With the Holidays inching around the corner, we’ve all got gift giving on our minds. For that executive in your life that has his fair share of ties and coffee mugs, I suggest you get them some new reading material. Here are three books I would suggest…
When hiring members of a top account development team, some qualities that team members should have may be a little counter intuitive. You may focus on a well-written resume, work experience, and references. Or you could focus in on the way they present themselves and how eloquently they speak. But let me intrigue you for a moment about some characteristics that you should be looking for in potential hires.
I’d like to intrigue you today with considering a more effective way to growing your firm and so I’d like to compare and contrast two different methodologies that I see most often employed, particularly when you look at firms offering services or products that are complex in nature to implement. That’s traditional selling, which is really focused on closing, versus connection, which is really focused on account building. A seed I want to plant with you is that at the end of the connections process, your client is actually coaching you and guiding you into the implementation of using your product or using your service.
An energy performance contractor adopted and utilized WOA’s capture plan model to facilitate internal collaboration across company divisions and to form alliances with other firms with similar client business interests. The specific case involved game changing opportunities fostered by the merger of two large school systems in the southeast.
I often speak in metaphors with my clients. We discuss heavy things, and these abstract ways of thinking, leading a team, and reaching business goals are better understood when linking a process to an inanimate object or a relatable life occurrence.
By nature, humans in organizations set a silo structure. They’ve been doing this since the beginning of time: setting up smaller groups within a larger group, in hopes that closer, more specialized management of duties will be more effective in the long run.
A nice looking man walks into a bar. He approaches a stunning woman and asks, “Do you want to dance?”
She declines. He sees another pretty woman, walks up to her, and asks, “Do you want to dance?” Again, no such luck. Not one to allow his spirits to get down, the man continues to the next woman, and the next, and the next.
“Do you want to dance?”
“Do you want to dance?”
“Do YOU want to dance?”
I recently read an article in Golf Digest (yes, I’m showing my hair color) in which professional golfer, Jason Day, stated this simple fact: Swinging [the club] harder is not the best way to drive [the ball] farther.
Sounds counter intuitive, doesn’t it? Well, the keys to hitting a golf ball father and the keys to effective account development have more in common than you would think. Because just simply getting out in front of more prospective clients (swinging the club harder) is not the best way to generate profitable revenue (drive the ball farther).
Many businesses have adopted a strategy for better customer relationships. It’s simple: they gather information about current and potential customers, input the data in software systems, create algorithms, and those algorithms make up readable information that leaders can use to influence future business decisions. The tough choices managers have been making all of these years are boiled down to information that a computer spits out. So easy a caveman could do it, right?
Have you ever felt like you were incredibly stuck when it comes to funding capital projects? In the past, you relied on a combination of tax revenue and lobbyist relationships. You polished your presentation skills and created dazzling proposals. While these methods used to work, they now lead to a lot of dead ends. Today, as states face shrinking tax revenue, and fewer government-funded programs are available, the game-changing key to capital budget success leverages venture capitalist thinking called “Stewardship to Equity.”
