What is a customer portfolio?
A customer portfolio is a list containing a company’s current customers, as well as those who have already purchased a good or service from the company. Depending on the company’s wishes, it can also include potential customers such as leads, suspects and prospects.
The company maintains this commercial file in order to maintain commercial relations with its customers and keep a record of their interactions.
It is also known as a customer file or customer database.
How does customer portfolio translate into English?
“Portefeuille client” can be translated as “client portfolio”.
What is the purpose and importance of a customer portfolio?
Winning a new customer can cost a lot of time and money, whereas keeping an existing one is much simpler. The main aim of the customer portfolio is to maintain the business relationship between the company and the customer, so as to keep existing customers for as long as possible.
With information about the customer, such as age, title, profession and history of interactions with the company, the company will be able to communicate more precisely with the customer and anticipate their requests so that they are as satisfied as possible.
In addition, a customer portfolio enables the company to consolidate customer information and gain a more comprehensive overview of the company’s situation. It also enables the company to better organize and delegate tasks, because thanks to the interaction history, all the company’s employees have access to the same information and can help the customer in the same way.
A customer portfolio also enables you to segment your customers, creating different categories to understand what certain customer groups like and don’t like. By grouping information in one place, it’s easier to compile customer statistics and identify sales bottlenecks.
A customer portfolio can also include a prospecting section. In this part, the company will keep information on potential customers and seek to win new ones. Thanks to the customer portfolio, which contains prospect information, the sales approach will be greatly facilitated, as the sales representative will know what the potential customer expects from the company.
How do you segment your customer portfolio?
A customer portfolio needs to be segmented, i.e. divided according to customer characteristics. This segmentation will largely depend on the market in which the company operates, but there are 7 essential criteria to identify, whatever the company’s sector of activity.
- First name
- Name
- Email address
- Phone number
- Current status (Is he or she a customer, prospect or lead?)
- Customer’s sector of activity
- Interaction history
This is just the beginning of good segmentation, and you can add as much information as you like. However, we advise you to stop as soon as the information you gather has no bearing on your further interactions with your customer.
Here’s a non-exhaustive list to complete your customer portfolio.
- Civility
- Age
- Location
- Contact preferences (e-mail, telephone…)
- Number of purchases
- Type of purchase
- Replies to e-mails
- Reminders and reminders
Organize your customer portfolio efficiently
Our simple prospect sheet lets you centralize essential information on your corporate customers and their contacts.
Easily track your interactions and identify sales opportunities.
How do you manage your customer portfolio?
Managing a customer portfolio can be complicated. No matter how vigilant you are, customer information tends to scatter quickly, and it’s always hard to keep track of it all.
First of all, we advise you to gather all customer information in one place, as this makes it easier to manage and share information between team members. The more information there is, the more complicated it is to manage the customer portfolio.
A customer portfolio is really effective when all the company’s employees enter information into it. This means being methodical and never letting a piece of information linger in the back of your mind.
We do not recommend the paper-based method of gathering this information, as it could be lost forever.
The digital method offers many advantages, not least the sharing of information and the ease of transporting this data on your phone.
What software and applications should you use for your customer portfolio?
When the customer portfolio is small (less than 100 people) and you work alone, you can use Excel. It’s very practical, as it allows you to quickly take stock of the situation, and can be easily modified.
It also provides a solid basis for understanding and seeing what you need before moving on to specialized software. However, if you’re not an Excel expert, keeping your customer file up to date can quickly become complicated and confusing.
There’s a type of customer care software that allows you to manage your customer portfolio simply and efficiently. This is also known as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.
91% of companies with more than 11 employees use CRM software (Algoworks), and that’s normal. CRM software enables a company to optimize interactions and relationships with customers, prospects, suspects, users, partners, employees and suppliers. This monitoring and relationship-building enables the company to better understand its partners’ expectations. This will help the company win new customers, build loyalty and improve its organization.
CRM software needs to be adapted to the type of organization, size and market of the company using it. The CRM software market is very large, and there are many different solutions (at least 600 different software packages), so finding the right CRM software can be complicated. We’ve put together a list of 5 software solutions, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.
- Moovago: suitable for sales agents, independent sales representatives, field sales representatives, sales agencies and SMEs.
- Hubspot: suitable for communications and marketing agencies.
- Axonaut: suitable for large companies.
- Pipedrive: adapted for sedentary salespeople.
- SalesForce: adapted for very large companies
How do I buy a customer portfolio?
The customer portfolio is just a container that needs to be fed. Even if the customer portfolio is big it’s not important, it’s the quality of the information inside that’s valuable. You need to collect information while complying with RGPD. To obtain a customer portfolio, you have the choice between doing it yourself with the information you have and creating prospecting campaigns to obtain new information or buying a customer portfolio directly from a service provider.
Data already collected by the company and belonging to it is essential. This includes customer first and last names, sales and order histories, and recent contacts with prospects and customers. In short, all the information that a company’s employees keep in their heads, in their files and on scraps of paper can be retrieved to feed your customer portfolio.
Some of this information can be purchased from service providers who offer customer portfolios. Before purchasing this information, we advise you to take stock of your current customers, to understand who might be interested in your company and the products and services it offers.
Resource: Find out more aboutbuying a customer file.