Page 164 - Marketing the Basics 2nd

156 Marketing: the Basics
The second disadvantage is related to the first. Bundling products often offers more value to customers than buying the products outright. However, bundling becomes more difficult because it requires coordination between the two sellers, not any easy thing to accomplish. One recent trend which many still find perplexing is that firms are competitors in the morning and then work together as partners in the afternoon. This leads to some confusion as to how to treat them and is an area we are still mucking about with.
cusToMeR saLes foRce
For those businesses that sell specialized products or services, a customer sales force (CSF) structure would be more appropriate.
Under CSF, resources are divided according to the client’s importance; the more sales a buyer accounts for, the more resources there are dedicated to satisfying customer needs. Call it ‘spend to make’. Because specialized products or services are customized, the sales force must be adept at understanding their client’s core businesses. Investment bankers for example, are customer sales force agents. They understand how market dynamics affect their client’s core business, and by offering a variety of products to strengthen those competencies, the salesperson gains a deep understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of their client’s company. Learning their client’s deepest secrets allows the sales agent to quickly identify and propose new business opportunities. A customer sales force is advantageous because the salesperson or team becomes the sole point of contact. What’s more, a CSF allows the client to focus its efforts on managing the day-to-day affairs of the company, not dedicating resources to assess future threats, opportunities and weaknesses.
The most serious drawback of a customer sales force model is that as the deals grow in value, a dependency issue is created. For example, the accounting department of Arthur Andersen, the auditors of the now bankrupt energy trader Enron, was supposed to conduct independent audits of Enron’s financial statements. Auditing however is a low-margin business. At the same time, Enron was purchasing high-margin consulting services from another division of Arthur Andersen, creating a potential conflict