Now with the 9th and final installment discussing Customer Experience Indexing (CEI™) as a way to measure, plan and act on customer feedback.  (#1) (#2) (#3) (#4) (#5) (#6) (#7) (#8)

CEI is a metrics-based way to drive revenue growth from customers you have, those you’ve lost and one’s you’ve yet to win. In drops 1-8 we’ve given CEI use cases for:

• An expanded Net Promoter-type way to calculate and measure satisfaction + prompted + unprompted customer advocacy
• Applying metrics for better account-by-account management planning
• Building lenses for better strategies and tactics for up-selling, cross-selling and renewals.
• Using metrics for Reference Account Management and sorting a top 10 list of best customer references, and why.

Last week’s rant aside, I heard some heartwarming feedback during my phone rounds last week on Reference Account Management. Sorting a top-10 list using the aforementioned steps is great way to have a constantly regenerated, rules based index of advocates who are not only loyal for reasons intangible, but are also qualified “satisfactioneers” from a statistical lens measuring service fundamentals such as quality function, value, basic expectations, length and frequency of engagement. And as you are able, you can even create sub lists for different verticals, channels, etc. for more precise matching of current prospects with current customers who can and want to help you win deals.

Taking this one step further, what if you took all of the companies on your top-20 RAM list and created a rules based profile that paints the picture of what a perfect opportunity looks like for your sales team? No guessing! If you find and start prospecting companies who match up with your most loyal and satisfied customers you’re not only communicating where your message is most likely to resonate, you’re also creating mindshare and giving your company a strategic messaging and positioning edge segment by segment (directly relating to where you have the most traction). Look at this as a snapshot of your winning market segments and the activities that contributed to these wins, thus arming Marketing and Sales teams with the road map to further success.

Is this a shameless plug for ReachForce’s Insight SaaS? Yes it is. But it’s still a golden opportunity to ask and answer the following:

1. Are you marketing to the right companies and what rules do you use to make this determination?
2. Are there trends in your sales funnel that you are not capitalizing on?
3. What kinds of leads move through the sales funnel the fastest and generate the most revenue?
4. Can you look into their sales funnel and identify current trends. By analyzing opportunities in the sales funnel in real time, marketers are able to adjust programs on-the-fly to help keep deals moving to close.

These are all questions marketers ask themselves as they are developing lead generation programs. And by combining CEI metrics with applications such as ReachForce Insight, marketing and sales teams can finally agree on winning target markets and focus lead generation efforts at other companies that match the same profile.