Share
Many times, companies setup new customers and never know that many firms are actually related by a common parent or holding company. They may be subsidiaries or divisions that still maintain their original names used prior to their acquisition. Larger firms that buy others many times do not want to throw away a known name or brand so they retain the company’s original name and keep the new relationship innocuous.
If your company does business with lots of other businesses, it may very well be worth hiring a marketing intern from college to research your database of companies and tie them together with family codes. In this case, a family code refers to assigning the same parental code that can be used for sorting and summarizing multi-location customers.
Uses for assigning a family code that connects your customers:
- Sort all of your monthly or annual orders by location and total.
- Sort all of your monthly or annual sales by location and total.
- Sort and compare gross profit by division within a company.
- Compare products or services sold by division. Who is buying and more importantly, who is not?
- Compare divisions to see who is buying your new products or services and who is not. Psychology tells you that when one begins to do something, others are more likely to join in assuming there is little associated risk in their involvement.
- Create company fliers offering corporate discounts listing all of the locations of a parent company on your company letterhead with an available purchasing discount. When the new location sees you do business with his sister divisions, he is more likely to buy from you to take advantage of discounts he might not get elsewhere.
- When selling to corporate purchase agents, show them how much of your product is being purchased within his organization and what discounts his firm might be able to take if his other divisions were encouraged to participate in the discount by buying from your company.
