not going to fire customers. (Moi ici: Depende, basta recordar as curvas de Stobachoff e os números de Byrnes. Ver marcadores) You are not going to treat them badly, but you will treat some better than others. You are going to be really careful about whom you choose to treat that way and what that treatment means. Does it mean you give those special customers absolutely everything? Maybe not. But you're definitely going to give them more consideration than customers who frankly are not worth that much to you.

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A requirement behind customer centricity is the ability to understand customers at a fairly granular level  (Moi ici: O que chamo: olhar olhos nos olhos, olhar na menina dos olhos dos clientes-alvos) and to be able to identify the customers or the segments of customers who are valuable from the ones who aren't. If you can't sort out your customers -- if you can't look at them and know who is good and who is bad -- then you can't be customer centric. That's step one.
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Step two is having an operational ability as well as an organizational capability to be able to deliver different products and services to different kinds of customers. (Moi ici: Construir, adaptar, um mosaico de actividades auto-reforçadoras. Ver marcadores) That's tough to do.

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Nearly every company on the planet is product centric. You look at their organizational chart, and it's broken up by different kinds of products. You look at the incentives. You look at the language they use. You look at the performance metrics that they rely on. It's all based on different kinds of products. The whole business model is based on producing something or a set of somethings in really high volumes and at really low costs, and that's going to drop to the bottom line. (Moi ici: Recordar aqueles postais recentes: parte I e parte II sobre tudo ser serviço e a co-criação)
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That's more or less business as usual. I'm not suggesting that it's easy, and I'm not suggesting that it's going away tomorrow. But I am suggesting that there are alternatives. If you organize the company around different types of customers and have customer segment managers who are just as powerful as today's product managers are -- giving them the right incentives and the right resources and tools -- that can actually be a more profitable way for many companies to go to market.

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(Moi ici: Now, quite a finale!)

One of the things that surprised me in the book is you say that "the customer" doesn't exist. We've been talking about customers all afternoon. What does that mean? (Moi ici: Recordar os postais do Senhor dos Perdões sobre a tolice da homogeneidade dos mercados)

Fader: One of the things that drives me crazy is when I hear managers or entrepreneurs talking about "the customer," doing back-of-the-envelope calculations about what "the customer" will be worth or discussing how "the customer" will respond to this kind of product or that kind of offer.
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By talking about "the customer" or by talking about "the average customer," that doesn't do justice to the vast heterogeneity and the incredible differences across our customers in terms of their propensity to buy, to talk to each other and to respond to different kinds of offers.

(Moi ici: Agarrem-se às cadeiras, mais um promotor de Mongo) Again, step one of being customer centric is not only acknowledging the heterogeneity, but celebrating it; saying, "Wow, all this heterogeneity is a great thing because it lets us pick and choose different kinds of customers!" (Moi ici: That's the spirit. Mais do que reconhecer e aproveitar a heterogeneidade dos mercados, é celebrá-la, é fazer batota para a aumentar, é assim que se torna a concorrência imperfeita e se criam monopólios de facto) When we say "the customer," we are selling ourselves short. I think it's important to not use those words and to always have a plural there."

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Depois de tudo isto, não posso estar mais de acordo com Fader ... tal como estávamos de acordo com Newton, até que apareceu Einstein... depois de identificarmos os clientes-alvo... descobrimos que isso é, cada vez mais, insuficiente!!! And we moved on.

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Temos de equacionar a cadeia da procura... como aqui relatei em alguns exemplos, uma empresa pode criar um modelo de negócio em que quem paga, o cliente-alvo, não é o foco principal. 

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Para lá da customer-centricity, temos de adoptar a balanced centricity, o many-to-many... (aqui, aqui e aqui)

Basear os preços no valor (parte II)

Parte I,
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A razão mais invocada para o não uso do valor co-criado como a base para a definição dos preços é:
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"Difficulties in making value assessments
The difficulties associated with reliable assessment of value are reflected in the following comment from the chief marketing officer of a software company:
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The research and development department came up with a new software program to help large retailers compare the prices of thousands of competitive products on the Internet in real time. This program helps them to adjust their own prices not only on the basis of data from internal demand, but also on the basis of the prices of competitors, which are usually much harder to get because Internet-based price comparison engines typically do not list prices for toothbrushes, pet-food, beer, and so on. We know there is value in this program for such retailers asWal Mart, K-Mart, and so on. However, we just do not have the tools to attach a financial value to our unique software package.
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Respondents in the pharmaceutical, chemical, and fast-moving consumer goods industries stated that similar difficulties were the primary obstacle to their implementation of value-based pricing strategies. If the company itself does not know the value of its products or services to customers, how does it know what to charge customers for value?
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The most effective way of overcoming the value-assessment problem is rigorous value measurement. In this regard, Nagle and Holden’s (2002) definition of value to the customer is pertinent: ‘‘A product‘s economic value is the price of the customer‘s best alternative – reference value – plus the value of whatever differentiates the offering from the alternative – differentiation value.’’"
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Alternativas para medir o valor co-criado com os clientes podem ser:

• Expert interviews;
• Focus group assessment of value;
• Conjoint (or trade-off) analysis;
• Assessment of value-in-use;
• Importance ratings.

"In practice, the most reliable assessments of customer value are likely to be obtained by using several of these suggested tools concurrently."

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Os empresários compram automóveis topo de gama, são capazes de ter umas botas de segurança made in Timberland, são capazes de ir a um restaurante selecto, são capazes de ... tudo pago a peso de ouro e, no entanto, têm dificuldades em traduzir o valor do que co-criam para um preço decente. Assim, continuo a ver empresas carregadas de trabalho e que deixam tanto dinheiro em cima da mesa negocial. E quando uma empresa cresce mais de 100% ao longo de anos sucessivos?

Basear os preços no valor

Já devia ter percebido o meu erro... já devia estar de pé atrás e ter cuidado.
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Já por mais de uma vez escrevi que os empresários portugueses têm o mau costume de subavaliar os seus produtos e serviços.
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Errado? Não mas...
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Mas não são só os empresários portugueses!!!!
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Depois de Byrnes, depois da curva de Stobachoff que Storbacka desenhou para os bancos finlandeses já devia metido na cabeça que os empresários portugueses não são uma espécie à parte, nem piores nem melhores que os outros.
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Foi o artigo "Customer value-based pricing strategies: why companies resist" de Andreas Hinterhuber e publicado no VOL. 29 NO. 4 2008, pp. 41-50 do Journal of Business Strategy que me fez reconhecer o erro.
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O que tento e tento, algumas vezes com sucesso, é que os empresários mudem de software para definir o preço das suas ofertas. A esmagadora maioria define os seus preços com base nos custos ou com base nos preços da concorrência. Assim, muitos deles, desvalorizam as suas ofertas e deixam dinheiro em cima da mesa negocial.
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Só que para meu espanto, confesso, o mesmo se passa na Alemanha, Austria e Suiça.
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Ou seja, o mundo económico está cheio de pagãos... um mercado espectacular para divulgar o Evangelho do Valor!!!
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"pricing strategies can be categorised into three groups:

• 1. cost-based pricing;
• 2. competition-based pricing; and
• 3. customer value-based pricing.

Of these, customer value-based pricing is increasingly recognised in the literature as superior to all other pricing strategies (Ingenbleek et al., 2003). For example, Monroe (2002, p. 36) observes that: ‘‘ . . . the profit potential for having a value-oriented pricing strategy that works is far greater than with any other pricing approach’’.
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The increasing endorsement of customer value-based strategies among academics and practitioners is based on a general recognition that the keys to sustained profitability lie in the essential features of customer value-based pricing, including understanding the sources of value for customers; designing products, services, and solutions that meet customers’ needs; setting prices as a function of value; and implementing consistent pricing policies.
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Despite the obvious benefits of customer value-based approaches to pricing, a review of the literature suggests that these methods still play a relatively minor role in pricing strategies. (Moi ici: Afinal não são só os empresários portugueses que resistem)
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Cost-based pricing derives from data from cost accounting. Competition-based pricing uses anticipated or observed price levels of competitors as primary source for setting prices and customer value-based pricing uses the value that a product or service delivers to a segment of customers as the main factor for setting prices.  (Moi ici: Uma das mensagens mais frequentes neste blogue, a par da concentração do negócio, focalização na emergência do valor co-criado durante a experiência de integração na vida dos clientes-alvo)
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Backman (1953, p. 148) notes that ‘‘. . .the graveyard of business is filled with the skeletons of companies that attempted to base their prices solely on costs’’.  (Moi ici: Como podia resistir a este "writebyte") More recently, Myers et al. (2002) assert that cost-based pricing produces sub-standard profitability; similarly, Simon et al. (2003) contend that cost-based pricing leads to lower-than-average profitability.
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customer value-based pricing approaches are, overall, the best strategies to adopt in making decisions about new product pricing.
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Despite the fact that empirical research shows that value-based approaches are superior to other pricing approaches, it has not been widely adopted in practice.
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literature review reveals that value-based pricing approaches remain in a significant minority.

(Moi ici: Os autores fizeram uma pesquisa no universo que se segue para tentar perceber o porquê do pouco uso do preço baseado no valor para o cliente) A sample of 126 marketing managers, business unit managers, key account managers, pricing managers, and general managers were initially recruited for this study. These managers participated in in-house pricing workshops which the author conducted in the period 2006-2007. Companies represented included automotive, chemicals, information technology (IT), chemicals, industrial services and fast moving consumer goods. We held nine workshops at nine different companies in Germany, Austria, China, and the USA. The study design is thus cross-sectional, multi-country, and multi-industry.
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In response to questions about the obstacles to implementation of value-based pricing, a wide array of answers was received (with multiple answers being allowed and encouraged). As shown In Figure 2, six main obstacles were identified after clustering responses:

(Moi ici: Vamos procurar analisar cada um destes factores)
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Continua.

Acerca do que não é "estratégia"

Excelente artigo "So, you think you have a strategy?" de Freek Vermeulen.
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Os teóricos que estão sempre prontos para amaldiçoar os empresários portugueses não perdem nada em ler o artigo e em perceber que o mesmo não foi escrito a pensar nesses patrões. E, no entanto, a vida não é um mar de rosas lá fora.
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"Most companies do not have a strategy.
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when it comes to strategy, I’d say there are three types of CEOs:

• Those who think they have a strategy — they are the most abundant
• Those who pretend to think that they have a strategy, but deep down are really hesitant because they fear they don’t actually have one (and they’re probably right) — these are generally quite a bit more clever than those in the first category, but, alas, are fewer in number
• Those who do have a strategy — there are preciously few of them, but they often head very successful companies

I often wonder why such bright CEOs and their deputies miss the most basic necessities of cogent and executable strategy. They fail because they:

• Are not really making choices Strategy, above all, is about making choices; choices in terms of what you do and what you do not do. (Moi ici: O que vamos fazer e o que não vamos fazer!!! Terry Hill, Steve Jobs e Gordon Ramsay são/foram mestres nesta necessidade de concentração no essencial. BTW, o que é que esta empresa não vai fazer?)... companies don’t concentrate; they cannot resist the temptation of also doing other things that, on an individual basis, look attractive. As a consequence, they end up with a bunch of alternate (sometimes even opposing) strategic directions that appear equally attractive but strangely enough don’t manage to turn into profitable propositions.  (Moi ici: Pena que poucos conheçam a curva de Stobachoff ou os números de Jonathan Byrnes) Too many strategies lack focus.  (Moi ici: Concentração, concentração, concentração no que é essencial!!!)
• Are stuck in the status quo Another variant of this is the straightjacket of path dependency, meaning that companies write up their strategy in such a way that everything fits into what they were already doing anyway. This is much like generating a to-do list of activities you have already completed. Last year. There might be nothing wrong with sticking with the tried and true, if it so happens that what you were doing represents a powerful, coherent set of activities that propels your company forward. Regrettably, more often than not, strategies adapted to what you were doing anyway results in some vague, amorphous marketplace statement that would have been better off in a beginners’ class on esoteric poetry, because it is meaningless and does not imply any real decision about what needs to be done in order to be a vital company in the next one to three years. (Moi ici: Falta-lhes espírito de matador, espírito assertivo... são como os treinadores de futebol que tentam tirar pressão de cima da equipa. Lembro-me sempre das fotocópias que Mourinho colou no balneário do FC Porto - para aumentar a pressão sobre os jogadores!!!) ...
• Have no relationship to value creation Sometimes companies make some decisive choices, but it is wholly unclear why these choices would do the enterprise any good. Strategy is not just about making choices; executives need a good explanation why these choices are going to create the company a heck of a lot of value. (Moi ici: Só os escolhidos é que falam de valor, os outros falam de preço, de custos, de competição, de benchmark, de... Os eleitos pensam na vida, na experiência de uso na vida dos clientes.) Without such logic, I cannot call this line of thinking a strategy at all. ...
• Are mistaking objectives for strategy We want to be number one or two in all the markets we operate in. Ever heard that one? I think it is bollocks. ... but the real question is how. We want to be number one or two in the market; we want to grow 50 per cent next year; we want to be the world’s pre-eminent business school — and so on. These are goals, possibly very good and lofty ones, but in terms of amounting to a strategy, they do not. You need an actionable idea and a rationale — a strategy — of how you are going to achieve all this. Without a true plan of action, lofty goals are but a tantalising aspiration.
• Keep it a secret The final mistake I have seen, scarily common, as to why CEOs who think they have a strategy don’t actually have one (despite circumventing all of the above pitfalls) is because none of their lower-ranked employees actually know about it. A strategy only becomes a strategy if people in the organisation alter their behaviour as a result of it. ... A good litmus test is to simply ask around: if people within the organisation do not give you the same coherent story of how the company is to prosper in the future, chances are it does not have a strategy, no matter how colourful the Powerpoint slides. These slides may fade in powerfully on the projection screen, but (in the marketplace) they fade out into strategic oblivion."

Já fizeram a vossa curva de Stobachoff?

Na sequência dos textos de Byrnes sobre os clientes que não são rentáveis, eis um artigo que vou procurar ler na íntegra "Are Many of Your Customers Unprofitable?":
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"What Kumar and Shah found about customer profitability should give many executives pause — even if their companies aren’t publicly traded:
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“In both TechInc and FashInc, we found an extremely skewed distribution of customer profitability — which was consistent with our expectations…. The average CLV [customer lifetime value] of one of TechInc’s High CLV customers was about 25 times as much as that of one of the company’s Medium to Low CLV customers. Interestingly, at both companies, the top 20% of customers contributed more than 90% of the company’s profits, because each company also had a sizable proportion of customers on which it lost money.
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The skewed customer profitability distribution meant the companies should apply different marketing strategies to customers in the High CLV segment than to those in Medium to Low or Negative CLV segments.”
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If, at both of the companies the researchers studied, one-fifth of customers accounted for more than 90% of the company’s profits, what does that imply about the remaining four-fifths of the companies’ customers?
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And is your company any different? Could a small fraction of customers be the source of most of your company’s profits? Conversely, do you know which of your customers are unprofitable for your organization – and how many of them there are?" (Moi ici: Esta bateria de questões devia ser levada a sério, muito a sério pelas empresas... já fizeram a vossa curva de Stobachoff?)

Bons conselhos para uma empresa

"Relying On Customer Trust To Help You Weather A Tough Economy":
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"In tough times, buyers want to economize every bit as much as sellers do, so customers cut back, simplify, and search for reliability. Discount stores benefit as consumers look for bargains, but customer-oriented sellers also benefit, as customers seek out businesses they can trust."
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"Think about it. Even in the worst economy imaginable--even if unemployment were 20% instead of just 9% -- there would still be some customers happy to buy your product. If you have the tools and systems to know which customers those are -- if you have the right customer insight -- you can almost certainly outrun your competitors. Customer insight is always helpful, but in a recession it can make the difference between success and failure. Retaining good customers is simply a more cost-efficient way to compete in a more cost-sensitive environment.
So when the economy tanks, rather than simply assuming the fetal position and hoping for the best, take some time out first to bolster your customer-oriented services and do a better job of earning your customers’ trust. Here are four places to start:

• Identify the most valuable 20% or 30% of your customers and reach out to them with unsolicited benefits and personalized offers. Consider prioritized service, facilitated deliveries, customized invoicing cycles, more helpful information, and so forth.
• If you have to cut costs, then economize first by reducing or better automating the service provided to low-value customers. (Moi ici: Gronroos escreve muito e bem sobre a eficiência interna e a eficiência externa)
• Strengthen your customer interaction processes. Reinforce your phone and email communications resources and set up better listening posts in social media as well. Create priority channels for your best customers to reach you. 
• And when you look for ways to streamline your business and run more efficiently, think about focusing on the particular types of customers whose needs you meet best."

Afinal uma série de sugestões que já costumamos dar aqui no blogue. Quem são os clientes-alvo? Como desenvolver a relação e melhorar a experienciação que eles sentem durante o uso?

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Por fim, gosto do realismo da frase final:

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"Economic cycles are inevitable. You can blame the Tea Party or the Orator in Chief, hedge fund plutocrats or the ratings agencies, but the simple fact is that downs are as inevitable as ups are, and it doesn’t take anyone to “cause” them. The right economic policies may help soften the blow of a downturn, but simulation studies have shown that any competitive economic system will oscillate, even with no outside perturbation at all. It’s just what economies do."
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E não deixar escapar a história dos caçadores e do urso no início do artigo... uma empresa não precisa de vencer a macro-economia, só precisa de ter mais sucesso na sua micro-economia.

There are no bad customers, only bad strategies

Ontem chamei a atenção para um texto recente de Jonathan Byrnes sobre a rentabilidade dos clientes.
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Ontem ainda, durante a tarde, debaixo da saborosa sombra de um Quercus robur, li mais um capítulo de "Service Mangement and Marketing" de Christian Gronroos (O VI - Return on Service and Relationships). O capítulo termina com uma citação de Kaj Storbacka acerca dos clientes não-rentáveis:
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"It is essential to maintain a positive attitude towards unprofitable customers. Unprofitable customers are not bad customers. Customers are unprofitable because the company's strategies make unprofitable customer behaviour possible. There are no bad customers, only bad strategies. Customer profitability is always a function of customer purchasing behaviour, and behaviour can be influenced in many ways. By changing strategies you can encourage customer behaviour, which in turn can have a positive impact on customer profitability.
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Many companies dealing with customer profitability issues have drawn too simplistic conclusions from the results of the analyses. As a result, personnel often end up thinking that unprofitable customers are bad customers. This has direct consequences on how customers are handled, which further aggravates profitability problems. It is therefore important for companies to view unprofitable customers in a positive light. Unprofitable customers often represent the greatest profitability potential of a company."
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Um bom conselho. Contudo, há que equacionar os constrangimentos do mosaico de actividades escolhido e não tentar servir tudo a todos, há que fazer opções.

Uma via para aumentar a rentabilidade

Excelente resumo de “Islands of Profit in a Sea of Red Ink” feito pelo seu autor Jonathan Byrnes em "Improving Profitability from a Granular Level".
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Chamo a atenção para os números " in my research and consultations with leading companies in more than a dozen industries, I've found virtually every company is 30-40 percent unprofitable by any measure, and 20-30 percent of the business is providing all the reported profits and subsidizing the losses. The potential profit improvement is often 30 percent or more within a year with comparable improvements year after year." (Moi ici: Recordar as curvas de Stobachoff)
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O que gosto de salientar acerca dos estudos de Byrnes é que ele escreve sobre empresas americanas... por isso, os empresários portugueses quando cometem o mesmo erro de trabalhar com clientes não rentáveis, não estão a cometer um erro intrinsecamente português. É a herança de uma época em que quem mandava eram os fabricantes e os clientes não eram tratados nem se comportavam de forma distinta.

As curvas de Stobachoff

Neste postal "Segmentação retrospectiva dos clientes" referi um artigo de Storbacka "Segmentation Based on Customer Profitability – Retrospective Analysis of Retail Bank Customer Bases" onde é mencionado o Stobachoff Index.
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Uma pesquisa na net permitiu-me encontrar uma interessante referência em "The strategic value of customer profitability analysis" de Erik M Van Raaij publicado por Marketing Intelligence Planning (2005) Volume: 23, Issue: 4, Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Pages: 372-381 (obrigado ao Baidu) e outra no livro de Robert C. Blattberg, Byung-Do Kim e Scott A. Neslin "Database Marketing - Analyzing and Managing Customers" do qual retirei o extracto que se segue para memória futura na minha base de dados:
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"Van Raaij et al. (2003) report the first experience of a business-to-business company with incorporating customer value analysis into their marketing planning. The company, which we will call “DBM,” was a multinational firm in the market for professional cleaning products. It sold directly to end-users such as in-flight caterers and professional cleaning services, as well as through distributors. It divided its market into sectors such as healthcare, lodging, or dairy. Sales and profits had been leveling off after years of growth and DBM was worried about new competitors. Further non-product costs (e.g., costs to service customers) had been increasing. The company desired to assign these costs to individual customers and calculate customer profit.
DBM undertook a six-stage process to calculate profit at the customer level and then develop strategies based on the results:
1. Select active customers
2. Design the customer profitability calculation model
3. Calculate customer profit
4. Interpret the results
5. Develop strategies
6. Establish an infrastructure for future applications."
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"The company used the customer profit curve to plot what they called a “Stobachoff” curve. This is simply the equivalent of a cumulative lift curve. It orders the customers according to profitability, and then plots the cumulative profit accounted for by these customers as one progresses from the highest to lowest profit.

shows that in this example, 75% of the customers are profitable (the curve increases up to about that point) while 25% are unprofitable. Given that the top 75% of customers accounts for 120% of the profits, the remaining 25% really drag profits down.
In this case there are a lot of profitable customers but they are subsidizing a relatively small number (at least a minority) of unprofitable customers. Note that by adding fixed costs through overhead, the firm may be distorting the true profitability of the remaining 25% of the customers. Some of these may be incrementally profitable." (Moi ici: E qual será o perfil na sua empresa? Basta recordar Byrnes para ficar com os cabelos em pé. E a minha experiência a trabalhar com PMEs, pouco ou nada habituadas ao conceito de clientes-alvo também não ajuda a melhorar o retrato)

"In the low dependence, low subsidizing cell, all customers are profitable and roughly equally so. In the low dependence, high subsidization cell, most customers are profitable but there are a few unprofitable customers who drag down total profits. In the high dependence, low subsidizing cell, there are only a few profitable customers and the rest of customers are unprofitable but not highly so. In perhaps the most dangerous case is the high dependence, high subsidization cell. In this case, there are a few highly profitable customers,
and many highly unprofitable customers. This is dangerous because if those few highly profitable customers should defect, the company would suddenly be losing a lot of money."

Segmentação retrospectiva dos clientes

Ontem, durante mais uma viagem de comboio, tive oportunidade de ler "Segmentation based on customer profitability - retrospective analysis of retail bank customer bases" Journal of Marketing Management, (1997) 13(5), 479-492 de Kaj Storbacka.
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O artigo apresenta várias formas de segmentar clientes actuais com base numa análise retrospectiva.
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"it is increasingly difficult to build marketing activities on the notion of a market. The "markets" are fragmenting rapidly and we are moving towards a time when the only relevant segment is the individual customer. (Moi ici: Olhar olhos nos olhos gente de carne e osso em vez de enganadores fantasmas estatísticos) Taking a genuinely customer oriented view on marketing changes many of the fundamental marketing assumptions and thus marketing in itself changes."
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"The proportion of profitable customers obviously varies among providers. Cooper and Kaplan (I991) suggest that, in certain industrial markets, 20% of the customer relationships stand for 225% of the total customer base profitability."  (Moi ici: E na sua empresa? Qual a % de clientes que têm dado prejuízo e nunca darão lucro?)
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O artigo começa com um exemplo de segmentação retrospectiva com base no critério mais simples: o volume de vendas:
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"It is also interesting to note that the customers with RV between 50.000 and 250.000 represent about 20% of the customer base and stand for approximately 90% of total customer base profitability. Hence, these groups can be argued to be the most important ones. This does not, however, indicate that the customers in these groups as individuals are the most important ones. An average customer, in the highest Relationship Volume group, contributes more than 25 times the profitability of an average customer in the group 25.000-49.999, more than eight times the profitability of an average customer in the group 50.000-99.999, about five times the profitability of an average customer in the group 100.000-249.999, and about threefold the profitability of an average customer in the group 250.000-499.999. The average profitability of customers in the small volume groups that are unprofitable is just a few hundred negative. As almost 50% of all customers, are in these groups, and as it is not possible to increase volume-based revenue (without increasing volume) it could indicate that just a small increase in the average fee-based revenue could have a major impact on the total profitability of the customer base.

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As a conclusion, we note that even the simplest way of segmenting customer bases provides powerful insights in the configuration of customer relationships and creates a foundation for strategic development of products and pricing mechanisms."
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Outros indicadores usados no artigo para segmentar clientes:

• profitability based segmentation
• segmentation based on relatioship volume and customer relatioship profitability

E voltamos sempre ao nosso alicerce: quem são os clientes-alvo? Quem são os clientes que merecem todo o investimento? E quem são os que nos colocam numa relação ganhar-perder? Não esquecer os números de Jonathan Byrnes

O cliente não é a última etapa, é o ponto de partida (parte II)

Continuado daqui.
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"Tactic 1: Choose the Right Customer
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Any firm that looks to sell products or services to the market needs to treat its customers as assets. Therefore, the first strides a firm needs to make in order to reach its end goal of financial success is to find the customers who can bring the most value back to the organization. (Moi ici: I rest my case...) In the past, marketing literature has stated that it should be the goal of the firm to retain its customers at all costs. The idea behind this retention strategy is that the cost of retaining customers is, on average, significantly less than the cost of acquiring customers, and by retaining even up to an additional 5% of the customer base, a firm can increase its overall profit ability by 100%. While it is true that the cost of retaining
customers is often less than the cost of acquiring customers, this research does not take into account the fact that not all customers are profitable customers. There are many customers out there who do contribute significant value to the firm but cost even more to retain. These customers who cost the firm more than they give back are not worth chasing after. (Moi ici: E quantos clientes tem assim? É capaz de os identificar? Lembra-se de Jonathan Byrnes?) However, it is important to note that the value of a customer to a firm should not be measured in profits based on revenue minus cost of goods sold and marketing costs alone. Customers can also add value to the firm by helping to attract other customers through positive word of mouth, effectively lowering the cost of acquiring some new customers or retaining some current customers.  And, allowing these customers who do add value to the company through indirect means to defect from the firm or disadopt the product or services being offered, especially early on in the life cycle of a product, can generate significant losses in future profits for the firm.
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 it is more important to choose customers who bring the most value to the firm, who are not necessarily all the high-revenue customers. What is important to realize about these high-value customers is that they can be found among just about any of the various segmentations of customer groups (e.g., there can be highvalue customers who spend both a high amount and a low amount of revenue with the store since many of the apparel items offered have varying margins depending on the type and label). Therefore, it is important for retail stores to identify the drivers of high-value customers, not just high revenue customers, when they are making efforts to choose whom they will chase after. This does not mean denying business to any customer who walks in; it just means that they make sure to give the proper incentives to those customers who are most likely to be profitable. (Moi ici: Estou sempre a dizer isto às empresas)
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Kumar tem um livro "Managing Customers for Profit" onde discute uma metodologia para identificar os clientes que interessam. Interrogo-me, para uma PME portuguesa, a partir do momento em que os gestores tomam consciência da diferença entre os clientes... será que o conseguem fazer sem grandes complicações, sem grandes fórmulas?

Na Economia o factor tempo conta, não é um universo newtoniano

"In the prior Age of Mass Markets, which occurred throughout most of the twentieth century, revenue maximization was the win strategy. Companies had relatively uniform pricing (for much of the period, manufacturers could actually set retail prices), cost to serve was relatively uniform as the product was just dropped at the customer’s receiving dock, and economies of scale meant that large production volumes led to diminishing unit costs. And diminishing unit costs meant more profits.
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In this situation, product management was indeed driving the boat. Their job was to maximize revenues. Most consumer product companies were characterized by a relatively small number of high-volume brands. In this situation, the cost of the small “tweaks” in products and packaging were small compared to the huge gains in scale.
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Over the past thirty years, however, our business system has changed enormously. We have entered what I call the Age of Precision Markets. In this new era, companies have instituted complex pricing varying from customer to customer, and even product to product. Cost to serve varies again by customer, and even by product within a customer. Products have proliferated into all ecological niches, and flexible manufacturing and outsourcing have enabled many niche products to achieve minimum efficient scale.
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Today, profit maximization requires a deep understanding of the interaction between pricing and cost to serve on a very granular basis (individual products within individual accounts). It also requires the tight integration of product management with the groups responsible for the second-order costs it so often produces. Chief among these are the critical costs of sales inefficiency and operations complexity – just what the top operations managers and sales reps were so concerned about."
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Trecho retirado de "Unlikely Operations Heroes – Sales Reps" de Jonathan Byrnes.