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NAICS Codes and Your Customers’ Industries
Ship-To Addresses Can Mislead SFA Programs Westport, CT (June 23, 2005) – Despite the best CRM and SFA software tools, vendors are often unable to determine what percentage of their customers come from which industry because of the way companies are assigned NAICS codes. NAICS codes are not assigned to an overall company, but rather to the specific operating function of each ship-to location. So a vendor who sells into several different ship-to locations at the same company can find the sale being classified into multiple, widely different “industries.” This makes it difficult to track and explain sales trends by industry and plan sales and marketing initiatives by vertical. For example, an ERP hardware solution can be sold to a consumer packaged goods company, but because the vendor delivered directly to various customer locations the vendor’s SFA “sales by industry” report can show several different industry types: distribution (the customer's remote warehouse location), transportation (a central distribution center), manufacturing (the factory) and business administration (the corporate headquarters). So if a vendor wants to plan a marketing initiative, they might not be able to target the right industry.
To solve the problem of inaccurate customer industry analysis, AllianceTrakker offers a service to analyze vendor sales and consolidate ship-to locations into the primary business of the parent customer. This enables companies to measure the industry-types of the customer base and plan sales and marketing initiatives more accurately. For more information, please contact AllianceTrakker at (203) 226-5853. About FollowUp Networks FollowUp Network’s AllianceTrakker is an enterprise-level service that maps and aligns sales teams across partners or business units, enabling them to locate and communicate with other salespeople who cover their same accounts and who can drive new business. AllianceTrakker is not a CRM or PRM tool, which are useful once a sales cycle is started. Instead AllianceTrakker ensures that salespeople find new business partners and opportunities, while enabling managers to see the blind spots in their relationships. |
