Managing the customer portfolio and its development is essential for salespeople. However, as it grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage and the chances of making a mistake increase.
The sales force must be organized to be at its best (more clients in less time) and know how to manage the client portfolio efficiently.
Let’s learn what a client portfolio is, its importance and how to manage it.
What is a client portfolio?
A customer portfolio, in the business sense, is a set of customers that a salesperson takes care of.
The value of the client portfolio can be evaluated in terms of volume (the number of clients) or in terms of capital (what they contribute financially).
Importance of a client portfolio
Getting a new customer can cost a lot of time and money, while keeping an existing customer is much easier. The main objective of the client portfolio is to maintain the commercial relationship between the company and the client to retain current clients for as long as possible.
With information about the customer, such as age, gender, occupation, and history of interactions with the company, the company will be able to communicate more accurately with the customer and anticipate their requests so that they are as satisfied as possible.
In addition, a customer portfolio allows the company to group information about customers and have a more global view of the company’s situation.
It also allows the company to better organize and delegate tasks, because thanks to the history of interactions, all employees of a company have access to the same information and can help the customer in the same way.
A customer portfolio can also be used to segment customers, allowing you to create different categories to understand what certain customer groups like or dislike. With all the information in one place, it is easier to compile statistics about the customer and identify sales blocking points.
A client portfolio may also include a prospecting section. In this part, the company will maintain information about potential customers and try to get new customers. Thanks to the customer portfolio, which contains information about prospects, the sales approach will be greatly facilitated because the sales representative will know what the potential customer expects from the company.
How to segment your customer portfolio?
A customer portfolio must be segmented, that is, divided according to the characteristics of the customers. This segmentation will depend largely on the market in which your company operates, but there are 7 essential criteria that must be identified regardless of your sector:
- Name
- Last name
- Email address
- Phone number
- Current situation (are you a customer, prospect, or potential customer?)
- Customer industry sector
- History of interaction
This is just the beginning of good segmentation, you can add all the information you want. But if the information you collect has no impact on your future interactions with the customer, there is no point in having it.
Here are some other customer details that can be used to complete your portfolio information:
- Civil status
- Age
- Location
- Contact preferences (email, phone…)
- Number of purchases
- Purchase type
- Responses to emails
All of this information is intended to support the company’s marketing strategy, help you make better decisions with the customer, and ensure that they remain a customer and enjoy interactions with the company for as long as possible. It also helps to see if the efforts are paying off by seeing if the number of customers increases, for example.
How to manage your clients well?
The difficulty for any salesperson is to manage the relationship with the customer in a consistent way.
Neglecting or poorly managing a client portfolio (not following up, not knowing the client, losing information, sending the wrong quote, etc.) can be serious for the sales department and the company.
To avoid any errors, it is advisable to establish an organization and the foundations for good customer relationship management within the company.
The most effective way to manage the customer base is to provide the company with a CRM. This will allow customer information and all actions carried out by employees during the relationship to be centralized in a single tool.
These are some tips that will help you correctly manage your client portfolio:
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A structured and updated database
By applying a single structure to all customer files, the sales team will find information more quickly (purchasing behavior, function, particular expectations, problems encountered, etc.).
Categorize customers according to different criteria (for example, medium basket, best customers, hot or cold leads) and thus determine priority cases, VIP customers, etc.
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Have impeccable organization
Have your appointments organized to keep them all and plan client follow-up.
Once an appointment has been made or a phone call has been made, the seller directly writes down the report of his activity and the next planned sales actions. The goal: remember all the points that were discussed with each contact.
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Improve knowledge of the client portfolio
Knowledge of the customer is essential and can influence the entire relationship.
Having the right information is a real advantage for your sales strategy.
It not only allows you to control your customer capital, but also to have all the advantages in hand to win new markets.
Thus, the salesperson will be able to better suggest relevant products or services to their customers with the goal of converting prospects into customers.
Conclusion
Clients and prospects will appreciate your customer knowledge, your empathy, your listening skills and your good advice, which will undoubtedly allow you to manage and develop your client portfolio considerably.
Good customer knowledge will allow you to be more reactive to requests and save time on a day-to-day basis. In the same way, it is important to have the support of tools such as a dashboard that will provide you with a better customer tracking and analysis experience .
Although selling is the main mission of a sales agent, we must not lose sight of the fact that the relationship with the client is an essential component to “sell better.”