Account Expansion

1. Use the voice of the customer to create an outside-in plan
2. Ensure the plan is well understood by employees
3. Integrate the plan in your management system

The third and final Critical Success Factor for the Executive Sponsor Program (ESP) is Pace. The Executive Sponsor Program is a journey, not a destination. I realize this sounds cliché. However, you can’t image how many organizations are not in alignment with this very simple principle.

Why? It’s typically because the Executive Sponsor at a high level knows what they want to achieve. They want improved client loyalty at an executive level, retention, increased testimonials/referencability and increased wallet share with these accounts, which is all very obtainable.

However, what they don’t understand are all the factors to help them achieve this objective. The Executive Sponsor Program (ESP) should be an executive relationship that is outside of any sales transaction.  It should be about strategically collaborating with your most important customers to help them solve critical business challenges or innovate something together that neither company could have achieved on their own.

You won’t achieve that by saying "I want our top 50 customer matched with our top 15 executives in the next two weeks." This is where the Pace comes in.

The graph below shows the journey based on our experience and research. The red graph shows when a company tries to implement themselves. You’re probably saying to yourself, we’re better than most organizations our results will be in the blue.

Sometimes, you need to go slow to go fast. Meaning, if done right, 80% of a successful launch is about the plan and 20% is the execution. We recommend that organizations start with no more than 3-10 pilots. This also goes back to Executive Sponsor alignment (CEO/President) and clearly understanding and communicating the goals, objectives and where this falls in the company’s priorities.

I will discuss "Common Myths in Building an Executive Sponsor Program" in my next blog.

The Center of Excellence (COE) is the "infrastructure" you need to have a program that is a standard, repeatable process that is sustainable. Without it, the program will become another "event" that your organization tried again but failed.

Here are some common questions we get asked when discussing the Executive Sponsor Program:

• How do we set our Executive Sponsors up for success?
• How do we keep the Customer Executive engaged?
• What criteria do you use to match the Customer Executive with our Executive?
• What criteria should we use to select the accounts?
• How many accounts should be in the program?
• How do you handle Global Accounts?
• How do you capture the great insight gained and leverage within the organization?

These are all excellent questions and ones that I’m always excited to answer, because when built correctly leveraging proven methodology,  best practices and our experience it will ensure the program is set up for success.

I will discuss "Executive Sponsor Program CSF#3 - Pace" in my next blog.

When clients come to us asking how to take their customer relationship programs to the next level they are typically asking how they can increase the level of relationship within the account. In other words, how do they move from vendor-type relationships with procurement to C-suite trusted partner status?

 The answer: Customer Advisory Councils and Executive Sponsor Programs.

A Customer Advisory Council is the first step in our B2B playbook. This forum of 20-30 decision makers represents your best accounts. A typical program includes facilitated, face-to-face discussions twice per year with sustaining activities, such as subcommittees, between meetings to keep members engaged.

Unlike other marketing activities that are focused on lead generation or measurement, Customer Advisory Councils are solely focused on building relationships and generating the market insight necessary to keep your business ahead of the curve.

Clients who have implemented Councils have seen, on average:

• 6% increase in customer retention
• 22% increase in new sales
• 10 additional customer references

The second tool is an Executive Sponsor Program (ESP). This formal approach to one-on-one relationships is best implemented following a Customer Advisory Council.

An ESP aligns an executive within your company with an executive in the customer account. The program exists outside of the sales cycle and outside of any particular deal or transaction. The intention is, over time, to create interdependency.

In interdependency, you become co-creators with your customers. Together, you and your customer create something that neither of you could do on your own. You become part of your customer’s long-term strategy.

Used in tandem, Customer Advisory Councils and Executive Sponsor Programs strengthen customer relationships and create sustainable, predictable, profitable growth. In doing so, they require the commitment and resourcing of any major corporate initiative.

 So, if you truly want to take your customer relationships to the next level, start with a Customer Advisory Council. Integrate the insights gained from the Council into your organizational planning process. As your company becomes more market focused, move to programs like ESP. Along the way, use your referral process and NPS programs to gauge how well you are moving the needle.

When you're launching a program that is impacting the top 20% of your customers, representing 80% of your revenue, the program needs to be taken seriously.  I know that seems so intuitive that you can't believe I mentioned it.  However, the scary truth is, I have found very few organizations that have truly institutionalized this thinking and are laser-focused on driving results with the top 20% of customers through executive programs.

There are two components to a successful Executive Sponsor Program launch.  They are the Center of Excellence and the Engagement.

• Goals of the program
• Number of accounts
• Number of sponsors
• Types of relationships you have today and relationships you want in the future
• Executive Sponsor Expectations
• Capturing and Communicating Customer Insight

In my experience as an Account Manager, an Annual Customer Review can be vastly different from one organization to another. The review can be a look at past performance/utilization, provide a picture of the current state or even a more forward looking view of what is coming in the next 12 to 18 months for your customer. I would like to provide my insights into new ways of thinking about customer reviews.

Let’s begin with a common definition of an Annual Customer Review. Simply stated, an Annual Customer Review is an annual face to face meeting with you and your customer to discuss the state of the account. How someone chooses to interpret what the level of customer discussion should be and the content that is provided during the review can be accomplished in many different ways.

We need to step back and ask ourselves this question first, "What should a Customer Review really be for our customers?" The Customer Review can be a strategic discussion that is solely focused on your customer. Make the review your opportunity to speak to your customer about their business. The review meeting allows you to gain perspective and insight on what your customer’s top challenges and priorities are with each business owner in attendance.

An Annual Customer Review is the right thing to do for our customers, but many in sales really don’t understand the true value that performing an Annual Customer Review can bring. If you begin to think past the negative aspects of pulling off a successful review i.e. creating that PowerPoint presentation, pulling together meaningful information to share, e-mails to various internal team members to gather feedback; the review can be a positive experience for you and your customer.

In my next blog I will be discussing some commonly held myths about the Annual Customer Review process.

It is simple: Everyone gets excited when a new customer is secured. There’s a celebration, bells are ringing, lots of recognition and rewards are handed out. Song’s like the Black Eyed Peas“BOOM-BOOM POW” or “I Gotta Feeling” are blasting in the hallways and everyone feels as though the most popular person in school just asked them to prom.

Been there, done that: How much celebration is there when a long standing customer renews for the 6^th straight year? Forget that they haven’t bid out the work in 3 years (no competition=greater margin) and they are already in your system (low cost of support, faster payment = greater cash flow).

It still only generates the excitement of going to prom with the back-up date and dancing to an old Richard Marx song. Yes you are at the prom, but that spark just isn’t.

Now the reality: It costs 3-5 times more to acquire vs. retain a customer. Getting your current customers buying more of your stuff means it’s harder for them to leave you (increased switching cost) and current customers are much less likely to bid out your work (increasing profitability). Shouldn’t you evaluate how your how you are spending your marketing dollars? 

Opportunity: Evaluating your marketing mix today and making the proper adjustments from acquisition to account growth can make a huge difference in top and bottom line results. Now that’s something the entire leadership team will be thrilled to hear about. 

Just maybe then you’ll become the most popular person in school (or at least the leadership team) and the CEO throws you the keys to the company G5 and backstage passes to the Black Eyed Peas.

There’s probably nothing more difficult in an organizations’ sales and marketing approach than to establish a footprint and presence in a new market.  The complexities and challenges are numerous:  Lack of brand awareness, lack of cultural knowledge, solutions that are not “localized” and the list goes on and on.  Not even to mention the fact that executive relationships become even more challenging for a foreign company thousands of miles away from the target market.

But one company is well on its way to achieving great success with the challenges of developing executive relationships in a fairly new and now highly targeted region for account expansion and growth:  EMEA.  That company is Harris Broadcast Communications (“BCD”).

Most organizations struggle to gain access and to connect with a new group of executives in a new region – but Harris BCD was up for the challenge.  Because of its growing product portfolio and fast changing market – they realized they must be successful at the executive level in EMEA to continue to grow.  

Harris BCD’s recently delivered their first EMEA Executive Advisory Board.  It took a great deal of focus and a targeted approach to gain access and enough trust with a group of EMEA based executives – but Harris pulled it off.  The approach BCD used was to selectively choose a small group of influential executives from strategic customers in the EMEA region.  Richard Scott, SVP and GM of the EMEA region, and his sales team were the primary relationship owners. 

What is most unique about this situation is that Harris was able to attract a group of 14 executives to connect with them in a manner shared by relatively few technology companies – a customer advisory board.  Rather than focus on a single event to attract executives and spend money on a speaker, a golf excursion or other event – Harris BCD instead invested in a first rate customer advisory board.  There were no lengthy power point presentations – instead it was a dialogue driven approach that kept the customer executives engaged for a day and a half. 

The benefits were mutual.  Harris BCD gained insight in to this targeted growth market and the customers had an open forum to help BCD understand where and how to focus investments to win in EMEA.  The side and most important benefit – Harris BCD and the customers were able to establish executive level relationships together – something that would normally take years to accomplish.

If you’re like many of the companies I’ve talked to recently, an Executive Sponsor Program (ESP) maybe worth investigating.  Here are the common factors that make an ESP valuable:

·         You have over  50% of the revenue in just a few accounts (< 30 accounts)  

·         You are having customer satisfaction/loyalty/retentions issues

·         Your Industry, company or sales force is in transformation

·         You are trying to catch up or distance yourself from the competition   

A great example of this is one of our clients, a large IT integrated business solutions provider.   They meet all four of the criteria.    They knew they had to get closer to their most strategic customers to accelerate their business results.   

The great news for our client is their Advisory Council was telling them the same thing by requesting that they be even more of a partner through involvement at a “Trusted Advisor” level.   Their Advisory Council went on to say that their account teams need to have the capabilities to engage on a business level and discuss business issues, which is the perfect scenario for an Executive Sponsor Program.

The Executive Sponsor Program enables our client to achieve these four common factors and enhance the business level discussions by leveraging the company’s executives to be the Executive Sponsors.

I will discussed “Getting Started: Critical Success Factors to launching and sustaining an Executive Sponsor Program” in my next blog.

Recently I interviewed one of my clients, Gowri Shankar, Senior Manager, Corporate Marketing of HCL Technologies, about their Customer Advisory Council (CAC). Now in its second year, the HCL CAC has 30 members from their top customer base.

HCL Technologies is a leading global IT services company consisting of over 62,000 professionals of diverse nationalities, who operate from 26 countries.  They focus on ‘transformational outsourcing,’ underlined by innovation and value creation, and offer an integrated portfolio of services including software-led IT solutions, remote infrastructure management, engineering and R&D services and BPO.

I have worked closely with Gowri on their CAC program for over a year now and was curious to know, from the perspective of a Program Manager, how he ensures their stakeholders stay involved, and what benefits they have seen since the Council’s inception in 2008.  Following are highlights from our discussion:

Q:  What are the top 2-3 reasons HCL decided to build a Customer Advisory Council program?

A:   “I can share more than 2 or 3! Here are six reasons (and there are probably more) …”

1.       Market Research gave us early warnings of shifts in customer needs and emerging technologies. We want to “stay in front” of those needs and understand what our customers’ expectations are of HCL.

2.       Strategic Guidance to help us validate and craft our strategic initiatives, looking ahead so we can make better decisions, allocate resources more effectively and align to their business and the marketplace.

3.       Innovation is a continuous process at HCL and we look to our CAC to provide feedback on our new IT Services developments.

4.       Customer Loyalty from our CIO CAC members has been phenomenal. I think that is because we include them in the process; we depend on them for input and validation of our strategies. As a result, we see less customer attrition and churn. 

5.       Sales guidance from our Council members – they provide advice on how to approach and appeal to similar customers, and many of them have given us referrals.

6.       Market Intelligence on competitors’ tactics and strategies. They let us know what’s working and what’s not working.  Plus, they share with each other trends they are seeing in the market and discuss leading economic indicators.

Q:  Can you describe the recurring benefits achieved through the HCL CAC and how you as the Program Manager maintain and enhance the initiative?

A:   “First and foremost, we are fortunate to have an Executive Sponsor who is fully engaged, which is a critical component to long-term success. Additionally …”

• The compelling strategic intent of the Council and therefore, the importance to not just maintain it, but continually improve it.
•  The tangible outcomes that have been achieved through the CAC such as increases in referrals, customer loyalty, and revenue, and overall the continuous and unfiltered perspective from market leaders.

Q.  What is one problem you faced gaining internal support and how did you overcome it?

A.   “Our organization is highly decentralized. It was a real challenge to demonstrate tangible evidence and benefits from the various stakeholders. We overcame that with the help of the CAC members. Their enthusiasm for, and confidence in the Council reinforced our internal leadership’s support and involvement.”     

Q.  What are the top 2-3 measurable results your company has gained from the Customer Advisory Council?

A.   “We are very pleased and proud of the results we have achieved. Here are some of the most significant results of our program …”

1.       Reference accounts increased 200%

2.       CAC customer satisfaction increased 25%

3.       30% of our CAC members have agreed to participate in a Case Study

Q.   Do you have any closing remarks?

A.    “We highly value our CAC Program. Through continuous engagement with the Council, HCL has better internal team alignment; as an organization, we are better focused on what we need to work on. We’ve formed valuable strategic relationships and built a mutual trust between our CAC members and HCL; there is a real camaraderie among the group. The time we spend together is invaluable. There is lively dialogue, differing opinions, shared benefit and incredible insight gained for all participants.” 

Sure, I have an opinion, but after discussions with numerous companies whose sole focus seemed to be cost cutting, reorganization and internal initiatives, I began to wonder.

I posted this question to the B2B Marketing group on LinkedIn and here were some of the responses:

"The customer experience is undoubtedly critical in B2B if only because of the buying process. Whereas in B2C, where the number of buyers and/or influencing parties are typically small in size, the buying process in B2B typically involves multiple audiences, job responsibilities, and in many cases, many channels as well. For these reasons, especially when we live in society governed by immediacy and specific relevancy to *me*, nothing could be more critical than a specific, user-relevant, positive customer experience. And if done correctly, especially on B2B web sites with strong analytics, the results from a positive customer experience can be *very* lucrative in terms of sales leads and revenue growth."  - Lance Baird, Vice President, Sales and Marketing at Godfrey

“Customer Experience is absolutely critical especially in services or complex solution sales environments. I learned LONG ago that the sales person might get the first sale, but it i s the customer services, i.e. customer experience, that gets the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and so on. That lesson supports the idea of growing customer share or insuring customer loyalty. Of course the other aspect of that is, it's of course also an imperative to growing market share. It is more than difficult to gain new customers if current customers are not willing to be a reference or even better an advocate for your products and services.” – Rick Volz, Sales Executive

“’You can fool some of the people some of the time but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.' Customer experience is everything in B2B. You can acquire customers using transactional techniques in the B2B space just as you can in the consumer space but to grow them into advocates requires that the whole experience by all of the people engaged in the relationship from user and buyer of the service is required to before you can develop the relationship any further. And just to make it even more complex those buyers and users are human and they change on average every two or three years. So understanding customers is much more complex in B2B and the relationship needs to be monitored all of the time. There is no room for complacency.” Iain Lovatt, Founder & Executive Chairman Blue Sheep Limited

Finally, after 14 posts, someone asked the question I was dying to know…

“What it is interesting is, that if we all feel so strongly that customer experience is so vital in B2B why is it so overlooked? Or is now the time for Business Leaders to understand that the brand is defined (whether we like it or not) by the experience we give and that to have a sustainable advantage and to be different in your market you MUST start with the Customer Experience?

It would be great to hear what you all believe are the barriers? I'll start with a couple:

- the lack of understanding of the importance (although this is changing) of the brand
- not enough listening to customers about how they feel about working with "company X"
- the B2B focus on quarterly results at the expense of the longer term plan
- the complexity of CX design in B2B

- .... (over to you) ...” - Richard Bush, Managing Director, Base One

There were several more posts about the importance of the customer experience in B2B), but only two that really answered the question posted by Richard about why it is often overlooked.

“Having been Head of Enterprise Customer Experience at Vodafone UK I speak from 'head in hands' experience of the complexity of getting the end to end experience right for business customers. Consumers, I would argue, are much less complex in their decision making, but businesses, well.... how complex can you get - certain people within a company may search for the right product, others may purchase it, others may use it and a different set may pay the bill (this applies to larger SMEs and definitely corporates). Getting the 'experience' right for all of those decision makers is hard but not impossible! I personally think B2B Customer Experience is a really interesting space and one that is just starting to get the attention it rightly deserves, but I definitely agree with the earlier comment from Richard Bush that there are many barriers to making B2B experience work. The biggest barrier I have found both as a client side practitioner and more recently from my consultancy work with B2B clients is that senior management (small business owners up to corporate boards) sometimes talk a good game but are less reluctant when they have to commit to the budget required for chance.” - Melanie Gray, Owner of GrayMarketing, a B2B marketing consultancy that specialises in Customer Engagement.

“... B2B transactions are based on an exceptional high level of trust. If trust is not present between you and the client from the outset, it’s almost impossible for a positive client/customer experience to be achieved (depending on what is the procurers driver). For my company this is our emotional trigger for our brand and one that resonates with our stakeholders. It’s not just about making relationships in B2B, it’s about maintaining them...” - Chris Hedges, Marketing Executive for Appleyards Ltd

I agree with Melanie and Chris that customer experiences in B2B are more complex because they are about relationships and trust at multiple levels and functions within the customer account. ..BUT if it’s the lifeblood of your organization, shouldn’t it be more than a nice-to-do? I'd love to hear your comments on why customer experience appears to be an afterthought instead of a managed process.

An Executive Sponsor Program is a program that focuses on your organization’s most strategic customers providing them with a one-to-one relationship:  An Executive within your company and an executive from your Customer.  I have observed that the best Executive Sponsor Programs focus the Executive Sponsor’s role on building relationships at the highest level with your customer and keeping it completely outside of any particular transaction or pending deal.   

The Executive Sponsor Program is all about achieving interdependency with your top customers and giving one another more leverage.   By leverage, I mean gaining insight and knowledge on both sides into the environment, culture, strengths, weaknesses, issues and desires.   This gives the Executives from your company and your customer’s executive an opportunity to collaborate on something neither could accomplish on their own.    Some of the key benefits organizations see from an Executive Sponsor Program are:

·         Aligning your company’s executive with your most strategic customers’ executives to create interdependency

·         Improving client loyalty through testimonials, referrals and case studies

·         Providing a programmatic approach for the overall program to build standard, repeatable process that is scalable

·         Capturing key findings from the engagements to funnel the right information to the right people within the company so they can take action. 

Russ Johnson, Vice President of Sales at Harris Broadcast Communications has seen firsthand the impact an Executive Sponsor Program has had on their company.  Russ states that “It's important to separate Executive Sponsor Programs from traditional every day account management and strategic account management models.  Through this new approach, we were able to connect to our customer at a more senior and strategic level, which Geehan facilitated the process.” 

“Historically, the sales team could bring our executive into the account.  By bringing in experts in preparation and planning, we were able to deliver a mutually beneficial meeting where the customer was able to bring something to the table too."

Stay tuned for my next blog about "Win-Win: Determining if an Executive Sponsor Program is right for you and your customer”