Article provided by Matrix Marketing
We carry around in ourselves a great store of knowledge and experience which is built up as a result of our upbringing, social construct, formal and informal education, and our actions – their causes and effects.
This is supposed to leave us with something to which we should all aspire for Wisdom. According to the Cambridge English Language Dictionary, wisdom is: “The ability to use your knowledge and experience to make good decisions and judgments”.
Whilst reviewing a little of what I believe to be Institutional wisdom gleaned over the years, I was reminded of two salient principles relating to time management.
- “Doing it fast means doing it right the first time.” (I cannot find a specific reference to this and must, therefore, assume it has become socialised in our day-to-day conversation)
- “Time is money” (This quote is commonly ascribed to Benjamin Franklin who inspired a number of memorable bits on wisdom).
All of this soul (wisdom) searching came about when we pondered a difficult dilemma in the lead generation cycle.
Why target poor-paying customers if ultimately they are going to cost you margin and effort?
A huge effort is made to correctly segment target markets. This enables marketing spend to be efficiently applied to the marketing mix to maximise product uptake.
Financial service providers have therefore long applied risk criteria in defining their market segmentation profiles and using sophisticated algorithms to try to accurately plot risk against revenue generated. This sometimes backfires when the desire for greater revenues overcomes sensible risk management.
B2B business, however, has been loath to take on a similar burden of responsibility. The decision to not accept a customer is consequently made late in the customer lifecycle resulting in much frustration by those resources tasked with generating new business as their efforts in nurturing and landing a deal are assigned to the risk trash heap.
Matrix Marketing (Pty) Ltd has innovated a simple and affordable alternative to time-consuming and costly risk analysis reports. A quick indicator available on our revised online platform informs salespeople of what payment behaviour is likely to be experienced when approaching a new customer. The sales effort is directed to those customers most likely to pass the risk assessment scrutiny without reservation whilst more risk marginal customers are approached and processed with greater caution.
Make your effort count.
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