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.