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Setting SMART customer relationship goals
Jonathan Farrington over at the "Sales and Sales Management" blog writes about the importance of having relationship objectives for large accounts:
"Everyone in the account team needs to know what we want the relationship to feel like."
Accounts, both large and small are all about relationships. Before relationships can be built and sustained, it is important to have clear and well defined relationship goals. These goals need to be SMART - Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Result oriented and Timely and most importantly, they need to be consistent with your larger account plan.
Figure out where the money is headed: You will have a much easier time selling if you know where the money is headed - even if you are a super confident, super smart, gunslinger salesman. So, talk to your coaches and figure out where the spending is headed- which lines of business (of the client), what buying centers, which technologies and whether the spending is discretionary or non-discretionary. Knowing these details is the first step towards "SMARTNESS". It is the foundation needed to make your relationship plan Specific (Which clients to target), Measurable (How to tangibly measure relationship success), Actionable (Having an operational plan to 'actionize'), Result oriented (Ensuring relationship goals translate into revenue), Timely (Your targets are time bound, can your relationship plan be otherwise?).
Map out your relationship value chain: Now that you are done playing Sherlock Holmes, it's time to dive deeper. Knowing where the money is headed allows you to break down your overall revenue target into more detailed sub-account level numbers. It also lets you know how much can possibly be "mined" from existing buying centers and how much needs to be "hunted" from new areas.
A single line of business might have multiple, distinct buying centers. This distinction is important as your relationship plan for a given line of business needs to align with these specific and distinct buying centers. The way the IT division that servers the treasury department of a bank ("Treasury" line of business for you) buys a consulting project might be completely different from the way it buys production support. You need to map out the relationship value chain for each buying centre that you need to engage with. By "relationship value chain" I mean mapping out the user buyer, the economic buyer, the technical buyer, influencers and gatekeepers. You can have the same person on the client side playing multiple roles, but knowing who is wearing which hat is critical. A very basic relationship value chain could look like this: Economic buyers Technical buyers User Buyers Influencers Gatekeepers LOB -1 Consulting <<Customer names>> Application Development Application Support
Very good. You now know your financial goals, have mapped these goals into the client's context and have laid out your relationship value chain for each buying centre. It's now time to see where you want to go versus where you currently are.
Relationship gap analysis: 'Customer relationships' are sometimes thought of as just a measure of how friendly or open the customer is with you. I mean you as an individual. While the "feel" part is important, in my view, relationships go much beyond just the way it feels. The "feel" part draws heavily on you, the individual, but remember that the customer is having a relationship with your company and you are merely a conduit. Hence, it is important to view relationships more holistically. The current state of the relationship with a given customer can be judged by what she:
a). Says about your company
b). Feels about your company
c). Thinks about your company
These factors ultimately decide what the customer is willing to do for you!
You might have never done business with a certain customer, but rest assured that she will have something to say, think and feel about you. Maybe she thinks you are a horrible company because her best friend at her previous job had a bad experience with you. It is your job to change that perception!
For each buying center, map out where the stakeholders in the relationship value chain are and where you need them to be. Are they saying the 'right' things about you? Keep in mind the importance of which service line you are trying to sell and what kind of perceptions would help you sell this. If you are selling consulting, obviously, you would like people to think of your company as a thought leader rather than an executor. In fact, having an "great executor" image could hurt here.
Operational Plan: Once you have figured out the relationship gaps, it is important to work towards rectifying the same. It's helps to have specific actions to be taken at 30 day, 60 day and 90 day intervals that would move you closer to your relationship goals. If you need to change what a certain customer thinks about you from "Great executor" to "Thought leader" each action in your plan needs to hit this theme consistently and you need to add value constantly. This could be something like getting the customer to attend a seminar hosted by your company, or getting your consulting team to do a free two hour session on Industry best practices. The operational plan ensures your goals are Measurable, Actionable, Result oriented and Timely. Any operational plan to fill relationship gaps can succeed as long as there is a focus on giving value to the customer at all times.
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