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Showing posts from September 18, 2012

Customer-centricity covers all your activities

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Yesterday I did watch a program about the banking industry and how they are ‘behaving’ after the crisis (which they largely caused themselves). It was very clearly explained that the managers and the sales people were driven to sell as much products (especially mortgages etc.) as possible. Their bonuses were put in place to stimulate that behavior. So, we all know what the result was and still is. If you manage your sales force by means of aggressive bonus schemes, you are not putting the needs of your customers at the heart of your operation. Then you are far away from being customer-centric. Actually years ago when I did start to work for DEC, it was one of their principles NOT to pay bonuses to the sales force. The reason was that they wanted the sales force to focus on delivering quality to meet the customer’s needs. This policy worked very well, and the company grew at a very fast rate. When the market slowed down, they decided to introduce variable