Strong relationships with customer decision influencers at all levels is a key element in understanding key customer needs, issues and opportunities for the supplier.

The Strategic Customer Review has also proved to be extremely effective is this area. Its objectives are:

• Identify the perceptions, issues and needs of strategically important customers
• Provide specialist advice on how customers can be managed to achieve maximum share of each customer's business
• Objectively determine how well the supplier is building/ protecting relationships
• Identify and develop potential barriers to entry by competitors
• Identify critical factors for service differentiation and building loyalty
• Flush out business opportunities and move customer focus away from price-based competition

Such a review is conducted exclusively by the senior team at Macquarie Marketing Group, who have an over 90% record in getting to key customer decisionmakers.

Key Deliverables

1. Detailed profiles on each customer organisation, setting out decisionmakers, processes, criteria, issues, opportunities, performance and critical actions
2. Urgent customer specific issues, reviewed with account teams and appropriate responses discussed
3. Overview report on loyalty factors, implications for strategy, customer prioritisation, systems and management processes, with recommendations
4. 'Loyalty' model for ongoing tracking/ performance evaluation
5. Opportunities to apply value management processes to major customers
6. Clearly defined implementation process for recommended actions

Some examples of outputs are provided below:

		Unprompted expectations from suppliers provide an effective view of current 'hot buttons'.				They also provide important insight to the customer management process preferred by customers.

		We ask customers to formally rate key service factors for importance and supplier performance compared to key competitors.				This is important for priority setting and identifying opportunities to differentiate.

		MMG customer priority matrices provide a clear view of which valuable customers are at risk.				They also assist management to prioritise resources and quickly form a view of the overall health of relationships with key customers.