Fresh from Florida

Google

By Stephen Kozicki

Last week, Peter Browne from Gordian Business was presenting in Florida at the Strategic Account Management Association’s 50th Anniversary Conference. Peter was presenting a case study of a successful client who in a mature market grew profit ahead of their 5 year plans.

“SAM has had the biggest impact of any initiative
we have undertaken in the last five years.
The business is almost unrecognisable.”

Case study, The Managing Director

The Strategic Account management Association (SAMA) have published the case study in their latest ‘Velocity’ magazine released at the SAMA conference. Also at the SAMA conference was the global launch of the practical business-to-business book on Strategic Account Management by Peter Browne and Gary Peacock.

Image: Peter Browne (Gordian Business) & Todd Snelgrove (SKF Global)

“In this book Gary and Peter provide some very practical and fresh ways of how to identify, build and grow relationships with individual and corporate customers.  Critically important, for corporate customers, they explain why some relationships work and why some do not work.  But they don’t stop there; they also offer simple tools and thinking models for how you can enable your team to plan how you can work with your key customers from a strategic perspective.”

Lynette Nixon, Industry Fellow, Innovation and Design Thinking at University of Technology, Sydney

So, if you are considering starting a SAM program in your organisation or are already on the journey and need practical advice to maintain your momentum, then pick up a book. The book is available from www.matrixplustraining.com.au or your airport bookshop, or soon download a copy of the ebook from www.amazon.com. 

Does your business need SAM (Strategic Account Management)?

Google

By Gary Peacock

 

Only those who will risk going too far
can possibly find out how far one can go.

T.S. Eliot 

In business there is a constant tension between managing risk and capitalising on opportunities. SAM is a critical element for doing both.

From our experience the top 10 to 20 accounts of any B2B organisation typically represent 60-80% of revenue and profit. We have seen cases as high as 95%. The consequences of losing one of these customers are dramatic, and in today’s business environment it is almost impossible to replace these customers; your competitors will protect them at all cost.

Do you have a problem?

Depending on a few accounts for your revenue		Do you rely heavily on a few large customers for most of your revenue? Is the revenue generated by these large customers growing as a percentage of total revenue? Over time, industries consolidate and the big get bigger. If you are an industry where this is happening it is likely you have a problem.
Losing large accounts		Have you lost a large account and you don’t know why (sorry, price isn’t the reason)? Repeatedly, companies lose key accounts and rationalise the loss of a one-off, caused by actions of a desperate competitor. They are rarely one-offs. They are a signal the market is changing and more is to come. Do nothing at your peril.
Serious financial consequences of losing a large customer		Have you assessed the financial impact of losing one of your largest customers? Would it be manageable or would it be fatal? How easy is it in your industry to replace a lost large account with a new one? In most industries this is becoming harder; if not impossible. Big accounts are locked into long-term agreements and competitors will defend them at all costs.

Businesses also need SAM because customers have become more sophisticated in their buying strategies. Successful sales and management teams need to become more sophisticated in their key account management strategies. Rethinking and adapting approaches for each customer is imperative. As industries and customers evolve, so too does the way they make buying decisions and manage supplier relationships.

Is your market changing?

Different competitors		Are you seeing new or different competitors emerge? Many industries are experiencing new niche competitors nibbling away at their revenue, or online channels creating low-priced and convenient alternatives. Are generic products a growing threat? Can you justify the premium customers must pay for your branded product – and for how much longer?
Different buying processes Different relationships		Is the way your key accounts buy changing? Are procurement and the senior executive team becoming more involved? As organisations apply greater governance and executive oversight, decisions are being made higher up. This is clear trend. Is your account team equipped to deal with these changes in the buying process?

If you identify with a problem or market change above then you would benefit greatly from a SAM program in your organisation. If you are looking to start a SAM program or are already on the journey and need additional practical advice to maintain your momentum, this is the book for you: Managing B2B customers you can’t afford to lose.

If you are thinking about starting a SAM program at your organisation then check out http://www.gordianbusiness.com.au/strategic-account-management or call +61 2 9450 1040 or email gary@gordianbusiness.com.au. We would love to hear your comments below and subscribe to our blog at the top right of the page.

How to deal with fast-paced negotiations.

Fast-paced negotiations need agility not speed.

Google

By Stephen Kozicki

There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.

Mahatma Gandhi

I have just returned from projects in Malaysia and Singapore. The region is fast paced, chaotic, and full of opportunities and pitfalls. When dealing with these opportunities and pitfalls I am surprised with how agile successful people and companies are.

Obviously in KL, the news topic was still the missing flight MH 370. There was much discussion around the slow response to the missing plane. Also around the multiple airline officials and government minister’s hasty responses.

Hasty responses often occur in critical negotiations. As the pace of the negotiation increases, there is an increasing danger of a hasty response instead of an agile response.

Successful management teams must become more sophisticated in their negotiations with key accounts. Management teams need to rethink and adapt their approaches for each major customer. Critical negotiations are a great place to learn agility over speed. Agility creates value and hasty responses descend very quickly into price discussions. 

The most powerful method we use to avoid hasty responses in live negotiations is preparing questions. Questions give you control over a fast-paced encounter and they allow you to manage the emotional responses to different approaches. The major benefit of questions is they prevent you making quick statements to defend your position. They also make you prepare better for negotiations with key accounts, you learn to look for real interests and not become blindsided by positions that people take.

Some of the best persuaders – salesmen, negotiators and psychiatrists – persuade with questions rather than statements. The power of questions to generate actions and commitment is well displayed in John Whitmore’s book Coaching for Performance. The only question to avoid is Why? During a negotiation this will produce only a defensive response because the other person sees it as a ‘blame’ question. Few people will answer this question truthfully and it often damages the rapport of a negotiation. Other ways to ask the why question are: what are your reasons for that? or how did you decide to do that? Some well know research in negotiation conducted many years ago showed skilled negotiators used questions twice as often as average negotiators.

To be agile in fast-paced negotiations, prepare good questions and you will avoid hasty responses that will lower your prices.

For unbiased, practical advice when planning for your next negotiation, contact us on +61 (02) 9450 1040 or Stephen@gordianbusiness.com.au. Please share any comments you have and subscribe to our blog at the top right of the page.

Flatlining 2: Right gives your presentations some heartbeat

Google

By Gary Peacock

The essential difference
between emotion and reason
is that reason leads to conclusions,
while emotion leads to action.

Neurologist Donald Galne

Not long after publishing the last Blog, Flatlining: Senior managers does your presentation have a heartbeat? my phone rang. Jo Madden, HR Manager from one of our best customers was on the line. “In presentations, another way to look at adding emotion to logic, is to adding right-brain thinking to left-brain thinking”, said Jo. That was another interesting perspective on Flatlining.

Jo is an expert on applying whole brain thinking to all aspects of business. She is a certified practitioner with Herman Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI). So, it’s no surprise to get that insight.

Anyway her call reminded me of a couple of other useful ideas. First, with whole brain thinking we ask and answer four questions. From the left brain we ask What? And How? ; Then from the right brain Who? And Why?

In many presentations, we use only logic and only answer the left brain questions: What and How? To give our presentations a heartbeat we need to answer some right brain questions too.

The first right brain question is Who? This question covers two elements: who will be affected and who will be involved. Talking about specific people and showing pictures of people adds some emotion and right brain thinking to our presentation.

The second right brain question is Why? In my experience, this is often the most neglected aspect of presentations. Senior Managers are often quick to answer What and How, while the audience is distracted asking themselves the question: Why do we need to do anything?

Recently, the Why question has got some attention because Simon Sinek has written a book: Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. Save yourself time, don’t read the book, watch the TED talk. Just 18 minutes long and nearly 17 million views, so well worth a look.

http://youtu.be/cTiB9Kl_bow

From a practical perspective, to include right brain thinking and to trigger emotion, ensure you connect to the big picture: what is happening with customers and competitors. Also, connect with long term objectives. What is your strategy? What are your goals beyond this financial year?

My strong advice is answer the Why question in your first two slides. If you do this well, then the audience is enthusiastic to hear the answers to the What question and the How Question.

Using visuals throughout and answering the Who question throughout will sprinkle the spice of right brain thinking and emotion throughout your presentation. So, adding right brain thinking gives you a presentation with a heartbeat.   

For help adding some right brain perspective take a look at http://www.gordianbusiness.com.au/pitching-for-results/ or contact gary@gordianbusiness.com.au or call us on +61 2 9450 1040. We would love to hear your thoughts on this, so please leave your comments below and subscribe to our blog top right.

Flatlining: Senior managers does your presentation have a heartbeat?

Google

By Gary Peacock

" Faced with a choice between changing our mind and defending our position, most people get busy defending their position."

John K Galbraith

Senior managers often ask us to review critical presentations. These presentations may be critical because of who they are being presented to: directors, head office, best customers or important prospects. Or presentations may be critical because of what is being presented: winning the sales is budget-critical or convincing the audience is career-critical.

We use a one page process that guides our review to:

ensure you are clear about what you want ensure you include only essential content ensure you create a compelling case

Another tool we use is like the ECG used to check your heart. Let’s say you have 20 slides. Draw a horizontal line with the numbers 1 to 20, one for each slide. Then, draw a vertical line from 0 to 10, where 0 is neutral (or boring!) and 10 is exciting or emotional.

So how do we use it? Let’s look at typical slides, the most common is text and bullet points. On a scale of 0-10, how would you rate that? Well, I am sure like us you have seen thousands of these. There is only one score we can give: zero. Nobody in the audience ever said. “Please show me another slide of bullet points.”

Next many presentations contain numbers. If a slide includes a copy of a spreadsheet filled with tiny numbers and standard black lines around each number, how would you rate that? Just consider, 12 columns one for each month and say 24 rows for products. This gives 288 numbers, on one slide.  How is your audience supposed to know which numbers are important? Even if you bold the total column, there is so much black on the screen that they give up. So, copies of spreadsheets of numbers in slides, score: zero.

At this point, some people will be just about to give themselves a score greater than zero because they use colour in their spreadsheets. They highlight columns with a colour. Or they show all shortfalls to target using a red font. If you have less than 100 numbers on your slide, give yourself a 3. It’s a little more exciting than the all-black spreadsheet.

Emotion: is the fast lane to the brain

Doug Stevenson

In some presentations we see, that’s all there is: bullet points and spreadsheets. So, how do we get some emotion or excitement? Well the first way is to add some pictures. Even those standard Microsoft images are better than slide after slide of bullet points. So, for every slide with a picture give yourself a rating of at least 5 out of 10.

So, how do we get some more emotion or excitement? If your pictures are of real customers or real employees, then rate your slide a little higher. To get higher ratings, how about some different pictures. For example when talking about competitors, how about a close-up picture of a boxer scowling at the camera. Or how about a picture of two boxers, sparring and glistening with sweat?

Or in a very competitive situation, how about a rock climber without ropes, clinging to a cliff with just fingers and toes. As long as the pictures fit the content, pictures like this will make the audience feel some emotion. Typically, a good picture will be rated between 7 and 10. This will give you a blip in your flatline, this will give your presentation a heartbeat.

The wisdom of the wise & the experience of the ages are perpetuated by:
quotations

Benjamin Disraeli

One little known method for adding some emotion is to add quotations. These are best to be quotations from famous people as they add credibility to your argument. Apt quotations can make audiences feel pain, feel uncomfortable or feel inspired. In short, apt quotations can make your audience feel something: emotion. If you have an apt quotation, give yourself a 7 or higher if it will make the audience feel something.

After discussing this tool with a senior manager in a large Property Services Company, she said “I just looked at a critical presentation we are giving on Friday and its flatlining.” Luckily she had two days to get a heartbeat or two into her flatlining presentation.  Senior managers make sure your critical presentations are not flatlining.

For more information on how to give your presentations a heartbeat read this, http://www.gordianbusiness.com.au/pitching-for-results/ or contact gary@gordianbusiness.com.au or call us on +61 2 9450 1040. We would love to get your thoughts on this, so please leave your comments below and why not subscribe to our blog top right.