Several years ago I received an urgent call from one of my top performing sales executives regarding one of our long time "Fortune 500" customers. Our champion at the account had just accepted a new position at another company. The problem was that the department that our champion managed, which represented the lion's share of work for that company, had been merged with another department - managed by what my sales executive described as an adversary. As CEO, I received a couple of these calls a year. "Would I call the Vice President of Manufacturing and talk to him?" The hope of the sales executives was that I would sprinkle pixie dust on the account and everything would be better. As you know, it just doesn't work that way and we eventually lost the account. These situations frustrated me the most because we had plenty of opportunities to secure our position with the customer but we failed to act.

We had failed in a couple of important aspects.

First, we hadn't utilized our relationship with the champion to gain access to higher levels in the organization, meaning that we relied on that person for all the planning and budgeting of the work we were to perform. While our champion was in power, we received 100% of the work from that department. The account was predictable and our work for them was first class. One could see that there was a lack of incentive to spend more time on developing the account.

In hindsight, we should have used our relationship with the Champion to meet and understand the business issues driving the company's higher levels of management. After each conversation we should have sent a follow up letter summarizing our key points. Using the letter as script it would be easy for me to have a focused and valuable conversation with that VP or manufacturing; something we could have easily done on the phone. More often than not, those conversations have led to other introductions including with other CEO's. Now, when that call from the sales executive came in I would have a prior contact with the executives based on business issues that we have discussed. Then, making the call to ask how we could help in the transition of the work between the departments would be far more effective.

The other thing we failed to do is to understand why we had an adversary in the other department. People buy from people who empower them. As I later learned there was an incident that predated both the sales executive and me that left a negative impression on the other department managers. What's worse is that we never spent the time to uncover this, attempt to resolve outstanding issues and seek an opportunity to diagnose other business issues that we could address. If there is an adversary in the account, even if they are not in the direct line of your relationship with the company, I believe it is critically important to try to convert or neutralize these situations. One of the best ways to do this is to meet and to include other supporters in the meeting, especially a higher level executive. This helps keep the meeting focused on business issues versus emotion and helps ensure that the contents of the meeting are not misrepresented later.

There are three additional reasons for networking within your accounts:

1. The more need you uncover, the better you chances of success.
Everyone may not have the identical goal or benefit in mind in implementing your product or service. The needs and wants of the constituents within an account will vary as widely as the people. By helping companies implement sales methodologies you may find that the benefit to the CFO is more accurate forecasting while the benefit to the Sales VP may be shortening ramp up times for new hires and to increasing top line revenue. Only by diagnosing the specific needs for each participant can you uncover their primary goal. After each conversation we recommend that a follow up letter be sent summarizing that discussion. This provides you a means of confirming that your understanding is accurate and it provides the buyer a well-organized summary of the conversation. The more people feel part of the evaluation process and the more people who are part of the process, the more likely your capabilities will be a match for their needs. Documenting conversations also provides some continuity if the contact is transferred to another department or leaves the company.

Continued on Page 2