Sandi Mays commented on my Gates of Churn post:
While disconnects are about as fun as a trip to the dentist, having early visibility is extremely important. A disconnect/churn funnel gives us insight into how accounts are being managed. At other companies, I’ve heard account execs say that managing churn takes too much time away from growing the business. I can’t imagine how that would be true – understanding how a customer’s needs change over time seems necessary to be a successful account exec.
In Salesforce.com for Zayo Bandwidth, a report titled Manager’s Sales Funnel by Stage — Discos is going to get a lot of clicks by me in December. If you are an account executive at ZB, or one of the sales VPs, please take note. The report is identical to the one I look at for new sales. It has five columns, each representing a stage: “Working,” “Upside/(Downside)”, “Committed”, “Closed” and “Accepted”.
Here is my challenge to the account executives. Use this report that shows me you are on top of your accounts. How strong is your relationship with your customer? Do they give you a heads up when they are considering a disconnect? If so, do you enter this as soon as you hear–even if the notice might not be coming for a while? If they don’t give you a heads up, why?
When I look at the report, I will question any disconnects that appear out of the blue. That is, if I see a disconnect plop in as a “closed order” in December, I will ask “Why didn’t the acct exec see it coming?”. Actually, I will expect sales management to already have asked this question and provided me an explanation.
BTW, price reductions should be flagged as well.
So here is my challenge to ZB Account Executives. If you know of brewing disconects, enter them in salesforce. Put them in the appropriate stage. Populate them in the month that you would expect the disconnect notice to hit. Show Sandi that you are on top of your accounts.
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As Billing and Collection Manager, I can attest that there is nothing more annoying than an unplanned disconnect. Especially one that “has” to be done under the 30-day stop bill window. If the AE’s have constant contact with their customer (i.e. emails, phone calls, meetings, etc..) then there should NEVER be any surprises. I betcha Alicia Burke knows what I’m sezin… Service Delivery has enough on their plate and anything unplanned for the month can throw off the whole game.
Just my two cents…