Create an Attention Plan in 6 Easy Steps

Do your customers need an attention plan? With the New Year off to a running start, increase your odds of success by ensuring you are focused on the right customers. Create an Attention Plan in six easy steps.

Conduct a mini-analysis. To get started, answer these three questions:

1. Are you clear on which customers are your most valuable? If not, analyze your customer base for current and projected value to your organization. Consider each customer's market/growth potential, the state of the economy for that customer's industry focus, and the strength of the management team. For quality of life purposes, rate how much you and your staff enjoy working with the customer. Based on your findings, prioritize your customer base.
2. Which customers are receiving the lion's share of your time? Are you paying the right amount of attention to the needs of your best customers on a proactive basis? Or, do you spend too much time putting out fires and dealing with the demands of difficult customers? If you find yourself reacting to unexciting customers to the detriment of your top customers, this is cause for concern. Reconstruct, to the best of your ability, the amount of time/attention you are giving to top customers vs. poor customers.
3. Are you spending too much time behind your desk? You demonstrate value by reaching out to customers on a regular basis. Your customers have no idea what you do at the office and how it affects them. Are you spending enough time with your best customers to reinforce a long-term, satisfying relationship? Can you expand the relationship beyond business to include friendship and leisure activities?

Create your Attention Plan. Armed with your mini-analysis, take these three action steps:

1. Determine how much time you want to devote to each top customer per week, month, quarter and year. Develop a matrix of in-person visits, telephone and Internet communications, project time, and creative idea generation for each customer. Include the involvement of your management team and personnel in the matrix. The amount of time you choose to devote to a customer is in direct proportion to the likelihood of an expanding, successful relationship with that customer.
2. Create a list of top value deliverables for each customer. Evaluate your deliverables from the customer's point of view--not your opinion of what the customer needs or what you are currently selling. If you are unclear about what your top customers consider to be exciting, discover the answers with personal visits and surveys. If your company is not providing leadership in the areas most prized by your customers, reconfigure the company to stay vital. Get your personnel involved in the process of understanding what is most important to customers.
3. Calendar your customer time. Organize your calendar to address the priorities of the customers you care about most. Above and beyond what it takes to deliver on expectations, remember to focus on personal visits and idea generation. Aim to make a tremendous difference for your customers by using your time wisely and creatively. Involve your personnel in strengthening customer relationships, generating new ideas, and delivering on your company's value promise.

We all have the same number of hours each day to make a meaningful contribution to the success of our customers. We all want to keep and grow with our customers. And we all want to have fun. Your Attention Plan will help you stay focused on providing top value to your best customers--and that's a good way to kick off the New Year.