Beyond the Sales Process

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Customers don’t want to be coerced, controlled, or otherwise pushed around. They value authentic relationships based on transparency, competence, credibility, and trust, and they’ll pay more for these qualities, even in today’s difficult selling environment.

Engage: Driving Success Before the Sale

Research the Organization: Become a student of your customer'

Doing your research puts you at a stronger position to compete. 
Be a student of your customer. Make substantial investments of your time to understand their business
Your best selling will occur when you're customer is not buying. At that time you can take steps to distinguish yourself and your organization apart from the field resulting in a customer more likely to open up

What you need to know
Customer's organization
How is your customer structured to do business. Not just org chart but how org chart relates to business
Customer's news and developments
What's happening in your customer's world. What internal or external events could trigger a new initiative 
Customer's culture
Values, attitudes, standards, behaviors, beliefs. 
Never offend your customer or commit a faux-pas that could have been avoided by doing a little research
Customer's industry
How is your customer viewed within it's industry? Is it a leader or laggard? top performer or underachiever? 
Customer's Drivers
Market factors and pressures that could compel your customer to take action. 
Customer's Value Props
What does your customer do to create value for their customers and to co-create value with their customers?
What types of solutions does your customer bring to market and how do they bring their solutions to market for their own customers
Look for success stories to create powerful conversations
Customer's customers
Who are your customer's most significant customers? 
Customer's partners 
Who does your customer partner with to create mutual market value?
Customer's competitors
Who does your customer compete with?
Customer's Buying and Decision Process
How does your customer typically make purchases?
Do they make decisions by committee? Must know this before hand
Who are the key people within your customer's organization?
Your customer's history with you

Acquiring and Capturing Customer Knowledge
CRMs
Team members working with same company in the past
Customer loyalty surveys
Internet
Social Media
Market Research
Your customer
At the end of your research you should be able to answer
What's going on in your customer's business?
How is your customer perceived within their industry
Do you understand your customer's value proposition
Which organizations does your customer consider to be significant to their business
Have you identified key people within your customer's organization
Have you reviewed your organization's history with your customer

Explore the Possibilities: Giving Your customer a Reason to Engage

Initiating a dialogue to find out what your customer cares about and identifying areas of potential interest.

You must be able to connect your offering to the business issues of your client and sell the value of your offering

Time is precious. You've got to engage them effectively so they will feel that's worth it to engage with you.

You Must
Facilitate a collaborative discussion with your customer. 
Share best practices with your customer. 
Share ideas, knowledge, and best practices with them
Target areas for innovation and co-innovation with your customer
Share new ideas to innovate

Evaluate your Exploration
Is the timing right for your customer to explore possibilities with you?
Have you given your customers reasons to engage and explore possibilities with you?
Do you understand what success looks like to your customer? 
Can you describe it? 
Have they had success before? What was it?
Have they had success with competitors, or complementors?
Do you understand what your customer cares about most?
Personal drivers?
Personal objectives
Do you have access to resources that will enable you to effectively explore possibilities with your customer
Are you willing to invest your assets to explore possibilities with your customer

Vision the Success: Visualizing Future Potential Value with Your Customer

To build a vision of success with your customer is to provide them with something of great value, especially if this vision enables them to focus more clearly on images of future potential value they haven't previously envisioned

Help your customers envision
Accelerating growth
Reducing costs
Driving innovation
Gaining competitive advantage
Creating value for your customer's customer
Growing a loyal customer base

I'd  like to better understand what's going to be important to you over the next 6,12, 24 months so I can plan to allocate my time and resources accordingly

Make sure
You make it extremely easy to do business with you
You resolve problems and conflicts as they arise
You understand the customers business and industry
You listen to customers needs before talking about your offering
You consult with customer with an intent to solve their business problem
You dedicate the resources that will enable your customer to work effectively together
You provide preffered pricing and contract terms
You align your team memebers with your customers 
you approach customers business strategically and not just transationally when buying
You plan the future together with customer even when customer is not buying
Develop relationships between executives 
Help understand the specific value of offerings
Help asses performance with mutually acceptable metrics
Share best practices and industry knowledge that will add value to customers business
You provide a single point of contact to customer for strategy and decision-making
You provide an internal advocate that will be focused on customers specific needs

Answer these questions
Based on what you learned from your visioning exercise, is your customer's future success likely to ultimately connect with revenue growth or cost reduction? 
Is your customer's future success likely to result from driving more innovation from within their business
Will you and organization be able to help your customer develop and sustain competitive advantage
Will you and your organization be able to help your customer create or co-create value with their customers
What are your top four categories of customer defined value?
Are you able to prioritize your top four categories of customer-defined value

Elevate the Conversation: Defining and Pursuing Customer Value Targets

Ways to elevate the conversation [Objectives]
To grow and develop organization
Keep up with new business environment
Evolve from an emphasis on products to a greater focus on customers
To be perceived differently within industry. Change way we do business
External drivers and market pressures are forcing organization to take action
Strengthen value proposition for each market served
Get more value from suppliers we do business with
Create more value for the organizations that compose that network
Figure out ways to be more competitive against another organization
Engage suppliers that adapt how they do business to our buying process
Need to train and develop our people efficiently and effectively as possible

Be able to answer these questions
Is it clear that your customer value target is focused on your customer's objectives and not yours?
How would you describe the level of collaboration in which you and your customer have engaged during the development of your customer value target
When you developed the first component of your customer value target, how did you leverage the possibilities that you explored with your customer
When you developed the second component of your customer value target how did you leverage the future potential that you visioned with your customer
When you developed the third component of your customer value target, how did you validate the importance of this value target with your customer
When you reflect on the development of your customer value target, how did your research, exploration and visioning impact your result?

Win: Driving Success During the Sale

Discover the Drivers: Understanding What's at Stake for Your Customers

Must be able to
Establish credibility and build a trust-based relationship
Propose a solution that fits
Prove that you can deliver value
Gain the competitive advantage

Actionable Awareness levels
Data
Information
Insight
Actionable Awareness

You must rise about the plethora of data and information so that they acquire the awareness that leads to the actions that result in customer value creation

When your goal is actionable awareness, you should first seek to understand what your customer cares about. Practical, real-world experience has taught us that these topics typically fall into the four general categories
External Drivers. What factors outside of your customer’s control are impacting their business and putting pressure on them to take action?
Competition
Customers
Government
Economy
Regulation
Technology
Shareholders
Business Objectives. What is your customer doing to address their external drivers?
Revenue
Cost
Risk Reduction
Internal Challenges. What can prevent your customer from meeting their business objectives?
Success Criteria. What will cause your customer to be successful? When was the last time you asked a customer point-blank what success looks like for them as an individual?

You know if your discovery has been effective if
You identified your customer's external drivers and pressures
You identified your customers business objectives and plans to address their drivers and pressures
You've identified your customer's internal challenges and obstacles
You identified your customer's decision criteria, decision process, and key members of their decision team
You identified the obstacles and risks associated with proceeding or not proceeding with this opportunity
You have confirmed that your customer has executive level commitment to this opportunity

Align the Teams: Developing Customer Sponsors and Supporters

Read when I get closer to becoming an Account Executive

Position the Fit: Competing for Customer Mindshare

We define positioning as developing or building customer mindshare by creating a positive perception of your solutions, advantages, and business value. It’s ensuring that your customer understands how your product or service is the best solution for their needs and offers the most value for their organization. It’s all about the fit.

It’s incumbent on you as a salesperson or account manager to develop positive mindshare with your customer, and to do it early. Take charge of creating a positive perception—don’t let another supplier take control, don’t rely on market forces, and certainly don’t allow customers to (mis)understand your company through hearsay or innuendo. Your goal is to articulate clearly who you are and how you solve problems, bring advantages, and deliver unique value to your customer.

What does success look like to your customer? There is no better way to understand than to ask.

You earn the right to position through discovery. You achieve that understanding by asking value-focused questions, which provide insights into your customer’s external drivers, business objectives, internal challenges, and success criteria.

Asking generic questions such as, “What keeps you up at night?” or making requests like, “Tell me about your business,” demonstrates that you have not gone the distance in your discovery and alignment. These types of queries and requests have little or no place in the contemporary selling environment. They expose you as a vendor. They reveal that you have not earned the right to position. They cause you to sound like everyone else. They demonstrate that you have not established trust and credibility.

You need to develop sponsors and supporters at all levels of your customer’s organization and, just as importantly, you don’t want enemies or antagonists at any level.

You must position differently depending on the level of the person you engage with, because someone at the senior executive level has different wants and needs than the middle manager or an individual contributor (see Figure 6-1). Through effective discovery and alignment, you build the foundation for successful positioning.

Early-Stage Versus Later-Stage Positioning. Your customer’s readiness to receive certain types of information depends on where they are in their buying process. If you try to position specifics, such as detailed wants and needs, before your customer is ready and willing to listen and hear what you have to say, then your positioning falls on deaf ears and you fail to acquire mindshare.

Early-stage positioning tends to occur at a very high level. You are not going to walk into a room with the customer’s team members early in the opportunity and get specific about things that they may not yet be ready to talk to you about. Early stage positioning is more general. You’re trying to build credibility. You can offer help, but keep it less prescriptive. You won’t necessarily connect to the specific wants and needs of the customer’s team members with early positioning, but it could be a good time to discuss evolving market trends or what you’ve done for others in their industry. Later-stage positioning is more focused and much more directed to the level of each individual. Is she a senior executive? Is he the manager of a business unit? An individual contributor or SME? As your customer moves through their buying process and you become more aligned with them, you can leverage your credibility to build trust-based relationships and connect with their specific wants and needs, especially as they relate to the individual. This is where you selectively position your strengths and, in the process of doing so, help the customer’s team members understand how you and your organization can help them meet their objectives. Early-stage positioning basically sets the table for later-stage positioning, and it’s based on your effective discovery and alignment.

6 Parts of your offering to position
Products 
Resources 
Expertise
Services
Customer Experience
Brand and Reputation

“If we get alignment and positioning right, we’ll win every opportunity.”

Measuring Positioning
Does your customer perceive that your solution provides a strong fit for their needs and requirements
Do you have, or can you develop, competitive advantage within this opportunity
Does your customer have a vision of a solution and does that vision include you?
Do you have resources available that will enable you and your org to meet your customer's requirements and exceed their expectations
Have you developed an effective proposal that will solve your customer's business problems and deliver real value?
Does your customer recognize your solution and business value beyond product features and pricing?

Differentiate the Value: Creating a Customer Preference

Section is redundant to previous. Skipped

Grow: Driving Success After the Sale

Realize the Value: Meeting and Exceeding Customer Expectations

Validate the Impact: Measuring Success with Your Customer

Adapt the Approach: Applying Lessons Learned with Your Customer

Expand the Relationship: Leveraging Your Past Proven Value

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Beyond the Sales Process

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