Brent Adamson's Blog, page 25

6 Lessons to Make the Most of Your Executive Sponsorship Program

Companies are forever looking to get closer to customers; particularly the c-suite executives that are hard for reps to engage and serve in the customer organization. Most sales organizations often resort to establishing an executive sponsorship program—pairing senior executives with a few key accounts as a means to establish long-term relationships at the c-suite level in the customer organization.

At their best, executive sponsors help drive greater account penetration and customer loyalty, while also acting as internal account advocates—marshalling internal resources to customer opportunities and actively participating in account management and development. Executive sponsorship programs also serve as a platform for reps to learn and practice next-level skills from seasoned senior executives.

That said, despite the many benefits of executive sponsorship programs, very few sales organizations have seen tangible results from them. Programs often fail to gather momentum as executive sponsors lack defined objectives and motivational incentives to participate regularly. In addition, poor alignment between customer accounts and executive sponsors fails to yield the desired results.

Over the course of our conversations with members, SEC has uncovered six lessons for improving the quality of executive involvement and commitment in executive sponsorship programs:

While reactive executive involvement is necessary to maintain account health (e.g., resolving a complaint), proactive executive engagement is critical to expanding the relationship.
Clarify program goals and objectives from the start so that executive sponsors know what they should be doing and account managers know how best to leverage their sponsor.
Carefully evaluate both the selection of eligible executives—every company has a few executives who should not call on customers—and the assignment of accounts based on the value they can deliver to that customer (see how Cisco matches senior executives to accounts).
Arm executive sponsors with the right information to help them succeed in customer interactions. The information must be concise, and it must be provided to the executive in advance of every customer interaction (see how Xilinx supports sponsors with requisite account knowledge).
Employ a combination of oversight and reward to ensure that executive sponsors maintain their commitment to the program. The best companies link performance reviews and compensation to sponsorship task completion (see how Sun Microsystems reviews program effectiveness).
Evangelize the value of the program on a regular basis, taking advantage of every opportunity to share successes and reward desired behavior. Doing so serves the dual purpose of best practice sharing and reinforces the program’s importance across the broader organization.

Does your organization have an executive sponsorship program? Are there other lessons you would add to this list? Share your experiences below.

6 Coaching Pitfalls to Avoid

Rapidly changing customer behaviors and expectations, coupled with increasing competition, is making it difficult for reps to close deals, often driving sales organizations to re-examine ways to boost sales. And while most sales organizations identify coaching as a key driver of improved performance and invest heavily in it, they often still find themselves facing poor performance results.

That’s because the progressively complex sales environment is pushing sellers to develop new skills. The critical question in this scenario—are managers suitably modifying their coaching approach to cater to the emerging needs of its sales force? The answer – maybe not.

To make their coaching efforts more effective in this evolving environment, managers should ensure that they steer clear of some common coaching pitfalls.

Here are the top six coaching pitfalls most managers face, and how to avoid them:

Pitfall 1: Coach on Relationship Building Skills

Many managers typically focus coaching on sharpening sellers’ relationship building skills. However, SEC studies reveal that sellers who are Challengers are far more likely to be high performers than Relationship Builders, and managers should therefore coach sellers on developing the key Challenger behaviors.

How to Avoid this Pitfall—Coach on Challenger Skills

During sales interactions, Challengers focus on teaching customers unique insights which often push customers to take action. Managers must establish systems to help sellers internalize and apply these new behaviors of teaching insights, tailoring them to value drivers, and taking control of customer interactions.

Pitfall 2: Coach All Sellers Equally

Most managers try to spread coaching time equitably across all team members, while some pay greater attention to star performers. However, while effective coaching increases retention of star performers, it does not impact low-performers significantly.

How to Avoid this Pitfall— Focus Coaching Efforts on Core Performers

Coaching time should predominantly focus on the average or core performers, rather than star or low performers. This yields the greatest impact on sales results; indeed, coaching can improve sales performance amongst core performers by 8% to 19%.

Pitfall 3: Focus on Opportunity Pursuit and Post-Deal Activities

Managers often give the same importance to coaching activities across the entire sales process (i.e., opportunity creation, pursuit, close and ongoing post-deal activities). But, most managers seem to focus undue time on stages with relatively lower pay-offs—opportunity pursuit and ongoing post-deal activities.

How to Avoid this Pitfall—Overemphasize Opportunity Creation and Close Activities

Managers can better ensure deal profitability by targeting coaching time on high impact areas of the sales process—mainly, opportunity creation, and close. Managers should coach sellers on identifying the right initial sales opportunities and sharpening deal close and negotiation skills.

Pitfall 4: Provide Generic Feedback to Sellers

Coaching sessions typically involve managers providing actionable and impactful feedback to sellers. However, managers often tend to share generic views or examples that sellers find difficult to relate to or implement.

How to Avoid this Pitfall—Tailor Coaching to Sellers’ Individual Styles

To ensure time spent coaching is beneficial for sellers, managers must customize feedback to a seller’s unique needs and learning preferences, while simultaneously considering seller personality and response to constructive criticism. For instance, keeping a record of every seller’s progress and mentioning specific instances of improved (or unsuccessful performance) can help sellers better understand and value manager feedback.

Pitfall 5: Coach on Deal-Based Capabilities

Many managers focus coaching interactions on resolving immediate deal-level concerns in order to meet sales targets, rather than long-term skill development. In fact, sales managers are increasingly deemphasizing coaching and are spending more time in the field to secure business.

How to Avoid this Pitfall—Coach Sellers on Deal- and Skill-Based Capabilities

To navigate through increasingly complicated sales interactions, companies are looking to sellers to teach and lead the customer through the buying process. For this purpose, leading companies are coaching sellers on both deal-based and skill-based capabilities, targeting a few key development areas based on analysis of trends in seller behavior over time.

Pitfall 6: Improve Coaching Effectiveness by Increasing Coaching Time

The average amount of time a manager spends with his sellers is an important predictor of their relationship quality, but it does not reflect the quality of coaching. Sellers gauge coaching effectiveness not by the amount of time managers spend with them, but by how coaching adds value to their growth and development.

How to Avoid this Pitfall—Coach Sellers for Three to Five Hours a Month

SEC research shows that returns on coaching start diminishing after three to five hours per month. However, time alone does not lead to coaching effectiveness; it largely depends on how well that time is used. Indeed, the key differentiator between core and star managers is that most core managers focus on telling sellers “why” they should improve their skills whereas star managers focus on “how” sellers can improve their skills, making their coaching more effective.

SEC Members, benchmark your coaching practices against best practice and identify existing or approaching pitfalls by using our newly updated Anatomy of World-Class Sales Coaching Practices.

Three Ways to Change Customers’ Minds

In today’s era of selling, customers are engaging suppliers only after they have done significant due diligence to determine their needs, identify a solution, and settle on a price they are willing to pay for that solution. In this world of established demand, reps are being relegated to a role of fulfillment with price being the only thing they are able to compete on by the time a customer reaches out to them.

It goes without saying that this is not an environment that any sales organization wants to operate in, but given today’s better informed customer, this shift in buying behavior is a reality that is here to stay and sellers must face.

As such, SEC set out in its 2012 research to determine how sales organizations can overcome this challenge by identifying how the best sales reps are getting ahead of the price-driven sale. Our research found that to do so, high performing reps teach customers where they learn, delivering disruptive commercial insight that effectively reframes the way they think about their business and the problems facing it.

In the process of analyzing how the best performing reps teach their customers into (or back into) the beginning of the sales funnel, SEC identified the ways reps use commercial teaching to reframe customer thinking. These approaches are based on how familiar customers are with the problem at hand, and whether or not they have already developed an understanding of the solution.

The three types of reframes are:

Underestimated Problem: Reps use this type of reframe when customers are both familiar with the problem at hand and have developed at least some notion of what a potential solution could be. To reframe customer thinking, reps teach them that the problem they face is one of greater magnitude than they had originally thought or that it should be appreciated differently. Therefore, the problem warrants a different approach which the rep is then able to teach the customer about.
Unrecognized Driver: For this type of reframe, customers are familiar with the problem, but have accepted it as a cost of doing business or a problem that they just can’t resolve. As such, they have no inclination as to what the solution could be nor are they looking for one. In this situation, reps teach customers that their problem is actually driven by a different, unrealized root cause that had not considered, revealing the opportunity for the problem to be better managed or solved by the supplier solution.
Unanticipated Problem: When customers present themselves to be ignorant of or completely ill-informed about an issue, reps can take the opportunity to teach them that an unrecognized problem is fast approaching, and will have a detrimental impact if not addressed. If reps commercially teach their customers about this problem effectively, they will lead the customer to how they are uniquely positioned as a supplier to solve it.

SEC Members, to learn more about the three types of reframes and see examples of what world-class commercial insights look like in practice, make sure to check out this year’s study Getting in Early: Shaping Customer Demand Through Pre-Funnel Engagement and register for the upcoming webinar Creating Cutting-Edge Sales Messages.

Also make sure to read more about the implications that today’s insight selling era has on your organization, and our new research-based sales methodology, the Challenger Plan, that represents how today’s best sales people, Challengers, approach commercial opportunities in this environment.

Hey Motivated Buyer, You’ve Changed…

What happened to our motivated buyers and decision makers?  They used to be so easy to identify, evaluate and work with.  We were able to create opportunity scorecards based on known and defined criteria to identify the high-value opportunities and accounts.  These are the same people and companies we’ve sold to for years, but doesn’t it feel like we need to sit them down and say “you’ve changed.  I don’t even know you anymore”?

Well, it’s because they HAVE changed.  A motivated buyer in today’s environment is different than the motivated buyer of just a few short years ago.  As many of you are aware SEC research has found that, on average, customers are already 57% of the way through their buying process before FIRST contact with ANY supplier.  They’ve been out there learning on their own, defining their own needs, researching solutions and considering all their options, without suppliers.

In today’s marketplace, we’d call those opportunities established demand.  It’s the world of the commoditized, price-driven sale; the one in which we’re one of three suppliers to submit the bid.  It’s the place none of us want to be, yet often times, the criteria we tell our sales professionals to look for in opportunities drive them right INTO this established demand.  They are looking for motivated buyers, with established needs who know what their problems are and need solutions.

However, what we’ve found at the SEC is that the absolute best sellers out there are using a very different approach to identify and select opportunities.  

Our best sellers know the customer has fundamentally changed.  That’s why they are out there looking for emerging demand—opportunities where needs are not well understood or agreed upon, and they can create or re-shape demand.  Our research last year revealed that high-performing sales reps use opportunity qualification criteria that revolve around customer agility and disruption.  They aren’t waiting to be one of three bids; they are out there looking for the next, best opportunity.

And our new work this year explains how these reps not only look for this emerging demand in the market, but also shape and re-shape demand by teaching customers insights where they learn. The best sellers are out there creating motivated buyers or reframing the way motivated buyers think.

If we want our sales organization shaping, re-shaping and uncovering emerging demand, we need everyone following our highest performers’ approach.  That approach involves looking at customers in a different way.  A way in which we:

Use different criteria to determine opportunity via updated scorecards that identify customers where disruption is occurring and agility exists ( SEC members, view our updated Opportunity-Fit Scorecard)
Teach customer where they learn in their respective marketplaces
Lead with insight to teach customers

Many of today’s sales professionals feel they don’t recognize their motivated buyers anymore because they’ve failed to realize that customer buying has shifted.  In response, this means our sales approach must also shift.  A shift that seeks out emerging demand, where we can shape demand and re-shape customer demand.

SEC Members, learn more about how high performers evaluate good opportunities.

12 Principles of World-Class CRM

Let’s assume for a second you have 100% adoption of your CRM system.  What does that look like?  How would you define 100% adoption?

Most companies I speak with would be happy with:

a)     Every opportunity currently being pursued has a forecasted value

b)     Recent and frequent updates at various stages of the sales process

c)     Vast intelligence extracted from every customer about every organization

If this is how you define adoption, congratulations, you’ve just built a system to reinforce Relationship Builder behavior.  Perhaps we should change the name of CRM to CRB – Customer Relationship Builders?

Now back to reality.  How many of us have 100% adoption?  Hardly any – and that’s likely because your best reps recognize that your system lacks relevance with how to sell in today’s sales environment.

They understand that your CRM is nothing but a reflection of your management system.  And if you are managing towards the above, then you are telling reps to only spend time on opportunities with a clearly defined set of needs (helping you insert misleading forecasts), find someone who is willing to talk to you frequently (making my manager happy with lots of updates), and get the customer to coach you on how to sell to their organization.  Problem is, this is the exact opposite behavior of how Challengers, the best reps, sell.

So how can we create and manage a system that is relevant, respected, and most important, reinforces the behaviors we know translate to successful customer outcomes?  Follow these 12 principles of a healthy CRM system:

Organizational credibility around tool deployment is a scarce and crucial asset.  Have a plan (and stick to it).
Every CRM “interaction” for a given sales rep must be a net “get”.  All system success relies on high quality and relevant data.  Be mindful that each field within the system and every change forces a new and different interaction.  Standardize the process for requesting to add fields.
Measure system success beyond adoption. Adoption is one indicator of rep value but is misleading.
Make sure sales managers understand and manage towards your definition of system success.
Pilots build world-class adoption plans, not just tools. Stalls in adoption momentum (“plateaus”) occur naturally; if this happens too soon or is unanticipated it will jeopardize future adoption efforts
Pilots must pull from a representative rep and customer base—The output of a principled pilot will predict when and why adoption stalls.  Lacking the information gathered during such a pilot, many adoption curves flatten prematurely and unexpectedly, harming the tool’s reputation.
Launch with the broader majority in mind, but start with the early adopters. Adoption efforts must be segmented or phased.
Pushing too early for adoption to a given segment before successfully winning over the previous segment is a waste of organizational energy
Proximity matters.  Most reps adopt tools because people like them (not stars) have success.
Be mindful of the impact bad data has on the integrity of good data.  At a certain point, the marginal cost of further adoption will exceed its return.  Frequently monitor data quality beyond that point.
Demonstrate the value of using data within the system.  Arrange for support resources (e.g., product experts) to be proactively offered based on entered data.
Required data should move beyond tracking merely sales actions into gauging customer reactions.  Strive to always help reps better understand customer intent to purchase (SEC Members: See The Challenger Sales Process).

SEC Members, for more information on world-class CRM, visit our CRM Topic Center, which includes resources on CRM issues such as data quality and adoption.

How Strong is Your Leadership Bench?

Sales leaders agree that consistent growth in an ever-evolving sales environment hinges on strong leadership. SEC’s sister program, the Corporate Leadership Council, found that leaders with the right leadership skills are 50% more likely to substantially outperform revenue expectations. However, in an uncertain economy and a changing labor market, good leadership can be hard to find – and even harder to keep.

So, how can we better prepare for expected leadership turnover when sales organizations are under the mandate to deliver higher growth than ever?

The answer is to develop a succession management plan that is built to prepare and support new leaders to execute current and future strategies without missing a beat in a fast-paced sales environment.

A critical component for any succession strategy is to incorporate an effective leadership development plan to close future leaders’ skill gaps in the areas that are most critical to enterprise-wide success. Yet when the SEC asked hundreds of sales executives what was most important for driving effective sales leadership, developing a leadership development plan was identified as a problem area for most sales organizations.

The best leadership development strategies provide diverse on-the-job experiences that align the organization’s leadership strategy to an individual’s development needs. Succession management efforts are not discrete events, but rather part of a cohesive system for managing talent in an organization. Further, expanding succession management to the front line enables development for high-potential employees earlier in their tenure, which can increase retention rates and improve the quality of leadership and management throughout the organization.

But aside from developing future leaders from within, what about bringing in a top sales executive from another company to take charge, and lean on their experience elsewhere?

The problem there is that while externally hired executives often bring new expertise and leadership to the organization, they also face a much greater risk of failing. SEC research revealed that nearly 40% of newly appointed executives fail during the first 18 months on the job because of an inability to manage the transition.

By using an effective succession plan with existing sales staff, you can have an understanding of a new executive’s specific areas for development, provide feedback early and frequently, and ensure accountability for new hires’ success to prevent executive derailment.

To build a strong leadership pipeline within the sales organization, progressive companies have taken following steps to cultivate the right leadership critical for uninterrupted sales growth:

Identify Future Leaders: The first step to developing a strong pool of internal leadership candidates is to know where the organization stands in leadership talent. Beyond using a standard talent assessment process to understand the current state of its leadership bench, CVS Caremark leveraged collected data to identify potential future leaders of the organization. By taking a proactive approach to identifying leadership bench development areas, Caremark could track its leadership bench strength, development, and retention goals.
Expose Future Leaders to the Corporate Strategic Agenda: A critical component to effective leadership is to understand the drivers of enterprise-wide success across multiple functions. While many organizations have implemented rotational programs to maximize the exchange of relevant experience and knowledge between sales and other functional areas, West Group established a Top-Talent Advisory Council to provide the executive team guidance on the sales-specific aspects of firm strategy.
Provide Ongoing Development Opportunities: To retain your top talent and prime them for future leadership roles, make sure they’re receiving effective coaching from their managers. While coaching remains important for overall team success, coaching high-potentials for leadership skills can reduce the risk of voluntary turnover and instead lead them to internal promotions.

SEC Members: To learn more about effective leadership onboarding, check out our resource center on Managing the Transition to Head of Sales. Also, be sure to see the Sales Executives First 100 Days to help your new leader move quickly to master their range of responsibilities.

9 Must-Have Travel Apps For Your Phone

Apple announced last week that worldwide downloads from its App Store recently surpassed the 30 billion mark (on average, that’s just over four apps for every person on Earth!)

For many, this stat is just the latest indicator of the increasing influence that smartphones and apps have had on the way we live our lives. Indeed, whether it’s work-related or not, there seems to be an app designed to help you accomplish just about any task.

But with summer (and summer vacations!) in full swing, we thought we’d re-run our take (first published last fall) on some of the top travel apps to have. Below are our picks, organized to help you deal with some of the most common travel challenges:

Challenge #1: “Wait, so for how long is my flight delayed?”

App that can help: FlightAware

If you’re traveling after the first flights of the day, the time of your departing flight is likely to be determined by when the plane you will fly on arrives from another airport.  Many times, the departure boards don’t accurately reflect this.  So ask the gate agent for the flight number of the arriving flight for your plane, and FlightAware lets you track that flight live while it’s in the air.  You can search easily by flight number as well as flight route (departing and arriving airports).

***Note – don’t stray too far from the gate area even if your arriving plane is delayed.  The airline might switch planes to get your flight off earlier.

Challenge #2: “I hope there’s more than a snack machine near my gate!”

Apps that can help: GateGuru and Point Inside

Running late to the airport and trying to figure out where you’re going to grab lunch?  These two apps are great for finding out what is around your gate area.  GateGuru offers a search by terminal area as well as ratings from fellow users.  For the more visually oriented, Point Inside provides terminal maps of restaurants and other services at major airports.

Challenge #3: “Those clouds look pretty bad… Are we going to get rained out?”

Apps that can help: MyRadar and The Weather Channel

MyRadar is a straightforward app that provides detailed radar information near your area, as well as a continuous loop to see where storms are headed.  You can also scan to other areas of the country to see the weather at your arrival destination.  The Weather Channel is a great app for forecasts and other weather data for cities/airports around the world.

Challenge #4: “There are so many restaurants around – where should I go?”  Or… “Please tell me there’s more than this truck stop to eat at around here!”

Apps that can help: TripAdvisor, Urbanspoon, and OpenTable

I like both TripAdvisor and Urbanspoon for their ability to show you what restaurants are around you in an easy to use format.  Both also offer the ability to learn how other diners have rated these restaurants. OpenTable also does this, and helps to snag a reservation quickly and easily.

Challenge #5: “I wish I could fall asleep, but the TV next door is keeping me awake…”

App that can help: SleepMachine

Nothing is more frustrating in my book than having a super quiet hotel room and being woken up by every door slam in the hallway, or traffic from the highway outside, or the guy next door watching SportsCenter with the volume on 11.  For my fellow light sleepers, I highly suggest SleepMachine.  You can select between several sounds, including a fan, white noise, even crickets (for those who sleep outside, I guess).  Or you can combine different sounds to create a unique, sleep permitting sound.

Those are some of the apps we find most helpful when on the road. Feel free to suggest others you find useful in the comments section below.

SEC Members, for more on apps, check out our resources on the top iPad apps for Sales and the top apps for your CRM.

Does Money Motivate?

Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive, argues that rewarding inherently interesting tasks (such as delivering commercial insights to customers) with lots of money can in fact dampen motivation and diminish performance. How come?

Most of us believe that in order to get more of a behavior we want, we must provide rewards. Conversely, conventional wisdom says that we must punish in order to get less of a behavior we don’t want.

As it turns out, Pink found that many motivation and behavior studies have shown that paying higher rewards leads to better performance so long as the task performed is straight forward and requires the use of mechanical skills. But surprisingly, larger monetary rewards lead to poorer performance when the tasks performed are more complicated and require conceptual thinking and creativity.

So why do sales organizations continue to think that the key to incentivizing sellers is through their check book? How entrenched is the belief that sales reps are coin-operated?

To be clear, Pink doesn’t advocate against compensating your sales force well. In fact, he agrees with SEC research on compensation design that you need to pay competitive market rates in order to attract and retain good talent. A well-designed compensation communication strategy affects perceptions of fairness, and is an equally critical determinant of an effective incentive structure. Pink simply suggests that you pay your sellers enough money in order to take the issue of compensation off the table. The key, he says, is to pay people enough so that they are not thinking about the money, but thinking about the work.

So if money doesn’t motivate, what does? Pink identifies three factors that lead to better job performance:

Autonomy: people are motivated by the ability to be self-directed, or by having control over the task they perform, their time, and the technique they use to perform a task
Mastery: people are motivated by their desire to get better at something. For many, the fun of mastering a challenging task is motivating in itself
Purpose: people are motivated by a desire to contribute to something greater than themselves

What do you think? Are sellers just different from the rest of the world? Is money the ultimate motivator? What are the non-comp levers that are motivating your high-performers and keeping them engaged?

SEC Members, check out our finding on the fundamentals of compensation, including comp design, communications, and managing President’s Club programs.

Gold Medal Coach? Prove It (Again and Again)

It’s that time again! In just over a month, several hundred of the world’s best athletes will compete for the highest honor in sports – an Olympic Gold Medal.  Standing behind the front-line, each of them has a coach, who is helping to diagnose shortcomings and guide the teams to become stronger, better, faster on the path to victory. Hurrah – cue the “Chariots of Fire” theme and commercials aplenty!

Back to reality though — it’s June and we’re in Sales facing the first-half close, likely asking ourselves:  How far are we from the finish line? Is our team skilled, motivated and engaged enough to bring back a win?

With the aim of driving productivity, some of our smartest members look to improve manager coaching:  SEC research indicates that the difference between low-quality coaching and highly effective coaching can lift performance 8-19% amongst core performers.  Seeking to curb attrition? We know that good coaching is one of the most effective ways to retain star performers.

However, while most companies set out to launch or re-invigorate coaching programs with great energy and enthusiasm, chances are that many of these efforts will fizzle out. We observe 3 key design flaws that prevent many companies from seeing the long-term benefits of coaching:

1)      There are no clear, objective metrics established around coaching effectiveness

2)      Coaching is not incorporated into manager recognition and rewards

3)      Senior leadership is ill-equipped to evaluate coaching on an ongoing basis

As good coaches will tell you, the key to winning the game is to execute the right strategy.  Faced with lagging performance and poor rep morale, the UK financial services provider Britannia Building Society built a Tiered Coaching Accreditation Program, a rigorous program that ensures managers consistently demonstrate high-quality behaviors and that results can be objectively measured.

Built around the concept of medal rankings (non-accredited, bronze, silver and gold), the program requires that EVERY sales manager at Britannia go through certification, regardless of tenure. Observed by second-line managers and program leads, managers’ coaching proficiency is actively scored against a standardized set of balanced criteria, including both quantitative and qualitative indicators. It’s not enough to get to the number, Britannia rigorously tests HOW you get there.

Gold status is based on the ability to sustain performance across all six months.  It’s a high bar — in a webinar we held with Britannia, Head of National Branches Bob Dixon, shared that in the first year only 1 out of 250 managers actually made it to Gold status.  Rather than promoting based purely on volume results, Britannia was able to uncover hidden coaching talent and focus development on the right people.

Moreover, what makes Britannia’s approach really smart is the continuous re-evaluation. Even that gold status manager can’t just sit shining his or her medal, waving at everyone on lower tiers. The next review is right around the corner – every six months, all managers must prove (again) that they’re coaching effectively. If coaching quality slips, they can be moved down on the coaching dashboard.

The Britannia best practice teaches us a few key lessons about how to build an effective manager coaching accreditation program:

1)      Ongoing Coaching “Pulse” Assessments:  Create a mechanism for ongoing upward feedback and tracking organizational progress (ideally, quarterly)

2)      Dynamic Manager Feedback Process:  Ensure managers receive individual, ongoing feedback on their coaching skills (via a dynamic and easily accessible tool/dashboard). For those at bronze and silver, give clear guidance on WHAT they need to do to reach the next level.

3)      Make it Visible and Pay for it: Play on sales managers’ desire to be the best. Publicly labeling a bronze medalist throws down the competitive gauntlet. If a manager really is a superstar, now there’s a way to reward them with recognition – Gold managers get higher pay packages and are entrusted with the best teams.  Enforce real consequences for managers who remain un-accredited.

4)      Make all Managers Accountable: Provide sales leadership with a view into the frequency of coaching interactions and the improvement in coaching effectiveness.

Building a world-class coaching certification program is powerful — our sister program SEC Solutions has helped numerous companies implement a coaching certification academy, built off Britannia’s approach.

Whichever route you take, it is worth spending extra time in designing the right infrastructure and metrics.  Even if the Olympics come around every 4 years, you’ve only got one chance to get this right! When building quality coaching programs, has your organization considered adding a certification component? What has/has not worked for your coaching certification program?

Can You Say What Your Key Account Strategy Is?

You’d think that investing in our best customers would lead to easy growth.  They buy a ton from us already, so if we just partnered a little more strategically then we could grow even more, right?  If it were only that easy…

The VP of Sales at a technology company was complaining to me the other day that he went on a customer visit with a rep, and the rep kicked off the meeting by saying “I’ve got some good news – we’ve just selected you as one of our company’s strategic accounts!”  The customer replied “GREAT!  What does that mean?”  After the rep told them about their new dedicated account team and their strategic partner discount, the rep went back to business as usual, proceeding with the agenda from the previous meeting.

The VP said this moment caused him to do some soul searching. Is that really all our key accounts program amounts to?   We’re spending a lot of organizational resources and money in the hopes of a deeper relationship…shouldn’t we be holding the customer accountable for acting differently as a result?   After all, these resources aren’t free.  As he and I talked about that experience, we decided it all started with better defining and/or communicating your key accounts strategy.

What is the value proposition to sell our customers on joining our key accounts program? Granted, we’re investing more heavily in key accounts by giving them account teams, better pricing, priority to certain value-added services, and so on.  But we’re also asking for a lot in return from the customer – introductions to new parts of their business, networking with higher-level decision makers, time spent on account planning – and as a result, more sales opportunities.

From the customer’s perspective, what is the value to the customer of being deemed a “key account” at our organization?  Is it compelling enough of a reason to want them to invest the time and effort it takes to partner more strategically?  How will partnering with us more strategically help them grow their business?

If we can’t answer that question in a compelling way, we need to start there.

Let’s assume that we have answered that question though.  We’re not out of the woods yet…

Can you actually say what your strategy is?

That question (and the title of this blog post) comes from the title of an article published by the Harvard Business Review back in 2008 by David Collins and Michael Rukstad.  The authors look at company strategies and discuss how universal understanding of a company’s strategy can be the difference between growing and not growing.  Lack of a coherent strategy leads to disarray for both our coworkers and our customers.

The premise of the article is that “most executives cannot articulate the objective, scope, and advantage of their business in a simple statement.  If they can’t, neither can anyone else.” That same thinking can be applied to our key accounts strategy.  Can our executives articulate the objective, scope, and advantage to being a key account of our company?  What about everyone who interacts with our key accounts?  If we can’t quickly and consistently explain that to our customers, how can we expect the customer to know?

So, is that all?

Well, if we get the first two questions nailed, then the real fun can begin.  Once you have the value proposition in place, then you can start exploring other implications that come with disproportionately investing in a subset of customers, such as:

Are we sure the accounts we’re selecting for the program are the right customers to begin with?
Are we sure that the customers we’ve selected even want to be in our key accounts program?
How do we hold customers accountable for growing with us as we help them grow their business?
What happens if customers do not live up to their end of the bargain?

We’ll address those questions in future blog posts.  But in the meantime, what is your reaction to this article?  Does your organization struggle more with the actual key account value proposition?  Or is the bigger challenge communicating it to the customer in a clear, compelling way?