Making contact for the first time with a major account can seem like getting inside a herd. Or a pack. Or a tribe. Every herd protects itself from intruders. Much ink has been spilled about getting around gatekeepers. (more…)
Major Accounts: Hunting the Alpha Animal
Written By: Catherine McQuaid
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Jan•
04•12
Reaching senior executives in major accounts takes the skills of a seasoned tracker. The Alpha animal’s job is to keep out intruders.
Although they seldom make decisions on their own, if what you are offering helps them keep shareholders or customers happy, senior executives will refer you to their direct report(s) who are responsible for finding solutions.
Being referred to a member of their team is exactly where you want to be. You now have permission and a warm entree to the herd. You have not been given the brushoff.
Have you found this to be true?
A referral means the executive has given his team the green light to start investigation, but you will still need to pass scrutiny with user groups, distributors and internal specialists.
They are all stakeholders in the decision to hire you. Their careers and their bonuses may be riding on how well your firm delivers.
No wonder the Alpha animal has to keep out intruders.
Selling to Big Companies 416 923 0877 catherine@HuntNewBiz .com
Major Accounts: Business Intelligence in the Jungle
Written By: Catherine McQuaid
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Jan•
03•12
Tracking lions, gazelles and zebras in the jungle is a metaphor for gathering business intelligence about stakeholders inside a company.
Lions, who rely on hunting for sustenance, must be strategic. They must know where the herds are and coordinate their tactics with other lions to reap the greatest benefit to the entire pride.
Gazelles, on the other hand, are fully aware of their potential position as “lunch”. They must be ready to react immediately to threats and changes in the environment. They are constantly evaluating current conditions to determine their relative safety or peril.
Which brings us to zebras. Just like gazelles, you say? Well, yes, to a certain extent. The difference is in the way zebras react to threats and challenges.
The zebras’ first line of defense is the herd. Banding together as a whole, keeping weaker members within the protective circle, affords the zebras greater protection than each could provide alone.
Selling Professional Services 416 923 0877 catherine@HuntNewBiz.com
Tracking Major Accounts: How Long is Too Long?
Written By: Catherine McQuaid
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Jan•
03•12
Winning a major account is not for the faint of heart.
Four years ago, on a client assignment, I initated contact with a senior executive of a firm ranked in the top 10 of their industry..
When this leader took a position in another company, I was back in touch. Still no business was won.
Shouldn’t I have stopped tracking and gone on to greener pastures?
This leader now heads up the #6-ranked firm in the industry. Will this leader remember something about my client from previous contact?
Probably not. She is more likely ro refer me to one of her direct reports.
A referral will mean a triple win:
1. By referring us to someone on her team, she signals that the business problem our client addresses is a concern. (If it weren’t she would have declined)
2. Since it has come from their boss, the referral will almost certainly look closely at my client’s solution.
3. A merger has taken place, so the referral will most likely put together a new team. From here on, we are inside and will meet members of the herd through referrals.
Most trackers give up too early.
Winning with Big Companies 416 923 0877 catherine@HuntNewBiz.com
Key Account Acquisition: Tracking the Big One
Written By: Catherine McQuaid
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Oct•
19•11
Business services firms, which are frequently project-based, can stabilize revenues by becoming a preferred vendor to key accounts.
More and more business is conducted virtually rather than by face-to-face meetings, so major accounts can be supported by smaller businesses.
Smaller businesses are vulnerable if they cannot provide coast-to-coast support when the project is running. Being able to respond quickly, right across the nation is a great asset, so demonstrating that you use alternative ways to reach nation-wide can set the stage favorably from the first contact.
This is why we suggest doing all early contact with major accounts by phone rather than face-to-face. In addition, it is easier to schedule 45 minutes over the phone with a national team rather than waiting to get everyone into the same room.
Concepts like virtual delivery (you don’t have to be in your clients’ place of business to deliver your goods or services) are liberating small businesses from home-town thinking.
Smaller businesses cannot afford long sales cycles or expensive client acquisition processes.
Anyone starting a business today can play in the global marketplace. This is a long way from a storefront business model where geography limits the ultimate size of your business.
Key Accounts: Where Should You Hunt?
Written By: Catherine McQuaid
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Oct•
04•11
Since you are a specialized business services firm, becoming a preferred provider to a few key accounts may make the difference between a stable income and “drought” periods. Before you pull on your jodpurs, you’ll probably need to know:
Are you hunting water or tree-dwellers?
Where do they prefer to eat?
Do they travel in herds or are they loners?
Knowing the habitat and habits of the entity you are tracking means you have a greater chance of not scaring them away before they spend a little time to check you out.
Before deciding which kind of entity would best suit your business, look for clues in your successes… (and failures) in the past.
In what industry or sector(s) can you demonstrate competence?
Is the business problem you solved unique to that industry?
Can you demonstrate relevance to other sectors or industries?
If not, should you pursue work in the sector you’ve had success with before going to other sectors?
How might you demonstrate relevant credibility to other sectors without becoming a generic offering?
If your only credibility story is in a cyclical industry and that industry is in the trough of its cycle, they simply may not have the means to purchase at this time. You’re best to find new territory to hunt.
Watching the Herd: Tracking a Major Account
Written By: Catherine McQuaid
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Aug•
04•11
Winning a new key account takes more than sales skills. In fact, taking a sales approach, which expects a yes/no outcome from every contact can hurt you if you’re going after major accounts.
When pursuing a key account, much more time is spent with influencers, ie. those who may have an indirect interest in your services.
I call these types of conversations “discovery” conversations because you don’t spend your time “telling” or “selling”.
Strategic questions sound like this:
“The last quarterly report said…about shareholder value…how is this impacting your business unit?”
“I’m guessing from the CEO’s comments…your unit’s mandate for next quarter is….?”
“Knowing that the…market segment is underperforming, are resources being re-allocated?”
Tactical questions sound like this:
“Who makes the decision?”
“How much do you spend on…?”
Tactical questions will often mean being sent to the operating part of the business.
This is where Request for Proposals, annual budgets and purchasing departments happen. In my opinion, this is the hardest way for a new supplier to get a foothold.
Becoming a preferred vendor company-wide requires access to and influence with EVERYONE who would be impacted if your firm were to be hired. I have learned the hard way that there is never just one right person to talk to.
Influencers, champions, implementers and user groups have different needs. Each group will want different things from you and will see the value of what your firm offers quite differently, one from the other.
Being able to tell your story differently for each stakeholder is a skill Big Game Hunters must develop.
No More One-off Assignments
Written By: Catherine McQuaid
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Oct•
06•11
If you are a business services firm and you want off the feast-or-famine treadmill, winning preferred vendor status with big companies is the best way out of one-time assignments.
This will require access to stakeholders across all lines of business . In other words, major accounts need all stakeholders around the decision to hire your firm to be aligned. Trusting your “champion” inside the firm to sell your story is too risky.
Third-party stakeholders such as user groups and subject matter experts have more influence than the executive signing the cheque.
Here is how we pursue major accounts: we start with the senior executive and, trickling down the organization by means of referrals, each conversation is therefore permission-based.
Isn’t there just one cheque-signer?
We shorten development time by negotiating a preferred vendor agreement at the same time as the first project contract is being signed.
Once the first assignment is secured and a company-wide vendor agreement is in place, an investment in multiple points of entry begins to pay off. Smaller companies cannot afford long sales cycles.
Once your firm has been awarded an assignment by one business unit, you can go back and brag about it to the others who may be taking a “wait and see” attitude.
Moving from One Herd to Another
Written By: Catherine McQuaid
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Oct•
06•11
If you want to be a Big Game Hunter, you need to know where big companies prefer to hunt, what they eat and who their predators are.
If your client roster is limited to one industry and you wish to win business in another sector, how do you make the business problems you have solved relevant to that industry you want to enter?
Often an industry perceives its challenges as unique to their particular circumstances. You may see your relevance more broadly. However, relevance, like beauty, may be in the eye of the beholder.
For example, if you have helped with customer retention in consumer finance, you would be able to demonstrate credibility in other industries where equipment leasing, retail lay-away plans or insurance are offered.
I helped migrate the experience a client had in consumer finance to 2 other industries: capital finance and automotive. By connecting the dots about buyer behaviour in credit cards and financial planning, I was able to help win new buiness in 2 adjacent sectors.
Knowing the landscape you are tracking means knowing your prey’s challenges. Read their industry journals. Follow their thought and opinion leaders. Know which conferences they meet and speak at.
A cursory survey of the topics at important conferences and journals can give you clues to the challenges they are facing and how to position your offering in front of those challenges.
Selling your Company? Fatten Your EBITDA
Written By: Catherine McQuaid
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Oct•
11•11
“EBITDA: Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Deductions and Allowances” is why you want to have big companies as clients.
When I was retained by an early-stage services company, they needed stable, predictable revenue. Friends and family had been promised they would have their investment back within 3 years. (more…)
David in the Jungle (without Goliath)
Written By: Catherine McQuaid
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Aug•
12•11
Pursuing a key account, even if you have a great portfolio of clients, can lead to rethinking how you deliver services. If you are a business advisory or professional services chances are you prefer to be on-site.
Might winning a big company as a new client mean you have to deliver services outside of North America? This happened when a Fortune 500-sized company became interested in retaining my client.
The company wanted to retain my client but they felt person-to-person contact would take too long to roll out internationally if on-site service was their only delivery model.
My client agreed to explore an Posted in Jungle Stories, Wooing Big Business...the serial e-book , business services, Fortune 500 | No Comments »
Major Account Acquisition: “Go South Young Man”
Written By: Catherine McQuaid
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Oct•
11•11
A young company wondered if they could leverage their success with an automotive credit company. They had aggressive, double-digit growth plans and a 3-year horizon to selling the company.
I was retained to conduct an outreach campaign to the top 20 banks in the US.
My advice was to follow one herd at a time and to grow from one sector to another.
The challenge was demonstrating relevance to other sectors. Therefore, the strategy was a 3-step migration:
1. Win consumer credit assignments within the banking industry
2. Leverage that success by pursuing asset-backed lending firms
3. Test “stickiness” within credit card operations of big-box retailers
What kind of big game was bagged?
* Projects with 5 of top 20 firms were secured
* Preferred provider agreements are in place with 4
Major Accounts: Jungle Talk
Written By: Catherine McQuaid
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Oct•
12•11
Winning Major Accounts: When you Lose the Trail
Written By: Catherine McQuaid
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Sep•
19•11
This the big day. You have your binoculars trained on the King of the Jungle because you plan to win a major account and get out of the “feast or famine” cycle of project-based assignments.
The assistant picks up the phone for your pre-arranged call and says “our company is not interested at this time”.
This is not the end of the trail. There are 3 ways to pick up the trail again. (more…)
Major Account Myth # 3: Get to the “right” Person
Written By: Catherine McQuaid
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Nov•
08•11
Discussions about how to win major accounts usually involves the “get to the right person” myth.
The bigger the dollar value of the service you offer, the broader the impact of your service and the more stakeholders it affects, the more people will be involved in the decision before you are hired.
As a rule of thumb, you should plan to have discovery conversations with all 3 roles before starting discussions about a specific solution (cheque signer, influencer & implementer).
I’ll give you an example from a specialty business services client:
I had been reaching out to executives in targeted companies for 9 months. All my development metrics were being achieved but no project had been identified.
One of the influencers inside the company asked my client to come to an internal conference.
We thought it was going to be a “beauty pagent” but it turned out that the subject matter experts among the implementation group (who had told us they had “no budget this year”) had been told by the head of the business line, where we had started, that if they could get buy-in from the field, a pilot could be given the green light.
Had we gone away when we were told “there’s no budget”, or stopped asking for meetings with other business lines, we might never have nudged the project into existence.
Because we had covered all the roles in the decision in 6 different lines of business (each having discretionary budgets) and because, as we argued, my client’s solution would have a cumulative effect if implemented enterprise-wide, the contract was awarded.
Major Accounts: What Difference a Word Makes
Written By: Catherine McQuaid
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Sep•
19•11
Major accounts can seem like another species.
I have learned that words are neuropathways to the heart.
Let’s say you’re a service provider to the pharma/biotech industry. Would you talk about “customers” or “KOLs” (Key Opinion Leaders)?
I was having a discovery conversation on behalf of a client. The audience was the training group in a Biotech firm.
They taught me a valuable lesson. If you are not using the language of your audience, the chances of building credibility are lowered.
This is what happened: I asked about their customers. The learning leader, who had started her career as a scientist replied, “I suppose you could call them customers but they’re KOL’s.”
Immediately, I substituted “KOL” for “customer” in all my client’s materials and conversations. We continued to pursue business within the pharma/biotech industry.
Changing our language may be the reason this manufacturer has agreed to consider my client’s solution in 4 of their therapeutic groups.
Profit Magazine
Written By: Catherine McQuaid
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Aug•
13•11
Rick Spence, author of Canadian Entrepreneur and Financial Post columnist, calls Big Game Hunting “Off Target Marketing”
Catherine McQuaid, a Toronto-based business-development consultant has a theory. She calls it “Big-Game Hunters in the Urban Jungle.” I think a better name is “Off-Target Marketing.” Either way, it’s an approach to prospecting that might help you build stronger relationships with hard-to-reach executives.
Warning: Big-game hunting is a complex affair that requires Posted in Press , big companies, major account, new customer acquisition, selling | No Comments »
Teddy Roosevelt & Ernest Hemmingway on Safari
Written By: Catherine McQuaid
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Nov•
09•11
Creating demand for big-ticket business services inside the C-suite requires much more than contact with that executive.
If your service will impact a couple of business units, there may be 25-30 stakeholders who have a point of view about your company. Knowing their interests and needs before proposal time, increases your odds of winning an assignment.
Assignments leading to approved vendor status can have cycle times of +24 months.
This may explain why the cost-of-sales in business services firms is upwards of 40% of revenues.
High lifetime-value clients rather than one-time assignments can challenge even the most optimistic Big Game hunter. However, becoming an approved vendor enterprise-wide means sustainable revenue growth.
In the process of client acquisition, Big Game Hunting delivers 4 transferrable business assets to a company:
1. A systematic business development process; everyone within the company becomes fluent in the system
2. Personalized access to “wish list” companies within an identified industry, including stakeholders surrounding an engagement
3. “Green Light” or referrals from senior leadership to members of their team.
Offering a context for the initial contact, or having an “ice-breaker” can double an executive’s receptivity.
An ice-breaker might be a conference where the executive you want to reach has presented, an article where the individual was quoted or, best of all, an industry award.
4. Exposure within each business unit of “wish list” companies increases the odds of winning an assignment.
Winning a major account can bring to mind images of Teddy Roosevelt or Ernest Hemmingway on safari.
Just a note: they went on safari with trackers and jungle guides to increase their chances of bringing home the trophy.
Bwana on Big Game Hunting
Written By: Catherine McQuaid
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Jan•
13•12
Catherine McQuaid, ”Bwana”
416 923 0877
Her secrets:
Engage “buck-stops-here” executives (C-level)
Get referrals to stakeholders
Go to all business lines at the same time