In October of this year the Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA) held their 18th Annual Marketing Conference and Marketing Excellence Awards Ceremony. Our CEO, Sean Geehan, spoke at that conference on "How Winning B2B Companies Achieve Profitable Growth."  It was exciting to be part of that conference for two reasons:

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.

That customer is HCL Technologies. Evaluated by a panel of renowned industry experts, organizations were judged upon innovation, execution, and business results - three critical aspects to marketing success.

HCL won the award based on its Customer Advisory Council (CAC) programs. HCL's global, collaborative initiatives involve over 80 of its Fortune 500 C-level customers and thought leaders who convene on a regular basis to advise HCL on industry trends, changing business priorities, and HCL's strategic direction. HCL applies the advice received from Council members into actionable plans that transform business and technology needs, creating more value for their customers. With their customers' help, HCL has achieved 25% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) over the last five years, going from revenues of $1.4B to $3.5B. The CAC also serves as an exceptional platform for HCL's customers and their industry peers to exchange ideas and best practices, and to network.

Awards such as this exemplify the value of spending time with your customers to build solid relationships, gaining a better understanding of their business, and becoming a trusted advisor over time. Customer engagement programs like HCL's Advisory Councils are key drivers for account retention, customer loyalty and revenue growth.

A fundamental reason for the success of HCL's Council program is the internal team leading the initiatives. Executive Sponsor Shami Khorana, President, HCL America, leads the team, stays closely involved, communicates to members, and attends all CAC meetings. Samir Bagga, VP and Head of Marketing, and Gowri Shankar Vembu, Associate General Manager and Head of Global CACs, are equally committed to keeping the Councils at a high-quality and strategic level. They work hard to ensure meeting agendas are robust with relevant, engaging topics, while at the same time giving members the opportunity to serve as "advisors" to HCL.

We at Geehan Group are honored to work with a company the caliber of HCL, and look forward to our continued partnership to help them run world-class customer engagement programs and continue to lead their industry with a market driven strategy, bringing company-wide internal team alignment. Congratulations to Shami, Samir, Gowri and all of the HCL team on this much-deserved award!

Are you a B2B company looking to achieve sustainable, predictable, profitable growth (SPPG)?  Referencing The B2B Executive Playbook by Sean Geehan, SPPG is the holy grail of goals for any B2B organization.  Throughout my career, I’ve observed three fundamental elements that will enable the realization of SPPG for B2B organizations:  Market Driven Strategy, Customer Engagement and Internal Alignment.  

Customer Engagement is the key to transforming the organization to drive sustainable, predictable, profitable growth. In the B2B world, customer engagement is the fundamental leverage point that allows an organization to foster two-way communication and connect the organization to the heart of its success - customers and sales.  During the sales process, and subsequent working relationship with customers, there are countless opportunities to engage with decision makers for dialogue - both outbound (ie. awareness and selling) and inbound (voice of the customer and market insight).  With the right environment and process, customer engagement is the cornerstone to gather insight that drives a market driven strategy and internally aligns the organization for success.

For the B2B Company, the magical moments that lead to company transformation are found within the engagements where decisions can be vetted and committed.  These successful customer enagagements primarily begin with a customer advisory board. Additional B2B customer engagement programs are needed to deliver other successful components: Breadth, Depth and Engagement Type.

Breadth:  The breadth of customer engagement in the B2B space is all about how broad your reach is to touch and engage your customers.  A domestic based company would need to reach all corners of the US to drive success of customer engagement.  Likewise, an international or global company would need to cover the corners of the earth.  Key decisions need to be made in those markets where you must invest to be successful.  Do you open an office in Dubai because it’s a hot market?  Do you focus on specific verticals to target and align to your regional or global breadth?  The breadth of the markets you focus on should align to the company strategy and growth opportunities. 

Depth:  The depth of your customer engagement programs includes the levels of engagement you have within your accounts.  We typically see that B2B companies engage with their customers at three distinct levels: the user level, the operational (influencer) level, and the executive (decision maker) level.  Customer Engagement at each of these levels requires different approaches.  For instance, a User Group meeting in Las Vegas won’t be a place to invite executive decision makers however, an industry trade show focused on an operational process would be a great place to meet and engage influencers.   Executive/decision maker programs in turn must be well thought-out, planned and executed to perfection to engage the right audience in the right manner…and ensure that they will return in the future.

Type:  The type of program refers to the engagement being on a 1-1 basis; a 1-few basis; or a 1-many basis.  Examples include:

• 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
  

In determining the type of customer engagement, careful consideration should be taken to determine the most effective method to reach your targeted buyer, advance the positioning of the company, gain both insight as well as get your message delivered. Each of these programs require levels of structure as the complexities of the programs can vary.  Our research has found that the top programs for advancing sales are executive summits while the top programs for driving retention and loyalty are executive customer advisory boards.

If you and your company are on the path to drive sustainable, predictable, profitable growth, an advisory board is a great place to start your journey and customer engagement approach.  If you’re a company that already has these programs or elements of these programs in place, often clearly defining and rationalizing the value of each program is important.  Making the most of every initiative is what separates good companies, and good marketers, from the average.

In the B2B world, there are three elements that will enable the realization of sustainable predictable profitable growth (SPPG), the holy grail of goals for any B2B organization.  In Sean Geehan's book, The B2B Executive Playbook, he identifies the three fundamental elements for B2B organizations: Market Driven Strategy, Customer Engagement and Internal Alignment.   In the past I’ve covered the overview and connections for these elements – today I’m focusing on the Market Driven Strategy component.

Market Driven Strategy
Many companies begin to develop their annual “strategy” by starting with a budget and a target for growth.  That’s an inside – out approach.  A market driven strategy is an outside – in approach, where insight about the market’s direction, velocity and changing needs are the critical components in the planning phase.   B2B organizations are in the unique position to capture insight into their strategies and market direction by engaging with their top customers to gain qualitative market insight (for example, in customer advisory boards and account based executive sponsor programs).  This insight can be relied upon to provide directional market guidance.  Other market research based customer insight can be conducted to capture further quantitative evidence of market movements, direction and needs.

Here are the four keys I've found to developing market driven strategy:
1) executive sponsorship by the CEO or BU head
2) alignment by the leadership team to the top priorities the market demands
3) insight from top customers and key growth segments
4) integration in to the strategic planning process

Case Study
When Springer Publishing engaged with decision makers in their markets, they uncovered growth opportunities in the e-publishing markets for research institutions.  Springer was able to identify the products, markets and customer segments where opportunities arose and weren’t being served today, and embed the opportunities in to their strategic planning process. 

Market Driven Strategy is dependent on two other key elements for success:  Customer Engagement and Internal Alignment.  Check out my other posts for more perspectives on these areas.

My last blog detailed the preparation needed prior to extending the first invitation to a customer executive for your Executive Sponsor Program (ESP).  You are ready and your executive is ready to make initial contact with the customer executive.  There are many methods of contact, so determine the best approach for each customer executive.

• Meeting 
• Phone Call
• E-mail as the last resort

In my experience the majority of the invitations to customer executives are all made via phone.  Everyone has a hectic schedule, so actually getting the customer executive live on the phone the first time is pretty low.  I would like to offer a few tips in getting the customer executive to respond to your invitation:

Voicemail
• Zero-out to gain access to their administrative assistant
• Find out the mode of communication preferred and the time of day they can be reached; schedule 15 minutes on their calendar
• Focus attention on the company’s key challenges, industry trends or a compelling event

If you have been unsuccessful in contacting the customer executive by phone, as I mentioned earlier, the last resort would be to reach out to the customer executive through e-mail. 

E-mail
• Grab their attention in the subject line
• Keep the message brief (mobile device friendly)
• No attachments

Don’t be discouraged if multiple attempts have to be made before you receive a “yes” from the customer executive.  It is your follow-up and follow through that will make the difference to your customer executive.