I am always amazed at the unnecessary amount of time that managers spend fighting friendly fire inside their own companies. There is incalculable energy spent within many organizations by their management team trying to cover their ifs, ands, and butts. Given the incredibly competitive nature of the business environment, one would think that just staying one step ahead of the competition could mean lifetime employment for most of us. But no….
I am on a plane as I type this on my way back from meeting with a client who managed to successfully pull off a major mission impossible initiative. Talk about saved by the bell. It all started 60 days ago when I was called to their offices to discuss why they were having such a problem staying on the good side of one of their strategic accounts. This was the same account that was up for re-compete in the next 60 days. To say that the lead executives were a little concerned about keeping this particular customer would be a gross understatement. This particular account contributed better than 40% of the company’s revenue. The bottom line was... the reason they were having issues with their client was they just couldn’t seem to get out of their own way. Company executives somehow couldn’t fit in regular client visits with everything else they had going on.
I was hired to help them figure out how to successfully execute an 11th hour strategy to convince their customer that there was no need to engage in a competitive RFP for the next phase of the contract. My first step in this recovery mission was to meet with the customer. Fortunately, I was able to get in to see the CEO within 48 hours of calling to schedule the appointment. Unfortunately, in the first five minutes of our meeting, the CEO said, “I haven’t seen an executive from the vendor company since we originally signed the deal four years ago. I couldn’t pick one of their executives out of a lineup if my life depended on it.”
Clearly, this did not bode well for my client. When I reported my conversation with the CEO back to my client, instead of being outraged, he calmly acknowledged, “it was true.” He followed up with, “Can you help us or is it too late?”
As we all know, in the face of overwhelming odds, there are really two choices, fight or flight. My client wanted to fight for the right to keep the account. We immediately put in place an aggressive 45-day get-well-plan which included a personal apology CEO-to-CEO, assignment of a dedicated client executive responsible for managing the executive relationship, a clear quantification of the business value and operational impacts that had been delivered over the course of the 4-year engagement, and a satisfaction guaranteed service delivery policy. It was the longest 45 days of all of our lives. At the end of the day, the contract was saved. My client was lucky. However, all of the executives on both sides of the aisle agreed this situation never should have happened in the first place.
No matter what line of business or industry you’re in, there will always be competitors who want to take business away from you. But this is not a story about getting beat by the competition. This is a story about falling victim to friendly fire. This is about complacency and comfort and forgetting that even if you win, you can never stop selling the value you bring to your customers. Technology is great, but high tech will never be a global replacement for high touch.
When’s the last time you sat down with your client and discussed the real value you’ve brought to their business in additional to just meeting the terms and conditions of the contract?
Can your client executives pick you out of a lineup? If not, I strongly suggest you change that or rest assured they will. After all, they won’t miss what they never had.
