Protecting Your Best Accounts from Competitive Encroachment

During difficult economic times, it is especially important for distributors to protect against competitive encroachment. As the focus shifts from growth of new accounts to maintaining and nurturing existing accounts, distributors must protect their turf and ensure that rivals don’t successfully steal away customers. This may involve creating more comprehensive marketing campaigns, strengthening relationships with key customers, or providing additional incentives to retain loyalty. By proactively anticipating and responding to potential threats, distributors can continue to build on their customer base and benefit even in difficult environments.

Data is your best friend when it comes to protecting against competitors.

Show that you understand them better than other companies

Utilizing data to develop an accurate customer profile and segmentation to better target sales messages and marketing campaigns drives loyalty. Easy access to great data allows you to have highly personalized sales conversations and send personalized messages to your customers. This fosters more meaningful connections with your customers, as the messages will be tailored to their needs and interests. Furthermore, targeted marketing lists help companies deliver relevant content that customers actually care about and will appreciate. This creates a sense of loyalty as customers are made to feel valued by your company.

Track your competitors

SMP allows you to track the competitors who are involved in each of your accounts and deals. This allows you to better understand each competitors methods, sales tactics, pricing and customer service. It also allows you to quickly go on the offensive when a competitor suffers a misstep or change in market perception.

Data allows you to constantly improve your sales and marketing efforts.

Distributors should regularly analyze the effectiveness of their sales and marketing campaigns in order to improve the success rate and reach of their efforts. Through data-driven insights, companies can understand how customers reacted to particular messages and promotions. This helps them identify areas where they may have missed the mark or fallen short, as well as areas that were successful and can be improved upon. By using this data, companies can then create more effective marketing strategies in the future – ensuring that they hit their targets while also optimizing resources and minimizing any wasted efforts.

Data helps you demonstrate value.

Self-service visualizations provided by SMP enable distributors to easily quantify and demonstrate the value they provide to their customers. These visuals can show customers a variety of information, such as a detailed purchasing history, support calls, current trends, and more – all in an easy-to-comprehend and engaging manner. This not only makes it simpler for customers to understand what they are getting from the company; it also helps create a sense of loyalty on behalf of the customer as they may feel that the company is making an effort to be transparent with them about the services provided.

Identify ways a competitor beat you.

Using SMP to track the competitors involved in each deal allows your team to share competitive information when analyzing lost deals. You can identify gaps in areas where competitors are outperforming you, such as delivery speed or customer service response times, and address them much more quickly than if you weren’t using a distribution CRM system to track deals and opportunities.