Imagine, you are the General Manager in a pharmaceutical company. Into your office comes a Division Manager. “You know you asked for ways to improve our relationship with United Hospitals”, she reminds you about the last management meeting. “I’ve got it. We need to innovate for them!” She says with a grin. What’s your reaction?
Read MoreIf your financial year finishes in December, ensure you spend your budget. In most organisations, if you don’t spend it, then you lose it. You lose it, but you still must deliver 2019 results. And 2019 starts in less than 40 days.
Read MoreCustomers you can't afford to lose are those customers who supply a good portion of your revenue or profit. Or they can be customers who are growing faster than the rest of the marketplace. The thought of losing one of these customers scares you so much that you might feel tightness in your stomach.
Read MoreTodd Snelgrove now Founding Partner at Experts in Value, was previously the Global Vice President of Value for SKF. During his 20 plus years in the industry, he has identified five reasons why companies do not take the time and effort to quantify their value and equip their sales teams or account managers with the tools and techniques they need to discuss value with customers.
This extract is taken from The Creative Negotiator by Stephen Kozicki.
Why can’t you quantify and prove value?
Read MoreThe word strategy is often misused and misunderstood. When we use the word we mean the simple definition used by the McKinsey consultant Kenichi Omhae: strategy is the intersection of three groups: customers, competitors and the company.
Read MoreWith the MTAA Value Summit quickly approaching and World Book Day next week, I thought I would share an extract from my successful book with Gary Peacock: Managing B2B customers you can’t afford to lose. This extract concentrates on creating value through joint partnerships.
Read MoreCompetition is increasing along with pressure on price, which can lead to a race to become the lowest price. However, discounting prices further to keep customers only prevents you from being competitive in the future because you have lower margins to invest.
With companies having fewer but larger customers it means that the top 10-20 customers for a company typically represent 60-80% of revenue and profit. Losing one of these customers can have dramatic impacts on a company - adding still further pressure to discount prices.
Read MoreSo, you need to persuade a customer you can't afford to lose? Where do you start? If we ask persuasion expert Robert Cialdini how to persuade your customer to act, he would suggest a few ways. Two are scarcity and consistency.
Scarcity is the best known technique, Consistency is not well understood and under-used.
Read MoreDonald Trump would probably say: Just tell em!
In the real world it's often not appropriate to just tell em! So, we need to have more sophisticated tools available.
At the end of 2016, Persuasion guru Robert Cialdini published his latest book Pre-suasion. To condense his 300 page book into two sentences he says:
So, what's so important about Pre-suasion?
Read MoreTell more stories to persuade. If you have attended our persuading for results workshop, you will have experienced the power of stories. At the end of day one we ask participants to come to day 2 ready to tell a story about themselves.
Read MoreThere are a lot of clichés around about success and luck. I often tell negotiators the better your negotiation plan, the better your questions and the better you frame value, the luckier you can be...
Read MoreToo many strategic plans become yearly reviews not dynamic plans for how to compete. As Michael Porter teaches, the objective of strategy is to win in the marketplace, delivering superior sustainable performance. His convincing argument requires ...
Read MoreAs customers are becoming more sophisticated in their buying strategies, so sales and key account management teams need to be ...
Read MorePost-Election 2013 – are you match-fit for the opportunities ahead?
Heading into the election, the economy was by far the most important issue for voters ...
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