there is a close alignment between the mission, the rhetoric and the
implementation.
Not only do senior managers need to ‘walk the talk’ but they
must constantly seek to motivate and empower those they work
with to seek constantly to improve the quality of relationships with
all the key market domains that we have identified in this book.
Internal communication, training and development play a key
role here. Creating a sense of common purpose and establishing
‘shared values’ is an essential foundation for relationship-based
marketing strategies.
A further and critical prerequisite for success in bringing about a
relationship culture in the business is an appropriate performance
measurement system. As the organization makes the transition from
a vertical, functionally oriented business to a horizontal, process-
focused business, then so too must the performance measures
change.
People generally behave according to how they are measured and
so, if the performance indicators are functional and financially
directed, then managers will focus upon functional efficiency. If, on
the other hand, the measures are outwardly focused on process
goals and customer satisfaction, then the likely focus of behaviour
will be upon process effectiveness.
We are now in the era of the ‘Balanced Scorecard’^15 in which the
importance of using non-financial performance indicators alongside
the more traditional financial measures is now recognized. Key ele-
ments in this new multi-dimensional concept of performance meas-
urement must be relationship-oriented metrics. For example, such
measures as customer retention, customer satisfaction, perfect order
achievement, complaints, customer referrals and ‘share of wallet’
must stand alongside the more traditional measures of performance,
such as achievement against budget. Where possible, these measures
should be process-based, such as ‘time-to-market’, ‘time-to-serve’
and ‘cost-to-serve’. Equally, they should be widely communicated
and, ideally, incorporated into financial incentive schemes such as
quarterly bonuses, employee awards and the like.
Performance measurement, culture change and behaviour are all
closely intertwined. The success or failure of a relationship market-
ing strategy will be largely determined by how well these critical
issues are managed. It will be clear from the breadth of these ideas,
and the business-wide implications that they have, that the vision of
Relationship Marketing we have presented in this book and else-
Creating and implementing relationship marketing strategies 427