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Das Narayandas, Professor of Harvard Business
School, and Nirmalya Kumar, Professor of London
Business School, coincide in their theses regarding
the importance of segmenting clients in order to carry out
advanced sales management, and to subsequently assign the
corresponding resources according to the needs of each
segment. It would seem obvious that referring to these
doctoral theories is obsolete and that most companies already
know them. What may not be so easy to distinguish, however,
is exactly what a client is, who our clients are, what
relationships link us to each of them, and what priority we
should assign them. To consider that all those people who
form part of our area of influence are clients, whether they are
strategic associates (whom some still believe are suppliers),
distributors, final clients, inside clients (staff), organizations
of a social nature, and of course public opinion through mass
media (and therefore the media itself), are also clients to be
segmented. Clients to investigate, to encourage and to whom
added value should be offered. Up to now, the wine sector in
Spain has managed marketing in connection with the product;
efforts, if any, were aimed at R&D (which should now really
be R&D+innovation) The more experienced companies have
begun to direct their efforts towards the market, starting to
research into what the market wants and beginning a small
segmentation of their activities. The leaders of the sector (3 or
4) slowly seem to be understanding that the market is
composed of clients and that this is not an abstract,
amorphous entity. What I have not yet seen, but hope to see
soon in this sector, is advanced marketing management
directed at leadership, in other words, to innovate by
designing strategies on how to develop, enlarge or diversify
the market. Modifying segmentations, foreseeing what the
client will purchase in the intermediate term. Adding service
to the offer and providing all the social structure with an
answer to a concrete need. This is advanced management:
changing the questions we ask ourselves when looking at our
clients, encouraging imagination, “creative destruction,"
starting to invent without fear of making mistakes, taking
risks. All those things that this sector does not yet do. Starting
with the lack of knowledge of its different clients. In most
companies (save honorable exceptions) they do not even
know that various types of clients exist. How are they going
to segment them or manage them if they do not know them,
they do not know what role each plays in the value chain?
How they are prioritized. However, what some of them are
now saying is encouraging: “Let’s change. From now on, we
shall be a mature sector and we shall apply the techniques that
others have been using for twenty years. We shall present a
common front for corporate matters and we shall be proactive
instead of being reactive.” The bad part comes when one asks:
who, how, when, with whom, with what resources? Just as I
was saying: advanced management. |
