Consultative Selling/Mac Hanan 30-31

31 In Consultative Selling terms, customer relationship management (CRM) is the management of a continuous stream of deltas moved into a customer's operations. No matter how many other ways suppliers relate to their customers, improving customer profits is the single most important transaction that can occur between them.

When you average your added values on an application-per-operation-per industry basis, you come out with your norm for your ability to add value to that operation in that industry with that application: your normal value.

...."According to our norms for the optimal layout for a print shop of your volume and type of production," 3M can say, "your current layout is depriving you of up to $1 million in profits every twelve months of operation."

Norms are the consultative penetration tool. All consulting professionals work from norms, whose metrics represent their track record--their single most important possession and the foundation of their reputation.

Here is the standard of performance for this critical success factor in this business function or business line, it says. How do you compare? If my norms are better than yours, ask me how I can bring you closer.