Gary Vastola, Vice President of Field Marketing & Service Support from Xerox and I participated in a Whale Hunters Expert Series call last week. The call and discussion was focused around the common challenges companies faced as they closed out 2011; flat sales, retention, and customer satisfaction issues. 

As we kick off the New Year companies want to turn the tide towards exponential growth.  The quickest way to achieve exponential growth is by focusing on your most important customers at a decision maker level.  That sounds so simple but so many companies become distracted trying to do that with all their existing customers. The truth is that all customers are all not worthy of that type of attention and resources.  As we all know, if you don’t prioritize your efforts than the efforts get diluted and so do the results.

Once you have focused on your most important customers at a decision maker level, the next question is what do you do with them?  The days of “howdy calls” are over.  You remember those days, an executive comes in to visit one of your important customers and basically the executive takes them to breakfast, lunch or dinner or meets in their office to introduce themselves and talk about sports and something else that is meaningless.  The executive leaves and the customer executive is thinking nice guy, but I don’t have time to waste doing that again. One way to engage your decision makers in a meaningful valuable way is through an Executive Sponsor Program (ESP).  An ESP is that one on one relationship (executive to executive) that is outside of any sales transaction.  When launched well, the results are undeniable.  

Are you on the “right stack” of mail?   

When you are doing something new, you fall into the classic “you don’t know, what you don’t know”.

 When you are planning your inaugural Customer Advisory Council you need to ask yourself….are we on the right “stack of mail”?  To set a Customer Advisory Council up for success long term you need to be focused on three main things:

1. Business Alignment – Alignment surrounding the priorities, content, members and outcomes gets the team focused around driving the results you desire.
2. Sponsorship – Who is your overall program sponsor?  If you don’t have one, you need to find one or you will not be able to keep the council headed in the right direction over the long-term.
3. Insight Execution – Gaining the right insight and executing on this insight is vital to success.  Insight execution is a lot like strategic planning.  You have to decide and communicate what you will and won’t do back to your members as well as internally within the company.  

I have observed several organizations spend valuable time, money and resources focused treating this like a trade show event.  They are more interested in the “glitz and glamour” then on making sure they have the foundation build for long term success.  Three of the most common pitfalls when setting up an inaugural Advisory Council are:

1. Finest Resort– Selecting a fabulous location is great to get your members to the first meeting, but it won’t keep them coming back.  You have to set the right environment in the inaugural meeting and execute on what you heard to keep them coming back.  There is no need to spend $450/night for a hotel room.
2. A/V and Travel companies- A successful Advisory Council meeting does take a lot of work, however, hiring an A/V company and/or a travel company to manage 14-16 people is not necessary.   If you plan for enough in advance, you will have the resources to handle the logistics for the meeting.  Your most strategic customers don’t want a production.  They want an intimate environment with you.
3. Expensive Gifts– Buying your customers expensive gifts is not necessary.  Companies waste so much time here.  Your most strategic customers aren’t coming for the gift or a fancy glass name plate.  They are coming to spend time with your executives to learn and share insight.

When you stay on the right “stack of mail” and focus on building internal alignment, sponsorship and insight execution you will set your council long term for success.

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.

As a business leader, how do you know if your Customer Advisory Council is yielding you the strategic results it should?   

An Advisory Council is a huge opportunity to gain insight on your strategic, marketing, sales, services, product and merger/acquisition opportunities.  This insight when executed properly yields companies Sustainable, Predictable, Profitable Growth.

If you are not getting this level of insight and results, you need to look at how you started the process.  I recently observed an advisory council meeting where the executives felt that their advisory council meetings were getting stale.   We did an assessment and discovered several things:

• Internal Alignment – Executive internal alignment was lacking. The Executives each had different ideas of why they had an advisory council and the results it should yield.  The result was the executives treated this like an event that happens twice a year
• Company Priorities - When we evaluated this meeting as well as went back to their first meeting, we identified that the agenda’s never tied back to the company priorities.
• Decision Maker Mix - They had technical and business leaders on their council – The decisions will always go to the lowest common denominator, which in their case went to technical discussions.

Based on what we identified, it was not surprising that the executives felt the advisory council was getting stale.     They were completely missing a huge opportunity to help them continue to transform their business to achieve the high growth they desire.

First of all, the executive team needs to understand the value that a decision maker council can have on your business.  Once you have alignment there, you need to look your planning process.   The executive team should look at their business priorities and align the agenda to drive outcomes that fit into those priorities.   Finally, once you have alignment, you have mapped this to your company priorities, it will become very clear who would be the right type of decision maker on your council.