Stability Indicators

I sense a current trend emerging for sales teams to pay lots of money to get their sellers to focus on what keeps a customer for as long a time as possible.  I’ve come across two recent examples of this, one with a local English, the other a global, training firm.  Training 2000 and Mercuri are their names.

The Mercuri training framework is widely known.  I first came across an aspect of it in 99 called the Sales Platform.  This is where you split your funnel into 3 Platforms; Suspect, Prospect & Buying.  And you represent them on a sheet of paper, draw a line across the middle, pop the Buying Platform at the top, and split the bottom half in two.

What I discovered today, at a division of multi-national engineering supplier BSL Brammer, was an emphasis on “stability indicators”.  These are positions that expose how likely your customer is to stay with you.

The English outfit appear to have their own take on these, they call “key security indicators”.  I’ve seen this implemented around Easter-time in a subsid of industrial conglomerate IMI.  You need to understand the variables that determine customer longevity, and you can attribute figures on a scale to each one.

I must say I do like this approach.  It does I think, help focus a sales person’s mind on what they need to influence.  I’ve as yet seen no results from this, but reckon it’s a worthwhile pursuit.