Planning to engage a major potential customer is much more than finding the phone number on the web site and ringing reception to ask who is the right person to speak to.
Chances are, even if they know who the right person is they will connect you to the intern.
For years I have been teaching and running workshops with the eye-raising acronym of SKAM.
Strategic Key Account Management.
The underlying logic is that there are only 3 ways to engage with a customer that leads to a transaction that is of a significant size:
You can help them increase their sales
You can help them increase their productivity
You can help them reduce their costs
On another level, there are some questions that you can ask yourself, and in the answering, arrive at a number of possible approaches, as it is rare that the first you try will work, but learning from the experience will help you with the second.
- How to I add value to what they are doing
- How do I demonstrate knowledge that I can make available to them that they will benefit from
- What trends or technologies can I bring to their attention that at will impact on their future profitability
- What insights can I bring to them
- What specific knowledge can I share
2. How do I go about building trust.
- What about their internal culture can I tap into and make a contribution
- What do the need or want that I have, and can give them
3. What can I do to be pro active and demonstrate my ability to work with them and help them achieve their goals
- What insights can I bring to them that will be of benefit?
4. How am I accountable for optimum results.
- Sales do not stop with the payment cheque. After sales service, warranties, ongoing advice, and so on all demonstrate that you are accountable for the promises made before the cheque was cashed.
5. How am I going to continue the engagement after the first transaction
- Once a customer has bought from you, if you do the right thing, you will have them as a customer again, and again. It is very useful to measure your “share of wallet“
- Would they recommend your services to their networks? Asking for referrals is a powerful marketing tool when you have satisfied customers, as there is no more powerful toll that word of mouth advertising.
Success in B2B sales of significant products, not just paperclips, takes patience and planning. It almost never evolves the way you expect, and almost never as quickly as you would like, hang in there.
