Relationship building is a discipline, not a seat-of-your-pants exercise
I worked with a company before the pandemic that had one of those old-school sales executives. He closed most of his deals on the golf course or in a nice restaurant. He remembered everyone’s birthday, including the names of spouses and kids. He was a legend within the company and spun stories that younger salespeople listened to with rapt attention.
Most of his sales (or renewals) involved chest-pounding about how great the company was with little time spent understanding the customer’s current problems.
He resisted our efforts to inject discipline into the sales and renewal process. He preferred to do things on the fly and rely on his decades of experience.
I wonder how he’s doing today without that discipline and, perhaps even more important, how his less experienced disciples are doing post-pandemic, when more interactions are over Zoom or email.
How many of you have a hot prospect who would be the difference between a great quarter and some sleepless nights? Or perhaps you have a long-time client whom you’ve historically wined and dined, but now you’re dealing with them primarily by Zoom and as the contract approaches its expiration date, they’re just not quite as responsive and you’re wondering if maybe someone else is in the picture.
It’s time to get organized. Over the next five posts, we’re going to talk about creating a relationship planner that will help you close the deal. Some parts may not apply to your particular prospect or current client, but many will enable you to create a structure that will enable you to explain your strategy to your manager – or see whether your account executive has things as well in hand as he or she claims.
Not Everyone Will Embrace This Process
It requires buy-in from senior executives and regular conversations about how everyone is approaching the planning. Your account executives and salespeople may either be set in their ways or they may be inexperienced and need help the first few times to get the answers “right.”
The biggest challenge can be teaching everyone to ask the right questions the right way. Avoid yes or no questions and ask open-ended questions; hypothesize (if we could do X for you, what could you do?); answer questions with questions (irritating if not done right); and ask them to tell you more).
Let’s start with the program structure.
What do you know about your primary contact? What roles does he or she have within the organization? What do you know about his or her professional career? What do you know about his or her personal interests or hobbies or family?
Do you have a meeting routine? Would it help to have one or do you need to change the frequency? Who should participate?
What do they need from you and/or your company to accept the offer?
Who is the decision maker? What do you know about that person?
Who are the influencers? Are they happy with the program? What’s happened in the past?
What is the decision-making process? Are they fast or slow? What do they need to make a decision? How long does it normally take?
In the case of this deal, is the deadline self-imposed or are there real deadlines? For example, are you trying to get the deal done three months early because you have three more to get through in the next six months.
Outline the program as it stands today (if there is one). If there’s an RFP, see whether there are guidelines there.
Explain how the program works (e.g., costs, impact on customers, list sources)
What are the current (or proposed) contract terms, deliverables, and timelines?
What are the marketing channels for the product? Do we have influence over them?
How many of our people interact with their people? Are the roles clearly defined? Do they seem to like working with anyone in particular? Do we?
Which areas/people get copied on e-mails?
How often does the partner communicate with its members/users of this product? What channels do they use (e.g., statement inserts, newsletters, statement messages)?
What relationships do we need to create/build? Why those people?
Do we have an escalation process for complaints, concerns, or questions? Consider this question going in both directions.
I work with companies and salespeople to create Relationship Planners in either 1:1 or group settings. Here’s a link to a streamlined Relationship Planner that you can download from my Resources page (without providing your email address unless you want to) and use on your own. But there’s a more detailed planning process that we can do as a webinar, workshop, or in-person consulting.
What other questions would you want to know as either a sales executive or account executive? Please add them to the Comments.
Next time, we’ll talk about the partner organization.
