Rick Page - Make Winning a Habit стр 17.

If you decide to invest in growing an account, you need to radiate to power sponsors early in the game. Radiate from those who know you and like you to those who need to know you and like you before the next formal buying process breaks out. Use one executive sponsor to take you to another. Ask each who else in his or her area/industry you can be doing this for.

Unfortunately, too many people either get too focused on delivery of the first project to radiate out or they havethe hall pass and get stuck in their comfort zone, calling on people who are already sold. In addition, sales hunters hurry down the road to the next prospect company because what is qualified for long-term

account management is not qualified for a short-term quarterly-driven hunter. This is why hunters usually dont make good account managers.

Collaborate

One way to elevate your value from commodity to strategic is to collaborate with the client on product or strategic initiatives. This requires working on issues other than just your product. It may mean logistics, marketing, codesign, new markets, integration, or innovation.

This is a very powerful model for raising value and has led to technology tools for product configuration, change orders, design, and collaboration through an entire supply chain.

I meet a lot of sales managers on airplanes. I remember flying into Minneapolis, sitting next to a sales manager for a paper company.

Of course, I asked him, Isnt it hard to sell a commodity like paper these days?

He responded, I have about 1,200 other salespeople in the commodity division. What I do is co-design specialty papers for clients with unique needs. Im meeting with 3M tomorrow to collaborate on papers for products that we will both produce two years from now. The margins are much higher.

Likewise, later that year, I sat beside a carpet salesman, flying into Washington, D.C., who was meeting with Marriott Corporation to design special carpets for hotels they would build throughout the world over the next few years.

Its the only way we could get out of the commodity business, he said.

Elevate your executive relationships to trust and your solutions to the strategic.

ELEVATING TO STRATEGIC PAIN

A few years ago, one of our principals, Jon Hauck, was in a presentation with a sales rep who was presenting to the president of a major division of MCI and two of his lieutenants.

The lieutenants had prepared and coached them for the presentation, which was to last an hour. This was the big day! They thought they knew the presidents key issues, which could be addressed by their slick sales dashboard that would provide significant visibility into the forecast.

But just 20 minutes into the presentation, they could see that the president was tuning out. Though the rep was doing a very nice job, unfortunately, the only heads that were nodding were his and those of the lieutenants. Jon reached over, closed the laptop, and asked the president if visibility into the forecast was what really concerned him most.

Yes, he said. But youve missed the issue. In the Telco space, forecasting revenue is not about when its sold, but when the switch is turned on. Thats what I need to forecast. I already know what my sales are going to be.

With that, they immediately changed direction and probed a little deeper into his actual issue.

He cordially explained it, and they artfully created the linkage from the benefits of their solution to solving his true pain. This took about 13 minutes.

When they told him they could do what he needed, the deal was done. He told his sales operations manager to get with them, define the scope, and tell him how much to spend.

Two weeks later, they had a contract for over $500k.

STAY INVOLVEDDELIVER WHAT YOU SOLD

Early in the implementation of the State of Texas payroll system, Joe Terry, then the salesperson on the account, ran into a potential two-week delay to get the system installed because the clients database manager was going to be on vacation and would miss the installation training class.

The next class was not to be held for another month, but the database manager refused to change his vacation schedule. At the project level, the project manager had chosen to simply let the delay stand.

Joe went to the deputy controller and explained the hidden cost of having the 30 people on the project team stand idle for a month while the project was on hold: $720,000.

That was a pretty expensive vacation.

The controller interjected himself in the process to prevent the delay, but just as important, Joe gained trusted advisor status with the controller. This access proved to be crucial as the project ran into the normal problems that can sometimes escalate out of control.

Many salespeople reach the executive level to get the sale and then leave the support team to work at the lower levels of the account. Sometimes the problem is actually the customers. By maintaining the access and relationships at the executive level, after the sale, Joe was able to save the customer from themselves without going over the project teams headhe was already there.

He elevated the relationship to trust by staying involved in delivering what he sold and saved the executive from embarrassment.

HELP THEM DEFINE THEIR REAL PROBLEM

One client executive of Deloittes came to them and said, We need to do something about increasing revenues.

At the time, Deloitte had developed a process called a Value Map that allowed them to break processes into different areas. When they mapped the clients problem to the Value Map, they saw that none of the projects the client wanted done addressed revenue at all.

The real initiative was that the client needed to cut costs. The client was asking Deloitte for the wrong thing.

When dealing with someone from a strategic standpoint, before you ask, Are you doing the thing right? you have to ask, Are you doing the right thing?