Have you ever experienced a “moment of fame” when everything you need for your business to succeed comes together perfectly?   It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s “golden!” 
What if you were able to take those “moments of fame” and make them a consistent practice within your organization?  Customer Engagement Programs provide the opportunity to do just that.

Recently, my client experienced one of those moments.  After conducting an Advisory Council meeting with the decision makers of his most strategic customers, he gained invaluable insight into the market, learning what his customers need, and what they are looking for from his organization.

As a member of the executive team, he walked into a strategic planning meeting with the CEO and his peers, armed with information no one else had—even better, it was validated by his most strategic customers:

• Sunset a core product in mid-term development – a savings of $8 dollars in future development, marketing, sales, and service, not to mention resources that can be devoted to high impact products.
• Eliminate a new solution from the product roadmap – a total savings of $3 dollars, six months in development and valuable resources.
• Get positioned to make an acquisition – of an innovative services company.

Gaining insight from your top customers provides a tremendous amount of confidence to participate in your organization’s planning process.  Sharing this information among the leadership team was a “moment of fame” for my client.  His CEO responded, “I’m so impressed by your knowledge this early in our planning process.  You are months ahead of your peers.”

When it comes to internal planning make no mistake—you are competing with your peers for resources and dollars to make the best decisions for the organization.  As you prepare for 2012, part of your plan should include gaining market insight at a decision maker level with your most strategic customers. 

In Sean Geehan’s book, The B2B Executive Playbook, he explains in detail how the market can provide insight, and help validate the following four areas (see diagram below):

• Your “Exploit Solutions” – those areas that align to your business model and for which you have a core competency – in other words, what you do well.
• Where you should “Evolve” – the market is telling you they want something that is in your core competency, but it is not part of your business model today. 
• What you should “Acquire” – the market is telling you they want something that would fit into your business model, but you don’t have a core competency for it.  This is an opportunity to gain additional insight for potential companies to acquire.
• Areas to “Evaluate” – this is something that is part of your business model and it is a core competency, but the market is not willing or interested in buying it.  This is an area you should look to eliminate or sunset the solution or product.

Validate Your Plan with Your Most Important Customers

My client learned that the best way to capture the areas outlined above was through his Advisory Council.  The value of a well-managed Advisory Council is that they can help you capture strategy, marketing, sales, service, product, and merger/acquisition information all at the same time.   

At their inaugural Council meeting, members were presented three specific initiatives for feedback.  The first was a legacy product they had for years—a “me too” in the market. The second was a new product they were getting pressure from sales to develop.  And finally, the third was to look at potential acquisition targets that would fit their business model, but for which they did not currently have a core competency.

The result of the feedback is what my client shared with his leadership team outlined in the beginning of this article.  And it saved his company over $10 million … all from listening to his customers.

Make 2012 a great year by seizing your Golden Opportunity.  Engage the decision makers of your most strategic customers to gain valuable market insight to help drive your strategic planning.

1. The opportunity for Sean to present the principles of his new book, The B2B Executive Playbook
2. The chance to witness one of our customers receive the ITSMA Diamond Award for Marketing Excellence in the category of Building Client Loyalty and Trust.

The Engagement Expo in Dallas this past week was a big hit!  Tracy Cole, Vice President at Standard Register and I presented how in the Business to Business (B2B) world, customer satisfaction does not create loyalty.  

A major aspiration for companies today is to be in ‘high growth’ mode, which can be challenging given the current economic climate. In the B2B world, high growth can be achieved through sustainable, predictable, profitable growth (SPPG), for which many factors come into play, most importantly customer loyalty.

One aspect we talked about as you create loyalty is how to engage Decision Makers.  Engaging Decision Makers is a lot like when I first started meditating daily in my yoga practice.  It’s all about:

• Insight
• Relevancy
• Relationships

Meditating has given me tremendous insight about myself.   You have to sit quietly and breathe deeply.  As a “type A” personality, this is not easy for me to do.   When you engage decision makers in the right way you will be amazed at the insight you can gain around strategy, marketing, sales, product, services and merger/acquisitions.

If you walked into a conference room and saw a group of people meditating, most people would think this is very strange.  If I saw this, I would say, “Is there room for one more?”  It’s all about being relevant. This is relevant to me and when you are engaging decision makers you have to make it relevant for them.  They need to have common challenges and a common goal.

When engaging Decision Makers the final piece is the relationship.  When you get a group of decision makers together and you are gaining their insight and having relevant conversations, you start to build trust which leads to a relationship.  Just like when I go to my weekly power yoga class.  There is a core group of us that attend every Saturday, which makes it even more enjoyable.

Breadth: 

• One to One:  Executive Sponsor Programs; Account Based Marketing; Account Based Innovation; Major Account Programs, etc.
• One to Few: Roundtables, customer advisory boards; CEO dinners; small summits
• One to Many:  Conferences, trade shows; summits; industry or partner events