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.

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.

It would be great if customer loyalty professionally was similar to the loyalty we find in our personal life between your dog and your family? 

We all know that achieving customer loyalty professionally takes work.   As a matter of fact, there is a big difference between customer satisfaction and loyalty especially in the B2B world.

Join me with Tracy Cole, Vice President of Client Satisfaction, Standard Register at the Engagement Expo in Dallas on November 7^th 2011 as we share Why B2B Customer Satisfaction doesn’t create Loyalty?

This presentation is based on findings from Sean Geehan's book,  The B2B Executive Playbook.

According to a most studies including the latest from Business Week, over 60% of defecting customers indicated they are satisfied right before they leave.  Learn why satisfaction doesn’t equal loyalty or retention and what to do about it.  Marketing and Sales must now play a role in driving beyond satisfaction to loyalty and ultimately advocacy.  Our session will explore best practices and lessons learned in developing customer advocacy. 

B2B Attendees will learn:

• Understand the differences in B2B vs. B2C loyalty and customer satisfaction metrics
• Understand the three layers of loyalty
• How loyalty programs can transform a company, making marketing look like a hero
• Best practices of leading firms to drive loyalty and retention
• How to engage the internal support necessary to deliver loyalty 

I look forward to seeing you in Dallas on November 7^th.

I recently spoke with Sherry Smith, Program Manager of the Executive Sponsor Program (ESP) at Dell to learn about the launching of their ESP. 

Situation

·         Dell built their program in January of 2010 and officially launched the program in July 2010

·         Currently there are  80 accounts in the program and 35 executives

Like most organizations Dell has aspirations of what they want ESP to accomplish for the organization.   They want to enhance executive relationships, loyalty, retention and revenue. 

Through the launch phase their executives have been very supportive of the program and eager to participate. The executive matching process and the kick off calls with each Global Account Managers/Account Executives have gone well. 

As with any program launch there are always a few challenges encountered along the way. Dell faced some obstacles with solidifying an overall program sponsor, the program structure and monitoring their program. The Dell team has been working hard on these common challenges as they know it will help sustain their program long-term. 

I asked Sherry what she would have done differently when launching the ESP. She said “start with the basics first. Clearly defining what you want the program to look like and working backwards with the tools and reporting you are going to need.”

Sherry shared some advice she would have for any organization considering launching an ESP. She said there are four components that are critical to success. They are:

1.       Do it right the first time. Don’t try to do it on your own. There is an art and science to successfully launching a program.

2.       Focus on the basics – focus on setting up the proper structure so that the program can be measured and you are able to celebrate the successes along the way

3.       Program Manager – Having a Program Manager with good people and program management skills

4.       Program Sponsor – the CEO or a BU President that can play their small, but vital role to champion the effort