Research with Results: a blog from the Aberdeen Group » Customer Management

Is Lead Scoring BS?

Trip Kucera — Fri, 18 May 2012 14:47:03 +0000

I’ve had several interesting conversations this week about the state and fate of lead scoring. When you talk with marketers about lead scoring, it can sometimes feel more likea political or religious conversation than one about a marketing best practice—in other words, there are believers, zealots, agnostics and heretics (i.e. non-believers). If you’re not familiar [...]

“Do you offer any pay for play services?”

Peter Ostrow — Fri, 18 May 2012 14:27:01 +0000

The subject line is a verbatim request from a solution provider seeking to promote their new product, I kid you not.This sales effectiveness vendor indicated that “We just launched (product) last Monday and it’s already going viral through the high tech sales community…We’re aiming to disrupt the (niche) marketplace by giving away for free what [...]

Sales Performance Management 2012: Rewards and Recognition as a Vital Compensation Component

Peter Ostrow — Thu, 10 May 2012 20:07:50 +0000

While many organizations are experiencing a recovery from the economic downturn, the distribution and pace of progress are not being enjoyed by all companies, industries or geographies. Firms are seeking to capitalize on every available competitive edge, and the potential of higher achievements among the human capital of their sales team may represent one of [...]

A Strategic Look into the CEM Activities of UK Companies

Omer Minkara — Thu, 10 May 2012 14:22:53 +0000

As Aberdeen is expanding its strategic footprint across Europe, we keep a close eye on the state of the market for Customer Experience Management (CEM) practices in the “old country”.In March 2012 I published “A Strategic Look into the CEM Activities of UK Companies.” This report demonstrates the state of the market in how UK companies [...]

Customer Experience Management in the Financial Services Industry: Balancing Regulations with Customer Delight

Omer Minkara — Thu, 03 May 2012 15:06:39 +0000

In the aftermath of global economic crisis in 2008 financial services firms (e.g. banks and insurance providers) have been under increasing scrutiny of tougher regulations such as Dodd-Frank Act and Basel III. This weekI’ve published a new benchmark report titled “Customer Experience Management in the Financial Services Industry: Balancing Regulations with Customer Delight“. The findings [...]

Show me the ROI

Omer Minkara — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 18:03:50 +0000

In an environment where companies are strictly evaluating each dollar spent, the ability to determine and share the value of CEM programs to obtain organizational support requires more than communicating its impact on brand awareness and loyalty.The key to effectively delivering the message on the value-add of CEM initiatives is measuring and understanding the ROI [...]

Voice of the Customer – It’s More than a Hype

Omer Minkara — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:15:06 +0000

On January 2012, I published a benchmark report “Customer Experience Management: Using the Power of Analytics to Optimize Customer Delight” that revealed capturing the Voice of the Customer (VoC) as one of the top goals driving today’s customer engagement strategies, from among all the defined best practices for Customer Experience Management (CEM). In early April, I published a follow-up research [...]

Does Social Media Marketing Measure Up?

Trip Kucera — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 20:52:24 +0000

In the age of metrics-driven marketing, measuring the impact of social media can be a challenge. While there are plenty of tools that support the ability to track social followers and click-throughs, the practice of connecting social mediawith measurable business results remains elusive for the majority of companies. I recently published a research brief title [...]

Revenue Performance Management: New Hype or New Hope?

Trip Kucera — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 20:58:20 +0000

Over the last several years, Aberdeen’s research has identified a general shift in the priorities of marketing leaders from activity- and brand-oriented measures towards revenue attainment, contribution to the sales-forecasted pipeline, andgreater use of standardized performance metrics aligned to business outcomes. Aberdeen’s October 2011 “Marketing Executive’s Agenda for 2012” pointed out that revenue-oriented metrics top [...]

Sales Mobility: How Best-in-Class Remote Sellers Are Replacing “See” with “Do”

Peter Ostrow — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 16:30:18 +0000

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Sales Force Automation (SFA) access via smart phones has been available for a long time now. Still, the actual activities performedby remote sellers have traditionally been focused on “seeing” rather than “doing.” In other words, hand-held devices allow field staff to view contact data, perhaps see their sales forecast or [...]