The 2 things to do in every account

Often we over complicate what we should be doing with our accounts.  In fact, it boils down to 2 things. 1) building relationships 2) moving opportunities forward.

I recently talked with a rep who told me about one account that was sucking up his time.  The customer expected him (a highly paid field sales person) to be handling all their day to day issues and customer service requests.  The final straw came when he was asked to send replacement screws to them because they had lost them when re-racking some network equipment.  So we are clear, these are screws that the customer had lost and which you can pick up at Home Depot for under $5!  He put a stop to this (politely!) and helped them understand how to help themselves better using other resources at the company.

Too often we get mired in the day to day activities of working with customers and prospects.  Simple requests for help are often the biggest time suck.  We convince ourselves that we need to "keep the customer happy" and end up doing things that add little value for us.  Even the customer rarely values these things, they either just think they do or are glad they have someone helping them.  

Filter incoming requests by asking if you will be building relationships or moving opportunities forward. 

Filter your own plans by asking the same question.  And then prioritize your time based on which tasks will have the biggest impact for you.

Action: in your top 5 accounts, what are your planned activities to 1) build relationships 2) move opportunities forward

What successful people do differently

I first came across Heidi Grant Halvorson at a conference last year (ASTD).  What she talked about really was impactful for me and she quickly became someone I listened to.  Here is the talk she gave that I saw last year.

When your back is against the wall

How do you respond?  Do you sink into despair and see a world where everything is negative?  Or do you come up fighting and figure a way to keep moving forward?

We've all experienced situations where things don't go according to plan.  Where nothing seems to be going our way.  Our prospecting doesn't produce results.  Deals are being stalled.  Deals are being lost to the competition.  The pressure is on.

But these are the times when you reconnect to your why.

Draw from your inner strength and belief.

You'll be glad you have surrounded yourself with positive people.  People with energy.

These are the times to show what you are made of.  Show others. Prove it to yourself.

If you are experiencing difficult times, remind yourself what is so great about your life.  If you are more introverted, take some alone time to do it. Extroverts... go to others, those that energize you, and have an open discussion about what you are experiencing.  Talk about what is important to you.

Go do it!

Action: tell me how you get back on track when your back is up against the wall

Click here to tell us what you do

The CEO of United Airlines doesn't care about me

On my last couple of United flights I actually paid attention to the video they play at the start of the flight, before the safety announcement.  Strange, I know, to spend valuable time doing that, but it was better than listening to the guy next to me.

I found it strange that the highly paid CEO of a big company took the only chance he gets to talk directly to many of his paying customers, to talk about internal things at his company.

The simple summary of the video is "I am the CEO, I'm proud of my people, we built this awesome, state of the art network operations center that is just stacked full of awesome shiny computers and people."  Maybe I'm being a little bit harsh... maybe I'm not.

I'm sure this is important to their business, but I was left wondering why is it important to me?

Surely if you are going to talk at me, you should at least be highly relevant to me?

Why not tell me that you have been working hard to be more responsive to me, to answer my questions quicker and better, to make my flights leave on time etc.  and that as part of that you have invested in this new facility.  And look here are some stats to show that I am getting these benefits.

I'm left wondering that if the CEO can't see this, how can he expect his staff to?  If the CEO doesn't realize he is ignoring his customer, how can he expect his staff to do any different?

Click here to leave a comment. Am I being too harsh?

Start with your customer, right?

3 times in the last month I have worked with sales teams to help them understand and communicate their unfair advantage in the market.  And 3 times I have coached them to put the customer first.

There are two basic approaches to this.  Either you tell your customer what you do that is unique and then tell them the business impact to them.  Or you do it the other way round.

At first glance it looks like the logical thing to do is the former.  If you explain your uniqueness it is then logical to say "what that means is that we reduce your costs in this area".

But logic isn't always the best approach.

I've found that the most impactful way is to tell the customer what's in it for him right at the start.  Hit him between the eyes about why he needs to pay attention and then provide examples of how you deliver on the business benefits.

This way, the business benefit is stated up front and then you provide ways and examples of how it is achieved, uniquely, by you and your organization.

Action: How do you currently describe what you do?  Can you improve it?

Click here to leave a comment and tell the community what you learned.