and faster players and swam them even more…that’s right, nobody was going to beat us down the pool. And, we continued losing.
After a couple of seasons, we headed to Southern California, the Mecca of water polo, seeking to prove we could hold our own against the best of the best. We played top-ranked Pepperdine and lost 14-1. In fact, we lost every one of the seven games we played on that humbling road trip. It was obvious we just weren’t improving or even close to being competitive at a national level. I finally realized I just did not have the right formula for success. For us to be great, I needed a completely new approach.
I decided to become a better student of the game to see if there were important elements or attributes of winning water polo our team was missing or didn’t understand. In my study, I learned that size and speed were not nearly as important as conventional wisdom dictated. Instead, other aspects of the game had larger impacts on the final score, including field position, minimizing your turnovers and capitalizing on those of your opponents, and understanding how to adjust your play to the refereeing. With this insight, I developed a new game plan and playbook, and enlisted experts in the sport, including the icon of U.S. water polo, five-time Olympic coach Monte Nitzkowski, to review and critique it.
After a few years of developing the team under the new strategy, we qualified for our first Collegiate National Championship tournament in 1994, and for three more over the next four years. In each tournament, we arrived with a group of players whose combined water polo experience was significantly dwarfed by each of our potential opponents, including long-time powerhouses Michigan, Florida, Texas, Michigan State, UC—Riverside, Arizona, Cal Poly, and the US Military Academy at West Point. On paper, we were clearly out-matched in terms of size, speed, and experience, but with preparation and a solid playbook, over the last five years of coaching, the Dayton team posted an enviable record of 112-6 and clinched the National Championship Title in 1995, the University of Dayton’s first national sports title in 15 years. Having the right game plan and playbook clearly delivered sustainable, predictable, and successful results.
Over the past 25 years of working with business-to-business (B2B) companies, I have often felt like I was reliving my unsuccessful early days as a water polo coach. As the always quotable Yogi Berra said, it was “déjà vu all over again.” The B2B company leaders, like the Dayton players and coaching staff, were smart, committed, passionate, and knowledgeable about their respective industries, but they often lacked insight into the true key fundamentals of the game they were playing.
Instead, they have developed their strategies based on conventional wisdom about business success that is often not applicable to B2B companies. I have seen this approach yield unpredictable and typically disappointing results. The 24-3 loss to Kentucky still stuck in my mind is their failed product launch, botched marketing campaign, misguided acquisition, or other equally ineffective strategy or tactic.
B2B leaders need the same thing I needed as a head coach at Dayton. They need a fresh look at the fundamentals of the game and a new playbook. I wrote this book to provide both. With the invaluable assistance and insight of my colleagues at the Geehan Group, along with a select group of our firm’s clients and other market-leading B2B firms, I developed the The B2B Executive Playbook specifically to help B2B leaders, whether they are responsible for an entire company, a business unit, or a function, such as finance, sales, R&D, marketing, strategy, or customer service.
Why Just B2B?
Two of the best, most influential, and closely studied business books written are Jim Collins’s Good to Great and David Thomson’s Blueprint to a Billion. Both offer extremely valuable insight into how companies become wildly successful. Nonetheless, these and many other good business books don’t distinguish between B2C (business-to-consumer) and B2B companies. In fact, of the 11 companies profiled in Good to Great, only one is a pure B2B company. Granted, some business issues can be similarly addressed in both types of companies. (Every leader should read Good to Great on “getting the right people on the bus” and Blueprint for advice on management-team structure). But in other critical areas, B2C and B2B companies require vastly different approaches, and these areas are major factors in B2B success on which I will focus.
In the pages ahead, you won’t read about the strategies of Apple Computer or Coca-Cola or Starbucks or Disney. I know these are the companies everyone points to when they talk about business success, but they operate in the B2C realm of retailers, such as Lowe’s, Kroger, and McDonalds, and consumer-package-goods manufacturers, such as PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, and Kellogg. This world is not the same as the B2B world. Although their examples can be useful in some ways, too often what makes these B2C companies soar will stall or even stop B2B companies.
Take marketing, for example. Marketing is very different in the B2B and B2C sectors. Unlike B2C companies, B2B companies don’t win customers with a Super Bowl ad, or a big following on Twitter, or a guest spot on Oprah. Nor will a celebrity spokesperson like Brett Favre, Snoop Dogg, or that cute little green gecko drive B2B success. Unfortunately, however, a significant number of well-meaning B2B executives try to apply B2C marketing strategies such as these in their companies, often with poor, and sometimes even disastrous, results.
Are You Using the Wrong Playbook?
The symptoms or pains felt by a B2B company following the wrong playbook are not new or necessarily unique. In fact, many are the same age-old business problems felt by many types of organizations. They just might be feeling new or heightened in your company due to lightning-fast changes in technology, shifts in global forces, the emergence of radically transformational business models, or other industry disruptions. These and other realities of the business environment have simply raised the risk of using the wrong playbook and are accelerating the need for adaptive change. B2B leaders know very well there is less room for error than ever before.
To know if you and your company might be using the wrong playbook, ask if:
Your company has lost or is at risk of losing its top customers
Margins are threatened or eroding
New products are falling short of their revenue, margin, or market-share targets
The relationships with the real decision makers at your most important customers are poorly developed
Your strategic planning process is unproductive or frustrating
Branding and marketing initiatives have fallen flat
Your senior executive team disagrees on how to move the company forward
Your organization confuses activities with results
These are just some of the problems that frustrate and confound many executives in B2B companies. But I’ve often found they aren’t the real issues; they are merely symptoms of a deeper problem which is the widespread misconception that all business pains can be successfully resolved with generic business cures. As a result, B2B executives take the lessons they learn from the B2C world, whether from experience or education, and attempt to apply them to their B2B company. As most discover, this approach simply fails.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that success in the B2B arena is not an overly complex undertaking. And, in almost every instance, the playbook of proven B2B strategies costs less to develop and execute than you might think—and will generate significant and measurable returns. That’s the promise I’m making in this book: You can yield market-leading results while simplifying your tactics, reducing the number and cost of activities, leveraging your time and resources, and achieving greater clarity and focus.
B2B’s Ultimate Weapon
The core
