Winning Major Accounts: When you Lose the Trail
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.
1. Go to the heads of each division or line of business in the corporation. Each executive may have P&L (Profit & Loss) responsibilities and therefore can operate quite independantly one from the other.
Remember the fable of the blind people and the elephant? Each person describes the elephant differently because each one is touching a different part of the elephant. A corporation, like an elephant, has many parts.
2. Multiple points of entry improve your odds of success. Taking the time to have exploratory conversations with EACH stakeholder in the decision to retain your firm improves your ability to understand the view of the elephant from their vantage point(s). Each stakeholder will buy a different benefit from you.
3. The average tenure of a senior executive in a given role is about 2 years. If you keep your binoculars trained on the behaviour of the herd during that time, when a new leader comes aboard, patience and dilligence is often rewarded.
Have you tried this? Let us know.
