For large sales organizations, account profiling is an essential sales force planning activity. Account profiles offer a summary view of customers’ (or prospects’) characteristics and key issues, often providing the single most important sales force-to-management communication tool for customer issues.
Like many firms that employ account profiles, Schlumberger Oilfield Services, a US$25 billion oilfield technology services and solutions firm, recognized a limitation in their profiling methodology: it focused on financial metrics that often provided little insight into the quality of the customer relationship.
This Sales Management Association Case Study describes the Schlumberger’s Account Relationship Profiling tool, an account planning platform that provided Schlumberger management with improved customer intelligence and enhanced account strategy for Schlumberger’s account teams.