Local rec center; youth basketball league. An opposing player launched a wobbly satellite, missing backboard, rim, net, other players, innocent passers-by, the works. Our five-year old grandson immediately began the chant: "Hairball! Hairball!" Close, but . . .
I've been struck by how often those who honestly think they're managing supply chain relationships use words that sound almost right, but that miss the mark when execution is closely examined. Business relationships, collaboration, open books, strategic alignment - all those seem to be the right stuff. But, when what they turn out to really mean are "Kiss me quick, I'm off to the next key account dinner," it's time to ask hard questions about the depth and quality of commitment to differentiated and sustainable mutual efforts.
Close, but not quite on the mark, isn't nearly as amusing, or harmless, in supply chain business relationships as it might be with earnest kindergarteners.
Ralph Roberts is the President of Worthington Industries Integrated Building Systems.
He took a moment to talk with Kathy Hoyt and discuss the role of business relationships in his success and the success of Worthington Industries.
Kathy: How has your approach evolved throughout your career?
Ralph: I’ve seen the full spectrum from concentrating on personal relations to company centered Value Propositions.
In the economic down turn in the 80’s the personal relationships were being limited due to less money being spent on entertainment. The shift went to B2B relationships and became more professional.
Relationships are being replaced by associations and event shows instead of a high concentration on “entertainment”.
Today it’s about how your business value systems are similar to your customer’s business relationships value system so you can work together.
Kathy: Who helped you develop these skills?
Ralph: When I first started Worthington Industries 37 yrs. ago the company was small so I had access to the Executives. These Executives had a strong customer focus and I saw them dealing with customers on a daily basis.
The WI Philosophy was already in play and was being demonstrated in the contacts with customers. The philosophical needle was very important in all areas of the company and an esprit de core was developed and lived.
Kathy: How have the skilled contributed to your success?
Ralph: The skills applied to all aspects of the business. The philosophy was driven throughout the organization.
You got put into situations and had to deal with it. There were no training programs so you had to figure things out for yourself. Some survived and some didn’t.
The common values were the deciding factor. When faced with a tough decision, I did the following steps:
The Philosophy card “taught” you the skills you needed.
(Note: When Tom Peters interviewed John H. McConnell there were no written policies in place – only the Philosophy card!)
Kathy: Can you think of a time when the relationship saved the customer?
Ralph: The Tenneco Company had had a relationship with Worthington that wasn’t so good. When we called on the purchasing manager he said he would never to do business with us again.
After repeated calls over a period of two years, we were finally able to rebuild the relationship by showing them we could add value to their company. It turned out to be one of our largest contracts.
Allen Bradley was a targeted account for us and when first contacted, the said “no.” The account manager was instructed to call on them every 6 weeks, develop the relationship, show how WI could add value.
Our reasoning was eventually they will get in trouble and when they do, we will be there to help. It worked.
Kathy: How is business relationships managed as a core competency?
Ralph: Today the Philosophy is formally introduced in the orientation program and is reinforced through all facets of training and interactions.
Look at the card to make a decision. We also use the TIPS process we learned through S4 to improve our listening skills and really understand our customer’s needs.
In 2008, we started a “Transformation” that brought teams together to become more efficient. Customers are seeing improved quality, service and cost effective solutions.
When customers tour the plant, an operator is able to talk to the customer and tell them exactly what they are making for that customer. Customers feel good that WI is doing all it can to improve quality, service and cost.
Kathy: When did the relationship cause you to lose a sale?
Ralph: I had a great relationship with a customer and thought he would never take away his business but he told me that we weren’t competitive with our pricing. Just because you have a great relationship you have to remain competitive.
He gave all his business to a competitor! A good business relationship is good to have but not enough to keep the business.
Kathy: What advice would you give about building relationships?
Ralph:
Kathy: If you could give one piece of advice, what would it be?
Ralph: How well do you know your top 10 accounts? Not the statistics and number but what is their growth plan, fears, and can you help them meet their business goals.
Can they articulate how Worthington Industries is helping them? There should never be any surprises in working with one of your top 10 customers.
Kathy: How has the economy effective business relationship?
Ralph: There is now a new normal. Employees are being cut from the work force and organizations have to go deeper than they would like just to stay in business.
Trust gets hurt and will take a long time to recapture it. Some companies have had to cut the number of suppliers they are using just for economy of scale – even if it was a good relationship.
In some cases, some of the preferred suppliers have gone out of business forcing them to buy from a company they might not like.
Companies are worried about the financial stability of the suppliers even if the relationship is good.
These are very trying times but it will come back. As the market comes back WI will be well positioned because we have quality products, a quality company and financial stability.
Ralph Roberts has been with Worthington Industries for 37 years. He currently serves as President of Worthington Industries Integrated Building Systems.
He serves on the Boards for Worthington Armstrong Venture (WAVE), ThyssenKrupp Steel and Worthington Industries (TWB) and Spartan Steel Coating for Worthington Industries.
Anthony Iannarino is President and Chief Sales Officer for SOLUTIONS Staffing. He is a consultant with B2B Sales Coach and Consultancy, and teaches at Capital University.
Joe Sperry sat down with Anthony Iannarino last week to discuss how his handling of business relationships contributes to his success.
Joe: How has your approach to relationships in business contributed to your personal or your company's success?
Anthony: My personal approach to relationships in business is based upon the idea that creating value together requires a relationship based on trust.
Mutual trust allows us to share ideas and information that might not otherwise be shared to explore potential ideas that allow us to exploit opportunities together, to solve problems, and to share business metrics that help both our companies do better work together than we would otherwise.
For example, 30 days after we start a large staffing project for a call center, we will share our turnover data. Initially some of our clients don't want to share their internal hiring data, but eventually they see it's the best way to discover how we improve our results together. Sometimes we have lower turnover numbers, and we share our on-boarding process with the client to help them improve their own results.
It's not always easy to build this trust, and sometimes there are individuals within some companies who cling to the idea that vendors are disposable. But once they have a successful business relationship, they understand the great value that a trusted business partner can help create.
Joe: How has proactive relationship management impacted both your organization's top-line and bottom-line performance?
Anthony: We schedule quarterly business review meetings with our clients. In addition to being a differentiator, this proactive approach has allowed us to improve our top and bottom line by defining the relationship as something more than a "vendor" could offer. In many cases, this approach by itself has helped a number of clients to move to us exclusively. This, in my opinion, is the response to "act like a vendor, I'll treat you like a vendor." Because we take a serious interest in our performance and how it impacts our client's performance, we are treated as something more than a vendor.
Joe: Do you have any advice for beginning relationship or account managers?
Anthony: Create value before claiming it. Understand that trust takes time to build, and you have to walk the walk before that trust will be developed as much as it can be. Have a presence. Have a presence. Have a presence. Never hide from problems or challenges, even if it makes you uncomfortable.
Thanks, Anthony! Business Relationships Members, do you have any questions for Anthony? Leave a comment if you do!
Anthony Iannarino is the President and Chief Sales Officer for SOLUTIONS Staffing, a professional sales coach, and a consultant for a firm he started, B2B Sales Coach and Consultancy.
Mr. Iannarino is also Adjunct Faculty at Capital University, where he teaches Persuasive Marketing, Social Media Marketing, and Personal Selling in the School of Business.
Anthony Iannarino is President and Chief Sales Officer for SOLUTIONS Staffing. He is a consultant with B2B Sales Coach and Consultancy, and teaches at Capital University.
Joe Sperry sat down with Anthony Iannarino last week to discuss how his handling of business relationships contributes to his success.
Joe: How has your approach to relationships in business contributed to your personal or your company's success?
Anthony: My personal approach to relationships in business is based upon the idea that creating value together requires a relationship based on trust.
Mutual trust allows us to share ideas and information that might not otherwise be shared to explore potential ideas that allow us to exploit opportunities together, to solve problems, and to share business metrics that help both our companies do better work together than we would otherwise.
For example, 30 days after we start a large staffing project for a call center, we will share our turnover data. Initially some of our clients don't want to share their internal hiring data, but eventually they see it's the best way to discover how we improve our results together. Sometimes we have lower turnover numbers, and we share our on-boarding process with the client to help them improve their own results.
It's not always easy to build this trust, and sometimes there are individuals within some companies who cling to the idea that vendors are disposable. But once they have a successful business relationship, they understand the great value that a trusted business partner can help create.
Joe: How has proactive relationship management impacted both your organization's top-line and bottom-line performance?
Anthony: We schedule quarterly business review meetings with our clients. In addition to being a differentiator, this proactive approach has allowed us to improve our top and bottom line by defining the relationship as something more than a "vendor" could offer. In many cases, this approach by itself has helped a number of clients to move to us exclusively. This, in my opinion, is the response to "act like a vendor, I'll treat you like a vendor." Because we take a serious interest in our performance and how it impacts our client's performance, we are treated as something more than a vendor.
Joe: Do you have any advice for beginning relationship or account managers?
Anthony: Create value before claiming it. Understand that trust takes time to build, and you have to walk the walk before that trust will be developed as much as it can be. Have a presence. Have a presence. Have a presence. Never hide from problems or challenges, even if it makes you uncomfortable.
Thanks, Anthony! Business Relationships Members, do you have any questions for Anthony? Leave a comment if you do!
Anthony Iannarino is the President and Chief Sales Officer for SOLUTIONS Staffing, a professional sales coach, and a consultant for a firm he started, B2B Sales Coach and Consultancy.
Mr. Iannarino is also Adjunct Faculty at Capital University, where he teaches Persuasive Marketing, Social Media Marketing, and Personal Selling in the School of Business.
David Maister is the consultant whose hard-won wisdom has guided an entire generation of consultants. He hasn’t written about key account management very often but in this essay (which later became Chapter 19 in his 2000 book The Trusted Advisor) he lists some points that are as insightful as anything else he has written. The article is called, appropriately enough, “Key Account Management.”
I’m going to list some of his insights verbatim and suggest strongly that you take a look at the article because it contains other real-world suggestions about managing key accounts.
Below are just a few of his points.
Key accounts’ commonly expressed concerns about suppliers:
Other insights:
All I can say is that if the points above do not offer some assistance with your key accounts, you must be in a unique market with unique accounts. Good reading. JSperry
I’ve been trolling the Internet for articles on relationship management and have been finding hundreds of them, all free, and most worth the price. While there are many many insights provided, they were usually on very high level. I could find few essays where the conclusions merited being included on this site.
When I broadened my search a bit, I came across an article that would appeal to business-to-business sellers and buyers. It’s by Erin Anderson and Sandy D. Jap, it’s called The Dark Side of Close Relationships. It appeared in the Spring, 2005, issue of the Sloan Management Review. I believe our readers should get their hands on it for a number of reasons, not least of which is that Anderson and Jap’s research included studying over 1200 business-to-business alliances.
Anderson and Jap argue that “Relationships that seem to be doing well are often the most vulnerable to the forces of destruction that are commonly building beneath the surface of the relationship. In other words, close relationships that seem the most stable can also be the most vulnerable to decline and destruction. We refer to this phenomenon as the dark side of close relationships.” (hard not to think of Star Wars)
One of he ways this dark side manifests itself is when both firms “are confident and optimistic about their collaboration….Since no trouble can be seen on the horizon, there is no apparent reason to change course, strategy or tactics.” The problem here is the assumption that things are going well can deaden the sensitivity of one or both parties to the relationship, and they may act opportunistically. Anderson and Jap use a great example of an auto painter who had a long relationship with the brand automaker and starting using two coats instead of the required three.
This agrees with our findings that firms in a relationship tend to assume that when no noise comes from the partner, the relationship is doing very well. I remember being hired by the CEO of a huge transportation company who said to me, “I cannot believe that things are going as well with our large customers as my account managers say it is.” His insights were solid—the account managers were burying problems they thought they would be blamed for. By bringing new sensitivity to the key relationships, the company was able to forestall serious problems and even, in one case, the customer seeking another transportation company.
Anderson and Jap feel that the dark side of relationships occurs when firms focus on three mechanisms: The creation of immediate benefits [which can lessen the effects of long-term value]; the development of strong interpersonal relationships [which, if there are few of these can result in an account manager taking customers with his/her when they leave]; and unique processes and adaptations, where the firms invest in the relationship [these investments may not be reciprocated.]
How to keep the dark side from appearing in relationships? “Prevention,” Anderson and Jap say, “is the best medicine. Bolstering relationships--through regular evaluation, backup plans (having a back-up account manager, for example] and crisis management--helps create efficient. motivated and productive relationships….”
I do disagree with one conclusion that the authors suggest. They say that to keep a relationship fresh, one should change the people close to the relationship every two years or so. Assuming that he/she is effective, most accounts would scream bloody murder if their account manager should be replaced every two years.
The article is around ten pages, it is not written in over-academic prose and it supplies many examples which I cannot include, or this piece might have been as long as the Sloan essay. It’s worth your time. Check it out. JSperry
How effectively aligned is your organization? That is—are all your departments pulling in roughly in the same direction? When one department has a customer problem, are other departments willing to step in and help? Or are your departments like little states in the Austro-Hungarian empire, lobbing grenades at each other?
An unaligned organization makes it almost impossible to be responsive to a customer request or problem. This is because cross-departmental processes can be at best clumsy and at worst unworkable. And who is trapped in this lack of alignment? Your account managers, who in some cases have to walk customer requests/solutions through your organization.
Every minute your account managers spend making up for an unaligned organization is a minute that could be used to uncover new opportunities for mutual value. JSperry
You say your firm has a strategic account management program? That your strategic account managers are beautifully managing the targeted customer relationships?
Are you as sure that all the accounts you have targeted should be strategic accounts? When you started the program, did you divest yourself of some accounts that did not fit your strategic criteria? Did you drop less critical customers who have never paid for themselves?
If you answer no to any of these questions, and seem shocked at the suggestion to drop customers, I wonder how strategic your SAM program really is. As our friend, Das Narayandas, Ph.D., Harvard Business School, once said to us, “Strategic account management is as much about deselecting accounts you don’t want as it is about selecting accounts you do.” JSperry
A high-tech global manufacturer decided to set up a global accounts program. They targeted their 200 top customers and were ready to pilot the program. Then some unknown genius had asked: “Shouldn’t we find out if they want to be treated as one of our global accounts?” The other decision makers agreed and so representatives went out to ask that very question of the targeted accounts.
What they found surprised them. Of the 200 global customer targets, 73 of them didn’t want such a relationship. What they wanted was cheap product and they tended to say, “Take the money that you would be spending on making us a global account and deduct it from your prices.”
Just asking that simple question saved the high-tech company millions of dollars in relationship management costs. And it strengthened the relationships with the more transactional customers.
The Moral? Just because you think it’s a value to the customer doesn’t mean it is. Ask before investing.
Too many firms treat customers as if they were costs rather than assets. When they treat accounts like costs, it’s very hard to justify investment in the relationships. But it is very easy to justify keeping costs low, no matter how the customer is impacted.
Note: when a big customer gets tired of being badly treated and presents the supplier with ultimatums, the supplier will move very quickly to make the investments it should have been making in the first place. The investments will probably be made, but why piss off the large customer before they are made?
Here are five questions you might ask yourself about how your firm is treating customers:
Without descending too much into left- and right-brained people (which I think is reductionist), many businesspeople feel that relationships, the heart, and love are soft constructs as opposed to analysis, numbers, and spreadsheets. Heart versus head.
The truth, as usual, is much more complex. I ask you executives: how many of your business failures have occurred because of a bad analysis or spreadsheets? OK—now compare that number to the number of failures that have occurred because of bad relationships. Unless your firm is very different from those I know, the second number, failure through relationships, will be far larger than the first number.
To name but a few of these failures, consider the failures in your mergers and acquisitions, in your outsourcing contracts, in your alliances, in your strategic account management, and in your firm’s overall management (and these are only a few examples). Relationships are the underpinning of your firm. What seems soft is very very hard when it leads to failure.
For those managers who see relationships as too soft, who try to maintain a “rational distance” from co-workers, this is bad news. As Daniel S. Hanson says, in his Cultivating Common Ground: Releasing the Power of Relationships at Work, “The truth is, it is impossible to separate the heart from the head just as it is impossible to separate relationships with work. Even if we could separate them, it is doubtful that it would be good for us or our work.” JSperry
Yes and no. Given the variables of two individuals’ personalities, it seems a daunting task to establish a connection. At the same time, most of us like to make connections and something so simple as a shared interest, family situation or history can take you a long way.
I know one account manager in the north woods who liked to take his account contacts hunting. As he put it, “Once they’ve killed with you, the bond is made.” That approach will not be available to most but, given his location, it’s an effective choice. What it does show is how creative the rapport-building ideas that relationship managers can come up with.
If you look up sales and rapport on the Internet these days, the acronym you see most often is NLP, which stands for neuro-linguistic programming. NLP involves such things as mirroring a person’s posture and their tone of voice. I’m sure some of that works—there’s too much research that says it does. On the other hand, it has always seemed to me a bit manipulative. And if the contact with whom you are trying to establish rapport has also read any of the articles or books, you can find yourself quickly embarrassed.
To help your account managers establish rapport with your account contacts, I suggest hiring them for rapport-building skills. I know relationship managers who have trained to be better rapport builders but, in my experience, most of the best account managers seem to have been gifted with the ability—either through nature or nurture. When you are interviewing these people, they usually make a connection with you because that is who they are. No connection, no rapport-building skills. And, all other things being equal, these are the sorts of folks to hire as relationship managers.
There are still firms trying to get a handle on what exactly service quality is so that they can deliver it. I can help a bit, drawing from the wonderful research done in the 1980s by Valarie Zeithaml, A. Parasuraman and Leonard L. Berry. Their conclusions appeared in the 1990 Free Press book Delivering Quality Service: Balancing Customer Perceptions and Expectations. This may seem old information to some but it’s been interesting to see how few of our customers really know this source. In that book the three authors break service quality down into five determinants, from most important to least important:
Reliability: Ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately
Responsiveness: Willingness to help customer and provide prompt service
Assurance: Knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to convey trust and confidence
Empathy: Caring, individualized attention the firm provides its customers
Tangibles: Appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel, and communication materials
This may seem like common sense, but the three authors’ conclusions are the only researched determinants of service quality we know. Almost everything else defining service quality is an educated guess.There are some interesting conclusions that can be drawn from these five determinants. The most important, I believe, is that the three most critical determinants come before empathy, on which many service people are hired.
The conclusion is that service quality, while it includes “niceness,” is in fact a detailed performance issue. If your firm is not reliable, responsive and knowledgeable, it will do it no good to focus solely on empathy. And yet much customer service training, in experience, focused on empathy and ways to use it.
To rephrase their conclusion, a firm which seeks to offer quality service most start with the actual expectations of customers and then create systems which allow the firm to provide consistent reliability, responsiveness and assurance.
In designing quality service, a firm needs to see it as a matter of cultural alignment, and not just customer service people being empathic. This is especially true of strategic accounts, where a given person at the account might phone any employee at the firm to get his questions answered. If there has not been effective training and the firm resource called is nice but knows neither the account nor the answer to questions, it sends a message that may be hard to erase in the customer's mind.
Relationship Drift for Fun and Profit...But Watch Out
Have you carefully mapped the key relationships that need to be maintained with your strategic accounts? Are you willing to bet the farm that you have captured all those relationships and that someone on your team is managing each of those relationships? Because like it or not, you have bet the farm.
You’ve bet the farm on your strategic accounts
One of the savviest strategic account managers I ever knew loved to come into a prospect that was being served by a competitor and draw up his own map of the critical relationships. He would then bring something of value to each person on the list and, more often than not, he found relationships that the competitor had neither identified or covered very effectively. If that relationship was high enough, he would use his better management of the relationship to steal the account away. Relationship drift is what happens when you do not map or do not effectively serve all critical relationships. In too many cases, by the time you realize that the account relationships have drifted away from you, it may well be too late to keep the account.
By the time you realize drift has happened, it may be too late to save your account
Of course, you’re just as smart as that strategic account manager. Why not see if you can create some account drift away from your competitors. But while you’re doing that, make sure that your own relationships are covered. JSperry
Where is the Your Strategy for Strategic Accounts?
Here are five questions about your strategy for strategic accounts:
1. Could someone deep in your organization explain your corporate and strategic account management strategy?
2. Do you have a written strategy for strategic accounts?
3. Are the end points of these strategies clear?
4. Will your average worker be able to use those strategies to make decisions and prioritize tasks?
5. Given these strategies, do your people know what your firm is not going to do?
If you answered “no” to any of these questions, you have some major work ahead of you.
You can’t always know who the account is going to contact to solve their problems. If a key resource is on vacation, the critical customer may be passed off to another employee who may have no idea that this is a large customer calling. In the worst case, this employee does not treat the customer with the respect it deserves.
If you do have a strategies for corporate and for strategic accounts, how far down in the organization have you driven those strategies? In too many cases the strategy is written but it lives in the Presidents office and is only used when s new strategy needs to be developed.
The last question, regarding what your firm will not do, is very important. Assuming your firm is not all things to all customers (a marketing approach that we do not recommend), all people—salespeople, marketing people, operations people—need to know where to draw the line when a customer makes a request. If a salesperson has promised a service above and beyond your strategy to land the account, someone needs to discipline that salesperson. On a number of occasions, we have seen the firm accept the customer that was overpromised to. That sends absolutely the wrong message to the firm employees—that strategic rules are flexible. JSperry
How Big Should Strategic Accounts Be?
On the face of it, this seems an absurd question—strategic accounts are almost always the largest accounts you have. But maybe your big clients are so large that their demands are squeezing your margins badly? I think about markets like commercial real estate, where huge customers bring in the big revenue but create such headaches that in some cases they are less profitable than middle-sized firms.
Offering poison pills to your competitors
I know one firm that was managing three large hospitals. The hospitals generated the supplier’s largest revenue but were just breakeven profitable. The management firm spent four years soliciting and gaining smaller accounts that offered higher profitability and fewer headaches. Then when the revenue of the three large hospitals was covered by higher-margin customers, the firm simply did not bid on the hospitals’ management contracts. The firm’s competitors leaped in, seeing the hospital business as a gift from God. They bid low and ended up with what can only be called “poison pills.” In one strategic thrust, the first management firm had significantly raised its profitable revenue while significantly dropping its competitors’ profitability.
Where’s your strategy in your strategic accounts?
Let’s go back for a second to the phrase “strategic accounts.” In my experience, many strategic account programs select accounts by revenue size; they do not select with an eye to their marketing/sales strategy. But those who do follow their strategy often define strategic accounts not as the huge customers but perhaps as customers with huge growth/profit potential. Or customers in a new market that will soon require offerings such as yours.
Do your competitors deserve some accounts you are currently serving?
Are your accounts very big or are they very big and profitable? Are you currently serving some accounts that your competitors really deserve to have? JSperry
It has become fashionable - even a cliche - to opine, as if a new tablet had been discovered on the Mount, that "Companies don't compete against other companies any more; today, supply chains compete against other supply chains." C'mon guys, that pseudo-aha moment was already passe by the end of the last century.
What we need to be focusing on in the 21st century is how to leverage business relationships to further optimize the power - and outcomes - of end-to-end supply chain peeformance. The supply chain world has an enormous advantage in being able to create multi-directuional business relationships; it is not confined to more traditional customer account management constructs (although those remain vitally important). A player in any given supply chain can have the potential to build upstream relationships with suppliers, as well as downstream with customers. And, the prevalence of third parties - logistics service providers - in logistics and supply chain operations and planning introduces still more powerful relationship opportunities.
So, where are you in the realm of supply chain opportunities for business relationships? Does an ultimate customer (even two steps further down the chain) dominate - or trump - what you'd like to do with relationships? Are you a weak player in a strong supply chain? Or, a strong player in a weak supply chain? Are you seeing potential breakthroughs, or substantial improvements, in prospective supply chain business relationships?
We once worked with a firm to help them improve their relationships and effectiveness in their market. We had scheduled account assessments and many individual interviews. When I asked the firm's executive committee if there were any lost customers we should contact, the responses were so similar that it was close to comical. "She won't see you." "She won't talk to you." "You'd be wasting your time."
They were talking about a woman who was a plant manager with what had been their largest account. I waded through all their negative responses and said that all she could really do is tell me no. So I picked up the phone later, called and, happily, she said she would talk to me.
"They're paying you by the hour?"
When I showed up, she first made sure I was not a disguised employee. After she was satisfied, she then said, "Let me get this right. (The firm that hired you) is paying you by the hour to learn what it could do better?" I agreed.
She then spoke to me for seven hours.
She had become the internal VP of Negative Marketing...
Within reach of her desk, the plant manager had a PowerPoint presentation presenting the ineffective systems and practices of my client (this was a very bad sign). After 45 minutes or so, it was clear she had become what we in the trade call the internal VP of Negative Marketing for my client. The presentation included the emails and notes she had written to my client, progressively angrier, as well as their feeble responses.
As well as the traveling external VP...
I asked her who she had been giving this presentation to and she said she had given it to most internal decision makers in her firm and that it was also a big hit at professional conferences where she could talk to my client's other customers or potential customers. And judging by her timing (which was impeccable) and the beautifully crafted anecdotes and phrases, she had given this presentation many times. Several times I caught myself laughing at what she was saying about the firm that hired me (and you were wondering why I have kept this anonymous).
I took so many notes my fingers became jelly-like.
To fill the remaining time, she pulled in other people at her firm who had been negatively impacted by my client and asked that they share with me their negative experiences. I took so many notes my fingers became jelly-like.
Validating the lost customer's concerns
Were the seven hours of interviewing and four hours of data analysis expensive for the supplier? Oh my, yes. But at the same time, it was probably the single most valuable project we did for the customer because it provided example after example of how the firm had failed a strategic customer and what they needed to do to avoid those mistakes in the future. Because we did this lost customer interview early in the account assessment process, we were able to tailor the account assessment interview guide to delve into her concerns with other accounts. We then validated many of her concerns with those of other customers.
A little like asking your ex-wife how you can improve yourself
There is a certain amount of masochism involved in talking to a furious lost customer -- it's a little like asking your ex-wife for ways to improve yourself -- but who knows you better? If you are sincere about trying to improve, the process, while painful, can pay you back a thousand fold.
Hi everyone! Here is a guide to adding a photo to your
businessrelationships.com profile.
First you will need to go to My Homepage. When you reach your homepage, click on Edit My Account. On the toolbar all the way to the right side, you will see a tab called Getting Started. Click on Getting Started.
In the left column, the first item says About You. It says Add a Photo in blue-- it is a link, and you will need to click on it. When you click Add a Photo, it will take you to a place to upload a photo.
To summarize: My Homepage > Edit My Account > Getting Started > Add a Photo
Still having trouble? Send me a message!
Hope that helps! If you still have trouble, contact Mimi at the Help Desk!