In Trying Times, Don’t Lose Focus on the Customer!!!

Sunday, August 22, 2010 by Rob Urbanowicz
I’m scared.  I’m scared for what this recession is doing to corporate America.  I’m scared that we’ve lost our innovative edge.  Why?  I’m seeing more and more organizations work harder with fewer people to produce results.   24X7 is becoming more the norm.  Organizational planning is a precedent.

The question to ask:  Are we focused on our customers and our growth opportunities, or are we getting bogged down on internal activities that don’t drive meaningful results.

A.G. Lafley, CEO at Proctor and Gamble made a keen observation of the impact internal focus rather than external focus can have on an organization.  In a recent HBR article entitled “What only the CEO can do”, he says that shaping values and standards of your organization is one of the critical roles of the CEO.  But his point is that you can’t focus your values and standards internally – rather, you must define and focus your values and standards externally - to your customers and gain market alignment through the voice of the customer.

Last week I went walking through the headquarters of a large B2B organization.  I noticed many people busy working away at spreadsheets, e-mails, and editing documents.  What I didn’t notice, were many conversations or webinars with customers.  Was anyone focused on account expansion or customer loyalty?

Lafley noticed the same issue at P&G when he decided he needed to reshape the values of the company.  Take for instance his approach to redefining one of the company’s core values – “trust”.  P&G employees interpreted “trust” in a way that put employees’ needs ahead of consumers’ - the employees, could trust that P&G was a good place to work and lifetime employment.   Very internally focused.  Lafley changed the meaning of “trust” to mean that customers could trust the brand P&G.  This shift meant the company had to focus on understanding and delivering the brand promise to customers.  Since this and many other shifts to focus on the customer, P&G’s revenues have doubled.

Are your company values rooted in working with each other and delivering internally – or are they oriented toward how you and your organization focus on serving the customer?  After all, what would your organization be without your customers?

Critical Strategic Combination: Mixing Speed with Size

Wednesday, July 7, 2010 by Rob Urbanowicz
One of the biggest challenges facing large companies today is their ability to create market alignment: recognizing changes in market demands and shifting the company quickly to meet those demands.  In the B2B world business transformation takes the critical combination of strategy, relationships and execution speed.

Introducing Dell’s Large Enterprise Business Unit.

CIO’s know Dell as the company that offers great products at great prices – delivered fast to meet sometimes unreasonable demands. 

So, when I attended Dell’s CIO Advisory Panel (ie Customer Advisory Council) a few weeks ago in New York City, I was pleasantly surprised.  I knew going in to this meeting that Dell aspires to be something different.  Better, bigger, more flexible, and with a broader set of capabilities to enhance the value they bring to CIO’s through executive relationships.  What I didn’t know was Dell’s passion to listen, and the incredible ability to combine speed with their strategic focus.

Dell’s LE CIO Advisory Panel was organized and hosted by Steve Schuckenbrock, LE President, and Andy Lark, LE VP and GM.  The intent of the meeting was to capture insights (voice of the customer) into the minds and perspectives of CIOs from throughout North America.  I’ve worked with many large high tech firms, and the most intimidating moment for presenters or discussion leaders is to move away from telling, and focus on listening.  It’s inherent in the genes of an executive, hired to know their business, to present all their knowledge rather than listen to the market.  Dell isn’t like the others.  Dell actively listened to their CIO’s in this forum.  And the insight gained was immeasurable.   

Andy Lark states “We went in prepared for discussions with our ears and eyes wide open.  We weren’t sure what the outcomes would be – but we found that the insights gained from these market leaders will help us accelerate the vision for Dell to be the world’s #1 technology partner. “

All great, but what amazed me most was the ability for Dell to rapidly take insights from these market leading CIO’s and engage the Dell LE team to deliver.  Just days after the meeting, Steve Schuckenbrock was able to coral the team and resources needed to deliver against new market and service needs, and educate the sales force about positioning Dell’s leading cloud computing capabilities to CIO’s needs.  Dell's taken acheiving market alignment to a new level.

Dell is not a slow elephant in this world – in fact they move like the young mountain lion on the prowl.

Executive Insight from the Outside-In.

Monday, June 28, 2010 by Rob Urbanowicz

Many organizations today think about gaining market perspectives from their customers in a broad array of forums.  Customer advisory boards, customer roundtables, focus groups, voice of the customer programs and many other avenues are used to gain insight.  But one unique way to gain insight to guide an organization’s leadership team is through the eyes of the supplier – a Supply Chain Council.

 

Supplier meetings are pretty common.  I think for the most part, suppliers dread going in to many of these forums.  I often think of an environment where suppliers will likely be told that they need to become more efficient, they need to lower their costs, create more ROI and deliver their products more timely with higher quality.  Sounds dreaded… but Standard Register is different.

 

Standard Register established their Supply Chain Council late in 2009 with a different intent.  The goal and objective of the council is to help Standard Register achieve “advantage” in the market.  That could be in the form of new products, faster delivery, access to new markets, access to advanced technology, and access to advanced thinking.  The intellectual firepower executive relationships in SR’s Supply Chain Council is impressive.

 

Greg Greve, Standard Registers Vice President, Supply Chain states: “One of our objectives was to leverage the collective brain power of our supply chain partners.  Although we’re only a $700 million business, we have strong business relationships with at least a dozen thought leading suppliers representing both similar and different markets than SR.  Bringing these thought leaders to the table has positioned us to gain advantage in the way we think, the markets in which we participate, and the manner in which we conduct business.”

 

So far, the program has been an overwhelming success.  It’s aligned the suppliers with SR’s goals, objectives and priorities, and provided thought leading insight to advance the business. 
 

These are exciting times for this 98 year old company to be on the move toward a transformation that will propel Standard Register into the next century of success, and the Supply Chain Council is a great enabler.

Accelerating a Global Customer Footprint.

Monday, June 21, 2010 by Rob Urbanowicz

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.

Creating a Strategic Customer Experience that Lasts Forever

Tuesday, April 27, 2010 by Rob Urbanowicz
I’ve just returned from a customer advisory council meeting that created an experience that will last forever.  What’s even more profound is that the lasting experience was created with the key leaders from 18 important accounts and regions in Europe and Australia.  How could they do this???  You start with a customer advisory council targeting the right membership model, and then you take it from there.  Here’s the story:

A publishing client of ours, Springer, just held an annual Library Advisory Board meeting with their EMEA region in Amsterdam, Netherlands last week.  Many of you know that the Iceland volcano hasn’t been cooperating for travelers throughout Europe, and is wreaking havoc with businesses and relationships over the entire European region, not to mention the world.

The Springer Library Advisory Board meeting was on schedule as planned, until early the morning hours of Thursday April 15th when guests were scheduled to arrive.  We began to hear reports of cancelled flights and stranded travelers as the day went on.  Instead of counting on the 23 advisory board members planning to attend the meeting, we began to count on those that we know made it safely in to Amsterdam and the hotel. 
Now for those of us who regularly attend and host these programs, we know in the end, you’ve got to get the customers to the meeting in order to have success.  In this situation, it’s easier said than done.  At first there were six members on site, then eight, and then ten.  Slowly and surely, the Springer staff was able to find ways for the customer advisory council members to get in to Amsterdam, and we were able to have a successful advisory board meeting with 15 members moving to 18 over the course of the days to come.

But disaster still loomed around the corner…

After a great couple of days together, Springer’s guests were scheduled for departures from Amsterdam on Sunday April 18th.  But European air space was closed to travel until at least Tuesday, and possibly longer until issues with the volcanic ash clouds and flight safety could be resolved.  What was Springer to do???

This could have been a disaster in terms of executive relationships with clients.  Panic was looming…  But Springer turned it in to a remarkable success story and great customer experience.  From the beginning, Christel Keurentjes, Springer’s Senior Marketing Manager, assured customers that Springer would take care of them and any issues.  The team stepped up and continually monitored the situation, made alternative travel arrangements, extended hotel stays, and in turn picked up the additional costs.  What is even more amazing, since we were all stranded in the lovely city of Amsterdam, is how Springer arranged city tours and a trip to the beautiful Keukenhof Gardens where the tulips and flowers were in bloom.  A few nice dinners in the city and a visit to the home of Peter Coebergh, Springer’s President for Rest of World Sales was quickly arranged.  All the work and seamless execution was a clear sign that this company cares for its’ customers. 

In the end, this is a Customer Advisory Board experience that all will remember – in the most positive way.

Engaging Customers for Customer Reference Program Leaders

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 by Rob Urbanowicz
Today I was in San Jose and had the opportunity to meet with the Bay Area Reference Group hosted by Valerie Stephen of Amdocs.  The group consisted of a dozen professionals representing some of the largest and most successful Silicon Valley high tech companies.  The members of this group are tasked with responsibility to manage the customer references for these global organizations in the fast paced intensively competitive and constantly changing high tech market. 
As we started the meeting, I asked the group to identify the challenges they face in their role as the owners of customer reference programs.  I found that there are 2 “buckets” of issues they face:  1) Getting the right customers at the right level to reference the right products/solutions with meaningful ROI, and 2) managing the references once you have them.  We spent the majority of the day discussing point #1 – through programmatic  voice of the customer and market alignment approaches that we’ve found successful through many of our clients.
We first talked about the different levels of relationship between companies and their customers – executive relationships, operational and functional level, and user level.   The group felt that today they are balancing their programs between the various relationship levels.  What I’ve found is that companies like Harris Broadcast Communications gets a bigger bang for their buck by shifting investments in customer programs from user levels to executive levels – building executive relationships to drive sales and loyalty with decision makers.
We then discussed advisory boards and the keys to building loyal advocates.  Most of the group already had advisory boards in place and we spoke about a few best practices.  Rhett Livengood from Intel explained that they are taking their advisory board “virtual” with in-between working groups and on-line communities that focus on issues and topics relevant to the advisory board members.  Dave Eoff from Fortify mentioned that they are doing a great job in building customer programs within their organization, and the executive team is highly engaged in their programs.  These are two critical success factors for executive level customer programs.  Engaging your executive team in the programs provides the organization with the passion for the customer and provides real life examples of reaching out to customers to engage and learn.  And keeping customer advisory council and other disproportionately important customers engaged throughout the year in relevant dialogue and meaningful business issues engages strategic customers to drive loyalty and passion for the sponsoring organization.
Finally, we discussed ways to take advocates from a customer or executive advisory council program to do two different things:  penetrate accounts through executive sponsor programs to accelerate sales and 2) leverage those advocates to act as “spokespersons” for your company through executive summits and other advocacy programs.   While the group has made great strides in the work they’ve done to date, my sense was that most organizations haven’t yet totally linked the customer advisory council programs and those members to other programs and fully leveraged the power of what they’ve created.  In the end there is more marketing ROI in engaging these important customers to further penetrate, cross sell, and engage them as advocates to reach broader audiences.

Transform your company with B2B executive level programs

Thursday, August 27, 2009 by Rob Urbanowicz
I spent some time this week with two colleagues to reflect on their success with executive level customer engagement. One of them was  Ben Kiker, the CMO from Interwoven prior to their acquisition by Autonomy.  He had some interesting perspectives to share about how he was able to transform and drive success of Interwoven through his approach to engaging strategic customers and prospects.   After implementing a two-tier approach to engaging executives, he was able to improve customer retention, accelerate sales and account expansion, and develop an impeccable list of customer references and loyal advocates as the catalyst for these changes.  Ben is now with Jive Software, and is looking to repeat his feat and take Jive from an up-and-coming start-up to an enterprise leader in the social business software space.

Lisa Campbell, a VP and GM at Autodesk provided her perspectives about how she was able to leverage executive customers from Autodesk’s Geospatial Business unit as a strong voice of the customer to develop the strategies that led to success.   Lisa was able to engage with leaders from the market, creating executive relationships in unique settings and align her team to drive to market needs, accelerating Autodesk’s product portfolio and go-to-market approaches.

Luckily enough, Lisa, Ben and I will be speaking at the BMA’s September 15th evening mixer in the Silicon Valley at the San Jose TechMart.  Here is the URL - come join us to hear the rest of the story.  http://norcalbma.org/programs/Mixer

Customer Retention Strategies in a Downturn

Monday, April 20, 2009 by Rob Urbanowicz
I recently read a great article in BusinessWeek (Retaining Customers Through the Downturn) at http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/feb2009/ca20090227_011221.htm that points to the fact that the sales team can actually deliver customer retention at a rate greater than the product or service an organization delivers.  The Corporate Executive Board’s Sales and Marketing Practice surveyed 5,000 members to find out why they would keep buying from suppliers, buy more over time, and become loyal advocates.  The results pointed to the difference being the sales team and their approach.
I’ve found a very similar experience in working with my clients - helping them build loyalty and accelerating account expansion through a better sales approach.  Working with sales teams, we’ve found that careful planning and focus on the customers’ key issues sets the stage for engaging dialogue and discussion at the appropriate business level.  The research identified that suppliers who listen to the customer and can teach them something new achieve greater results.  We’ve worked with hundreds of clients in executive selling and advisory situations, and we’ve found that when we establish a dialogue-driven, business-level discussion, customers buy more, buy more often, and are more loyal than those in a control group.  They also found that suppliers who focus exclusively on the corner office find that without a strong network of supporters, the supplier will not only fail to build loyalty, but may lose a big deal altogether.    All the more reason to link the executive team to the sales team for account-based selling. We call it the Executive Sponsor Program - Accelerating sales by leveraging executives and a team selling environment.

Case Studies Start with Customer Loyalty at the Strategic Account Level

Saturday, April 4, 2009 by Rob Urbanowicz
I was recently talking with a B2B Marketing leader who made the comment to me that “We don’t have enough customer references and case studies from our customers, including major accounts”.   I found that interesting, because this company is very successful and has great products and services.   When I asked why he felt that way, he responded that “we just don’t have good relationships with executives where they are willing to contribute to writing white papers, being interviewed for a case study, or offering to provide a positive reference, let alone accelerating sales and retaining customers.  My final question was: “How do you engage with them to build a relationship?” – and his answer was:  the sales team meets with our customer executives at least annually, and sometimes our executives will meet or talk with our major accounts, but we don’t feel like we know them well enough to ask. 
Interesting…  Here’s a thought.  Build out a programmatic approach to driving customer loyalty at the account level.  Can you say Customer Loyalty Program?.  Start with a one-on-one environment like a major account program targeted at your strategic accounts, but elevate the program to include your executives from product, sales, marketing, and strategy.   That will help you to engage at the right level in your strategic accounts, and move interactions with them from selling approaches to business level discussions.  Understanding the value you've already delivered, and the business challenges strategic accounts have will not only grow sales, but also put you in position to gain more references, case studies and white papers.

The Answer to Accelerating Sales - no PowerPoint!!!

Thursday, March 26, 2009 by Rob Urbanowicz
I recently had conversations with two vice presidents of sales whose organizations are in the process of making the long transformation from product centric organizations to solution centric organizations.  One of the interesting themes in these conversations is the difficulty these leaders face as they drive to transition the sales force to a new mindset.  Despite the fact that they provide sales training, a solution selling process, new compensation structures, the tools and the techniques, the sales force continues to puke out the powerpoint presentations – which misses the point.  What these leaders want is for the sales force to spend time learning about the customer’s needs, and take the time to listen first, and sell later.  Many times the sales team is uncomfortable developing executive relationships, and will walk in to a meeting with the crutches of the powerpoint presentation of 43 slides that take 90 minutes to “breeze” through, with questions at the end of course... 

Here’s a thought.  Get rid of the powerpoint presentation.  Instead, force the sales team to think through an approach that is industry, market and strategic customer driven.  Do a little homework up front with strategic customers or through other sources to understand the industry related issues – and then Get Radical – have your team go to your next meeting with a single page of your thoughts and ideas, and three key questions.  And start with the questions!!  You might be amazed to hear that decision makers will actually enjoy hearing the meeting start off with a simple question like “How’s business?”, and “What are the key objectives you’re looking to achieve this year?”, and “What 3 things must go right in order for you to achieve those objectives?”   The power of the voice of the customer with the sales team listening will bring amazing results to accelerate sales and retain customers.  You’ll find out their key needs and pain points so you can come back and sell.  And in the mean time, you’ll make a great impression with your customers' executives and begin the transformation to a new sales approach.

Putting the Relationship in CRM

Monday, March 2, 2009 by Rob Urbanowicz

This is what CRM is all about:  having a productive sales force that listens and respects the voice of the customer, putting customers first.  In the end, your organization will deliver the right capabilities adding value for your customer and growing relationships for the organization.

 

I wonder how many b2b companies set off to implement their CRM strategies and set the false expectations that customer retention strategies and customer relationships will be improved by CRM?  I've seen many companies begin their CRM journey by evaluating systems and processes rather than the actual time and quality of time with executive decision-makers in their customer and prospect lists. I'd like to challenge the notion of organizing CRM around the system, technology or process. In the end, for a sales person, isn't success measured by the size of the sale and accelerating sales?  Why then wouldn't you start with the customer executive and build a solution value proposition around their specific challenges and the solutions your organization can bring to the table?  This is what CRM is all about:  having a productive sales force that listens and respects the voice of the customer, putting customers first.  In the end, your organization will deliver the right capabilities adding value for your customer and growing relationships for the organization.

An idea to accelerate sales with strategic customers

Sunday, February 15, 2009 by Rob Urbanowicz
As more and more organizations struggle with cost cutting, restructuring and other internal issues to return to profitability, here’s a simple way marketers can deliver marketing ROI, grow profitable customer relationships and keep within your budgets: Create executive relationships with your strategic customers.   Right now, many companies are becoming internally focused and losing site of what really drives business – customers!  While many budgets are being cut and compromised, there is one cost effective way to earn more business from your best and strategic customers – engage your executives with them.   This will drive revenue and loyalty with your key accounts, and in B2B complex sales environments, you’ll find that you can uncover significant opportunities to increase the sales pipeline and close deals faster.   For instance, organize a meeting with your top customer and one of your top product executives.  Spend time up front with your executive and your customers’ executive to identify key topics and discussions that are relevant to both.  A few examples are: How is the economy impacting operations?  What are your short-term strategies?  How are you building customer loyalty?   The next step would be to get the executives together in a face-to-face meeting, and be sure to spend time discussing how your organizations can work together to help them solve their problems.  Your product executive will get excited because they have a chance to interact and learn more about what’s going on in the market.  As new sales opportunities are identified, your sales team will get excited about selling more to the key strategic account.  And your customer will feel like your company listens and works to partner with their organization, ultimately building greater customer loyalty and the desire to do business with your company.  In the end, you’ll be a hero.

Customer Advisory Boards: Discovering new value propositions during economic crisis

Tuesday, February 10, 2009 by Rob Urbanowicz
Last week I facilitated my 23rd customer advisory council meeting in the last 2 years.  The meetings I’ve facilitated have included “C” suite executives from telecom, financial, banking, retail, high-tech, higher education, professional service firms, and manufacturing.  Over this time period, I’ve seen an interesting shift in the discussions and strategies from these executives. 
In 2007-2008, much of the executive level strategic discussions in executive customer advisory boards focused on the changing landscape in technology, the evolution of Web 2.0 and ASP models that would provide new levels of service in an evolving IT oriented landscape.  Demographic shifts to metropolitan areas and globalization were the drivers of strategic planning.  But over the past 9 months the discussions have dramatically shifted toward today’s economic environment that many B2B organizations are grappling with; determining impacts to their operations, customer relationships and customer loyalty.   
But most importantly, I’ve found that leaders have shifted their thinking from the tactical approach in Q3 of 2008, to a “mid-term” strategic approach through Q1 2009.  What I mean is that the 2008 dramatic impact of the economic downturn left B2B firms in the position where they threw out their strategic planning and focused on the day-to-day and week-to-week operations of the business.  Long-term planning was reduced to the next month of operations.   But now, as we’ve turned the corner into 2009, I’m finding organizations are thinking about their mid-term strategic approaches that will cover the next 12 months or so. 
The economic crisis has created a sense of urgency to get on with executing the changes that were once deemed too difficult or time consuming to deliver.  Organizations are making the headcount reductions that they’ve hesitated to do, making the cost cut focused six sigma decisions that were often shelved, and are no longer taking on the attitude that projects are OK to be delayed.  The mid-management team that has often stifled change in business is taking on a “git-r-done” attitude.
What this means to customer facing executives is that the value proposition built into products and services must change to meet the new market reality.  What delivered value just six months ago is no longer appropriate in many markets, and the sales pitch must change along with the new focus of customers.  Now is the time to listen intently through the voice of the customer to the new strategies and directions from your strategic customers in the B2B market.  Programs like a customer advisory board, a strategic major account program, executive summits and executive roundtables are a great environment to listen to the market, and craft the new value proposition to accelerate sales and increase customer retention. 

B2B Mandate: Drive Short-Term Success with Major Accounts

Saturday, January 31, 2009 by Rob Urbanowicz

I recently attended the AMA’s bi-annual conference “m.planet” where I heard some common themes among the B2B attendees. When I asked attendees about where they are focusing in today’s economy, the overall consensus was very short-term focused – “Anything to drive sales!”   As I probed deeper, I found that the B2B marketer’s role is changing as organizations move marketing spend and shift away from major user conferences and move investment to accelerating sales, especially with strategic customers.  

I spoke to marketing leaders from companies like Xerox, Halliburton, FMC Technologies, Silgan Containers, Qualcomm and others, and found many shifting their focus from broader coverage of all accounts, to targeted focus in major strategic accounts to drive account expansion and retain customers. I also heard that many organizations struggle to present a holistic view of their capabilities to strategic customers.  That practice continues to position the organizations as product-focused instead of solution-focused, making account expansion a challenge. 

What I also found was that many companies find it difficult to meet with customer executives to have business level discussions.   The B2B world is still in the product-to-solution migration, and the sales teams love to talk, rather than listen.   It was obvious that marketers see opportunities to connect with executive level decision-makers and discuss how to better serve and partner with these strategic customers, rather than dump a sales pitch. 

I’m interested to hear how B2B marketers are responding to the opportunity for marketers to accelerate sales and build loyalty through executive customer relationships.  Please let me know - Rob Urbanowicz

B2B Customer Loyalty Program Survey Results

Saturday, January 24, 2009 by Rob Urbanowicz
I'm excited to announce some key research findings that help leaders retain and grow top accounts.  I've written a full article that will be available to the AMA's m.planet conference attendees this week.

Here's a snapshot of the our survey findings for B2B customer loyalty where in our survey of top B2B high-tech firms, we asked Chief Marketing Officers and Marketing Vice President’s to identify the customer programs their organizations execute and the level of success with those customer programs.  These programs included Voice of the Customer, Major Account Programs, and other Go-to-Market customer programs. 
In the area of account retention and customer loyalty, we found that face-to-face executive level customer loyalty programs have a significantly higher customer loyalty success rate versus user-level customer programs.  The executive customer programs leading in loyalty included executive advisory boards and executive summits. 
This observation makes sense, since B2B buying decisions typically rest with the executives responsible for implementing company strategies and tactics to move their business forward.  But, if the incumbent vendor is connected with the customer executive sponsor, they can stay in tune with the broader business needs and the executive sponsor’s key initiatives, retaining and growing the account.
I'm interested to hear feedback from other marketing leaders about your results.
- Rob Urbanowicz

B2B Customer Relations in Digital World

Tuesday, January 20, 2009 by Rob Urbanowicz

Coming up next week in Orlando is the AMA’s big annual conference “M.planet.” It is really positive to see that despite the economy they are expecting to see, at last count, over 600 attendees. This year’s conference is labeled “Navigating the New Marketplace,” with an emphasis on the hyper-networked new world. While I’m down there, I’ll be looking to confirm a couple of key findings I’ve observed as the B2B world transitions to new social media: First – as expected -  B2B organizations are investing in social media, but mainly at the user level (as opposed to the business executive or operational level) and second, B2B leaders are continuing to invest in engaging relationships with their customer executives. 

One of the key sessions I’m planning to attend is “Successful Customer Engagement Strategies in B2B Markets” by Abbie Griffin from the University of Utah. I’m really interested to learn Abbie’s perspectives about how B2B organizations are building customer strategies given the economic realities coupled with disruptive technologies.  The B2B world deals with loyalty, account retention, account expansion, and the voice of the customer in a different manner than B2C - especially with the complexity of the buying organization.  I’m anxious to hear how customer relationship strategies are evolving to deal with the realities of today, and compare and contrast to what I’m seeing in the market and with our clients.

If you’re planning to attend M.planet this year, be sure to connect with me and look for Karen Penney and Michelle Mikula in the Geehan Group booth!

-          Rob Urbanowicz

Meet Rob Urbanowicz, the journey to enable customer driven strategies

Saturday, January 17, 2009 by Rob Urbanowicz

Let me introduce myself. I’m Rob Urbanowicz, a principal with the Geehan Group, joining in 2006. I’ve spent my career working with clients and focused on customer relationship management: developing CRM strategies, implementing supporting technologies, managing organizational change in sales and marketing, and now, in the most intimate environment and highest level service a consultant can deliver, working directly with the strategic customers of our clients, some of the best known companies in the world.

Here at the Geehan Group, our team delivers the strategies, plans, programs, environments and events that enable leading companies to extend their relationships with customers, increasing revenues, building customer loyalty and developing market driven strategies. We deliver customer advisory boards, customer advisory councils, executive sponsor programs, major account programs, executive summits, customer program planning, and other strategies that enable customer relationships.

Early in my career, working on an account project for Deloitte & Touche, I realized the only way to sell more services was to know your clients by keeping on top of their outbound market communications and leverage opportunities to develop customer relationships by connecting with decision makers and talking about their business challenges. I’m passionate about helping clients achieve success with their customers, and personally, I'm looking forward to my continued journey transforming businesses to become more focused on their customers. 

- Rob Urbanowicz