in the B2B arsenal—is the engagement, collaboration, and advocacy of your customer decision makers. I know you’ve heard this before, but I’m not talking about the end-users of the products and services your company sells, or the buyers in the purchasing department. I’m talking about the handful of executives and influencers within your most valuable customer companies who ultimately determine your success help you achieve sustainable, predictable, profitable growth (SPPG).
If your company is like most B2B companies, it relegates its relationships with these key executive customers to the sales or marketing function. As a result, executive customers either get treated like sales prospects or get bombarded with marketing materials and event invitations they don’t have time to read, let alone act upon. They don’t find value in these interactions—just as you don’t when your customers treat you in this same way. Naturally, they put up barriers to access. So now, in the time-honored tradition of treating symptoms rather than root causes, you can find a growing shelf of sales and marketing books on how to “break into” the C-suites of prospective customer companies.
You don’t need to “break into” the C-suite to reach your executive customers. In fact, the true decision makers will happily come to you…if you make a place for them at the right level of your organization and engage them in strategic discussions which offer their companies real business value. This is exactly what happened for $3.3 billion Noida, India-based HCL. Up to 2008, HCL had no systemic way of interacting with the decision makers from their customers (CIOs). HCL’s Americas President Shami Khorana shares, “This platform has allowed us to have an exchange of ideas with the true decision makers from our major clients to gain ‘collective feedback.’ This has ultimately contributed to our sales growth and the value of the services we provide.” When you engage executives in a relevant way, it not only gives you ongoing access, but they are actually enthusiastic supporters. Khorana added, “These are real executives with both business acumen and extensive domain knowledge. This combination has delivered an incredible level of thought, insight, and guidance.” Since launching their program, HCL hasn’t lost one of their “top 80” clients involved in these programs. These clients collectively represent more than $2 billion of the $3.3 billion in total sales.
So, if and when you do decide to move forward, you will quickly discover that this small group of executive customers has the power to consistently and successfully:
Drive alignment of your leadership team, and ultimately your entire organization with the market by developing a clear and focused strategy.
Leverage the time and effort of your leadership team, as well as company resources.
Deliver sustainable, predictable, profitable growth, which I will demonstrate is the true aim for any company.
I will also show how by rebalancing discretionary investments, your efforts will yield a measurable ROI on B2B specific initiatives. Imagine what that would do for your company—and your career.
I understand that this may sound like hyperbole, but I hope you’ll bear with me and read on. In the pages ahead, you will see how a wide variety of B2B companies have achieved all of these benefits. Their annual revenues range from under $50 million, such as at Intesource, Inc., a boutique provider of cutting-edge procurement services and solutions, to more than $40 billion, such as at Oracle, the broad-based enterprise computing giant. The highlighted companies hail from a wide variety of industries around the globe, including information technology, health care, publishing, broadcasting, banking, legal, and foodservice equipment, among others. Furthermore, their customers include a veritable Who’s Who of global business. I sought permission to include these real-life examples to prove not only are the three benefits attainable, but also that any kind of B2B company can attain them.
Coming Attractions
Before we begin, I’d like to give you an overview of the book’s contents.
Chapter 1: Setting the Stage is a brief introduction to the outcome that all B2B companies should be focused on and striving towards: sustainable, predictable, profitable growth (SPPG). As the acronym SPPG suggests, each of those words is equally important. In fact, if any one of them is missing, B2B success will be fleeting at best. It’s worth noting that SPPG is as important in the B2C sector as in the B2B sector. The difference between the two is how SPPG is achieved.
Chapter 2: A Different Game explores the primary differentiating factors between the B2B and B2C worlds. This chapter explains how three indisputable realities about customers define the B2B world and control the fate of the companies that operate within it.
Chapter 3: Six Benefits, Four Steps explores the core benefits of engaging your company’s executive customers. It also introduces the four steps in The B2B Executive Playbook which can generate SPPG. Each of the steps is detailed in the four chapters that follow.
Chapter 4: Engage describes the first step on the path to SPPG. It explains how to assemble and connect your company with a market collective—that is, a select group of the key executive customers in your market. This chapter discusses how to leverage executive customers to gain a view of their industries and key markets through their eyes, as well as how to work with them to brainstorm and validate new ideas. This level of engagement increases their loyalty to your company, as opposed to the people in your company with whom they usually work.
Chapter 5: Plan describes how the market collective can build consensus among the members of your leadership team and help ensure that your strategy is properly aligned to the needs and direction of the market. It shows how the engagement of executive customers adds direction, clarity, and confidence to the strategic planning process. This chapter also reveals how your leadership team can raise the effectiveness of its M&A deals, boost new product success, rethink business models, and develop more powerful marketing, service, and sales programs.
Chapter 6: Collaborate examines how to use individual executive customer relationships to unleash innovation and build your business. It shows how leading B2B companies are driving innovation by collaborating and co-designing the next generation of offerings with executive customers. Executive customers are the most reliable sources of input throughout all the phases of the development process, including ideation, validation, testing, and adoption. They not only assure the success of new products and services by ensuring they are properly aligned with the market, they are also the best and most enthusiastic customers for these solutions.
Chapter 7: Grow unveils the final step on the path to SPPG. It shows how executive customers can become your best marketers and salespeople. This chapter describes a variety of ways in which they can act as powerful advocates to accelerate your sales cycle, enhance your margins, and build your corporate reputation, brand equity, or reposition your firm.
Chapter 8: Implementing the Playbook and Chapter 9: Avoiding the Four Pitfalls contain hard-won knowledge from the companies who have adopted and implemented executive customer programs. Chapter 8 describes what companies can expect as they implement executive customer programs and the roles that various members of the B2B leadership team should play to ensure success. Chapter 9 describes the most common implementation pitfalls, in the hope that they can be avoided in the future.
Your Success Starts Here
Executive customer programs are powerful strategic tools with applications that range far beyond sales and marketing. When they are sponsored and supported by the entire leadership team, they can transform the performance of B2B companies, enabling them to operate more effectively in the short-term, and more importantly, grow and profit in the long-term. Executive customer programs can drive internal and market alignment, unleash successful innovation, and differentiate you from your competitors. They leverage executive time and resources, allowing company leaders to address strategic issues and avoid getting caught up in company politics, day-to-day
