The Geehan Group recently hosted a B2B Executive Roundtable in Palo Alto, California, where our Founder and CEO, Sean Geehan, moderated a discussion with special guests Brad Brooks, VP Enterprise Marketing, Juniper, and Greg Jorgensen, past-CMO of Verisign.  In characteristic Geehan Group fashion, an intimate group of about 20 executives enjoyed a convenient, casual and socially-appealing venue—Zibbibo Restaurant—while participating thought provoking panel discussion, executive networking and, of course, a California infused wine tasting experience.  

The Theme:  Sean’s pending book release “The B2B Executive Playbook” helped carve the theme of the meeting around advancing business relationships from transactional vendors to strategic partners/trusted advisors—while reaching decision makers.  Sean moderated a lively discussion in which the audience asked stimulating questions and openly discussed panel responses.  The top concepts that resonated with me included:

“C level executives don’t have a ‘like’ button for you.”
Brad Brooks, VP of Enterprise Marketing at Juniper responded to the question of social media hype when it comes to the C level.  As is the case with most B2B companies, and following Pareto’s 80/20 rule, Juniper earns a large percentage of revenue from a small percentage of customers.  Most importantly, though, is that the C level executives in these top accounts are conservative:  So they don’t use a “like” button to click and review for input, instead they call their “friends”—peers in this case—to seek advice and input when making decisions.  Understanding this level of customer advocacy, Juniper knows they must build a strong relationship with decision makers.  To do so, as Brad noted, first requires establishing a foundation of trust.  For Juniper, this means they are always open to discussing and resolving customer issues, faithfully earning that trust over time.
 
”Centralize to gain benefit:  Decentralize to execute.”  
One of the most important aspects for a CMO to address is determining when to centralize and when to decentralize, as Greg Jorgensen, past CMO of Verisign, pointed out.  Because B2B relationships and sales typically occur at a regional level, the execution of marketing and sales programs needs to be delivered on a local level.   Greg noted, “The corporate function is best left to delivering in areas where process, consistency and cost savings can be maximized to the benefit of both the corporate centralized function and the regional decentralized function.”  And then let the region manage the delivery aspect of the program with the customer.

“Beware the ‘Sins of Wealth.’” 
Brad also stated, “Successful organizations can enjoy the ‘Sins of Wealth’ where financial success allows for missteps in B2B marketing execution.”  Spending for PR can quickly grow as a bloated organization misinterprets marketing awareness campaigns as the only metric for success—while neglecting the nurturing and rewarding of decision maker relationships.  “Balance is important … and determining who to influence is the responsibility of the savvy B2B marketer.”   A day will come when the relationship with the decision maker is paramount to retaining and growing your business.

“What a great event! The targeted attendees (marketing leaders), level of dialogue, intimate setting and open interaction was an experience to repeat!  And I loved the wine tasting networking where I could identify the common connection points to others I met.” – Maeve Naughton, Fortinet

There were many more comments from our panelists and contributions from our attendees worth taking back to reflect on and implement, but not enough space to capture here today.  Thank you to our panelists and attendees for joining me, Sean and Karen Posey in this engaging executive experience!

"Big Deals" get everybody excited.  The city of Boston just had 1.5 million fans come watch the Boston Bruins team parade through the heart of the city after the Bruins won professional hockey's coveted prize, the Stanley Cup. The streets were littered with the Bruin jerseys and yellow confetti. The Stanley Cup is a "big deal." And everyone who had any connection to the Bruins was ecstatic.
 
Dave Hersch, CEO at then small start-up Jive software recalls one of their first big wins. "When we first started out, we went up against IBM for a big deal wit ha large manufacturer. They flew in ten people. We had three of us running the company from an apartment.  The odds were stacked against us but we did our homework and built a solid relationship with the decision maker. The customer liked our lightweight,flexible approach to solving their problems, and we won.  We celebrated with iterations in the apartment." Even big B2B players get excited over big deals.  When Boeing recently landed its $1.7 billion order for six of its 777 jets with Qatar Airways, you can bet more than just the sales rep was excited over the win.

How important are relationships to B2B sales success? Relationships are critical to Big Deal Success!
 
None of the above B2B deals were the result of a "vendor" type relationship between the seller and the key decision makers in these accounts.  And in each of these cases, the procuring organization noted that they were "partnering" with their vendor to purchase the products or services.  So how can an organization move the needle and become more of a partner to their customers and prospects and close more "big deals".  Here are four things an organization can do to move the company from vendor to partner.

1.  Understand what it takes to move up the ladder.  Bret Barczak, CMO GE HealthcarePerformance Solutions, was charged with launching a new solution and its related campaign.  But his customer base didn't yet view GE as a strategic partner with the credibility to provide the new solution.  To overcome this, Bret identified 15 accounts at which he could tap in to key leaders to gain insight about the problems they were trying to solve - problems which also had a connection to GE's services and solutions.  Through this process, he learned how to reach these powerful decision makers and others like them.  The combination of the "what" to say and "to whom and how" to say it, helped correctly position both the marketing message and the sales campaign.  Armed with the right package, GE was able to reach the audience they needed to build relationships and sell big deals. Barczak's team avoided spending useless time at the wrong levels where big deal decisions aren't made.

2.  Take the product (and even the sales rep) out of the conversation.  Building partner relationship means the business conversations are about just that - the business.  A CIO from a high tech client of mine was upfront and honest with a vendor when he took an appointment with him.  He told him he didn't want to talk about the products they offered, but rather how they could solve the problems they faced.  The sales rep wasn't exactly sure how to handle the situation, and when he started to introduce his company and their solution set, the CIO abruptly ended the meeting.  Often times, sales reps and account managers struggle with engaging conversations with business leaders because they haven't sat in the chair of the person they are selling too, or they don't have the appropriate level of business acumen to have a conversation that addresses the problems the business faces. An easy way to gain business level understanding is to use an executive from within your organization and have them meet with the customer or prospect.  A non-sales executive often doesn't fully understand all the features and functions of the products, so they aren't tempted to discuss them.  More importantly, they can relate well to their peer because they bring relevant personal business leadership experience.  The conversations, therefore, naturally begin with the business and the challenges the prospect faces. Over time, these discussions often foster a personal relationship which helps solidify the business association.

3.  Recognize that relationships are an "all-time" thing.  Vince Lombardi once said, "Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all-time thing."  Building relationships that lead to long-term sales success is the same way - it's not a sometime thing, it's an all-time thing. Winning big deals comes from all the steps to win each small element of the relationship.  Techniques that build relationships include:

• continued touch points at unexpected times - like showing up at their big industry conference to show your interest and support
• using your own time to research a problem they are trying to solve
• meeting with them in person at "non-transaction" times
• taking time to hand-write a note
• ultimately, treating your customer or prospect as you would your best friend

4.  Celebrate relationship successes together.  Recognizing and celebrating both big and small accomplishments keeps morale high and teams motivated.  Take time to celebrate, and don't forget to invite your client or prospect to join you.
 

Lastly, you may need to "sell" to your own CEO.  Nothing gets a CEO (or BU head) more excited than landing the big deals that create market momentum.  To build relationships and support big account pursuits, multiple resources may be necessary.  Sometimes it requires the CEO to step in and show support for the partnering with a prospect.  When the CEO is on board, it's much easier to align the functional heads to your prospects' team, their needs, and their methods to evaluate your service or solution.  When you have the ability to create relationships throughout an organization with the customer's team, the ability to win big deals and retain big accounts goes much deeper.

Implementing these concepts within a B2B organization will lead to building the relationships that matter, and landing the big deals that gets everybody excited.

A common challenge executive's face is building awareness in the market about their organization or a new solution to drive sales. In the B2B world, one way to drive market awareness is through Executive Summits.   Executive Summits traditionally consist of a compelling keynote speaker that focuses on an important topic, one or more case studies from strategic customer(s) and a few sessions that stimulate thought and conversation. This creates an environment where the participants are talking 80% of the time. 

Typically, marketing events focus on the end user or even the influencer but the real opportunity is focusing on the decision maker.  In order to attract decision makers to your executive summit you need to create the right environment to entice them to attend, especially if you don't have name recognition.  Securing compelling keynote speaker, focused on a relevant topic, will make all the difference in attracting attendees because the use of a strong keynote will position your organization as a thought leader. 

Another option when planning an executive summit is to leverage an influential industry group (i.e., magazine or industry group).  This will help you to broaden your reach of decision makers in a more efficient manner (working smarter vs. harder).  Once you have speakers identified you need to think about the number of attendees you want at the event; more is not better in an executive summit.  Executives like a more intimate setting where they can have access to the keynote speaker, network, and really participate in the event.  Creating an intimate environment with no more than 50 people will allow you to do that. 

We recently executed an executive summit for one of our healthcare customers that did not have name recognition with their decision makers.  Their primary contacts within the hospital were with material management and procurement.  They knew they needed to get to decision makers in order to change the perception of their company and their brand.   They wanted to focus on patient safety and invite Chief Nursing Officers and Chief Medical Officers.  

This is where focusing on an influential group such as a trade publication gave them leverage.  They partnered with an influential magazine within the healthcare market and spoke to their editor about what they were trying to accomplish.  The editor was so impressed when she learned about the keynote speaker and the intimate environment to learn and share (80% participants talking), that she was energized to help them recruit key industry leaders to be on a panel discussion based on her own relationship with these individuals.  This gave our customer the start of the ground swell they needed. 

Our customer decided to leverage two panels which now gave them access to eight creditable executives.  Once they locked down the keynote speaker, leveraged the editor of the magazine, and recruited the panelist, the panelist were able to invite two peers in similar positions. They were now on the path to success.

An additional element that added to the success of the event was the use of social media tools such as LinkedIn and Facebook.  This enabled the head of the business unit to personally invite people as well as post and share updates to the event. 

The event was a huge success.  Our customer's goal for this event was to build awareness, executive relationships, and form a clinical advisory council.   They achieved the following:

·         50 healthcare executives in the room that saw our customer's organization as a thought leader

·         Attendees rated the Summit as the best event experience ever

·         100% of the attendees want to be involved in future events

·         Created solid candidates for their Healthcare Advisory Council

An additional benefit for our customer was that their internal leaders who attended the event also got to see first hand that they can be relevant with executives, which helped give them the overall confidence they needed to make some key decisions about where they wanted to go in the market.  

If you are serious about driving market awareness and growth at an executive level conducting an Executive Summit is the way to go.   Our experience continues to show that when Executive Summits are done in conjunction with an Executive Advisory Council, the results of increased brand awareness, revenue, and executive relationships accelerate even faster.

David Thomson, author of the classic business book "Blueprint to a Billion" provided Geehan Group B2B Summit attendees with his seven essentials for growth.  David highlighted one of the most important and obviously relevant essentials for the B2B company in Essential #3 - "Marquee Customers Shape the Revenue Powerhouse".    Sean Geehan, Founder and CEO of the Geehan Group presented and shared the B2B phenomenon and fact that 80% of B2B company revenues typically come from 20% of the customers.  The trick is to identify and engage strategically with these top and marquee customers to achieve break through growth.

In small group roundtable discussions, we met with about a dozen B2B CEO's, CMO's and Sales Executives and asked them to share their challenges toward engaging with marquee customers, the practices to overcome these challenges, and how best to drive enterprise transformation toward marquee customer engagement.  Here are some keen insights we've gathered from our discussions.

Who is a Top Account or Marquee Customer?
The most fundamental objective to achieve success with top accounts and marquee customers is the obvious; identifying which customers are truly marquee customers.   Not surprisingly, we found most organizations struggle to clearly define which accounts are marquee customers to focus and align with especially when a big volume customer is not necessarily a true marquee customer or aligned with your B2B company's strategic future.

As we talked through solutions to the problem of defining a marquee customer or top account, it was clear that an objective definition was needed to guide customer focused decisions in the B2B enterprise.   Although most organizations inherently know their top 2-5% of accounts, the picture gets a little fuzzy as drill down to the layer that separates the average account from a top account.  Having objective and documented parameters can make it simple to identify which accounts are in and which are out, as well as eliminate internal politics and conflicts in favor of other non-marquee accounts.

Dealing with a Big Account or Marquee Customers
In the B2B space, large accounts can also show a tendency to leverage their size for negotiations and cause the smaller vendor to buckle on pricing.  Large accounts may also show their muscle to drive an organization to build to their custom specifications, devoting precious talent and resources to a single customer, thereby risking the opportunities to build products that serve the rest of the market.  Jeff Brown, VP Sales from Savvis pointed out, "Customers often have a tendency to "box you in" to the work you've performed and delivered in the past, making it difficult to reposition your products and services more strategically". 

Our leaders felt that the best way to deal with these situations is to engage at more senior levels in the organization and continue to innovate with new products that can be used to cross-sell.  Syed Hasan, President Americas for Springer Science+Business Media highlighted "By including top customers together in the innovation process, ideas can be collaboratively brainstormed and developed for the market, rather than a single account developed solution that can't easily be repurposed and/or resold."

B2B Relationships
The B2B sales process and relationship building can be challenging as well.  Many larger B2B organizations have decentralized operations, and in turn decentralized decision makers - even commenting that sometimes customers are so large or complex they don't even know their colleagues within their own companies.  Greg Jorgensen, SVP Marketing at VeriSign noted that "Those firms relying on resellers and not their own direct sales force face challenges to drive growth because they don't 'own' the relationship."  Others agreed that the capacity of organizations to own relationships can become a challenge, especially when top executives are not skillful in customer engagement.

Clearly our B2B leaders in this discussion felt that owning the engagement process was a critical step to building relationships with top accounts.  The group felt that getting the sales organization out of key meetings can not only help with better product and service insights, but also lead to better enterprise wide and strategic relationships.   Dee Rambeau, EVP Customer Engagement, PR Newswire noted that his firm has moved to having weekly "synch" meetings internally and externally with customers to align their strategies and tactics.  Jeff Brown, VP at Savvis again pointed out that key account managers play a critical role in quarterbacking the relationships with large and strategic accounts.  The group also agreed that the marketing team should support key account managers with tools and process to enable their success.

The Uncontrollable Risks
Vendor consolidation, diversification, merger and acquisitions were discussed as risks in accounts, but our group felt that proper positioning and relationship building with those accounts can mitigate the risks and ultimately end in a reward as accounts change their vendor strategies.

Winning in the End
Like every good senior leadership team does, our B2B leaders concluded that driving customer engagement through the organization was paramount to long-term success.  The phrase "Lose it, Live it, Prove it" was quickly brainstormed as a fix to engage the broader organization in marquee customer programs.   Millicent Calinog, SVP Wells Fargo summed up our conclusions like this:
Lose it:  When you lose a big account, showcase the issue to create the compelling reason to change.
Live it: Leverage the executive team to demonstrate the importance of marquee customer programs.  Bringing customers to headquarters and communicating successful engagements with your executive staff are two simple ways to show that your organization is "Living" customer engagement.  Be sure to recognize and reward those individuals who go out of their way to improve relationships and deliver services to top accounts/marquee customers.
Prove it:  Develop the goals, objectives and ROI for your top account programs, and actively track, monitor and report the results you see.
 
The group enjoyed the lively conversations and was anxious to get back to the office to implement the new ideas.  Personally, I'm anxious to hear back from the group next year about the progress that they've made!