Stakeholder Mastery - Identify

Hey, it's Jermaine Edwards, your customer growth guide. If you're new, welcome. If you're old, welcome back to the fold. In this very exclusive video, we're beginning a 4-part series I'm calling Key Customer Mastery. We're beginning with stakeholder mastery and the importance of first identifying who those stakeholders are. It's one of the most important things that we can do as customer leaders, key account managers, or customer professionals to understand who those most important contacts are and have a plan to meeting their expectations and engaging them effectively to move the relationship forward. So let's begin. Now, the first part here, as I mentioned, is to identify. Identifying is one of the most simplest process— one of the simplest processes, I should say. However, we do need to follow a format. So the first thing here is within your sphere of reference, wherever that might be, your customer relationship management system, your peers, departments, wherever your contacts actually exist, we want to identify those people and simply just get their names down on a piece of paper, on a spreadsheet, on a document, or inside your customer relationship management system. Wherever they are, get as many of those contacts you have visibility to, or your department or peers have visibility of, and get them on a piece of paper somewhere where you can manipulate and begin the activity. And once you do, you want to now look at what I call the Big B, which is the benefit. So we're going to explore something I call common thread thinking here. And common thread thinking within the sphere of your stakeholders simply means what is the common aligned benefit goal that the group of contacts is after. What are they after exactly? What is the business actually looking for them to produce? And then how does your product or service align to that overall corporate benefit? How's it aligned to the corporate benefit? Document what that is. Then we want to go to the second part, which is the IB. The individual benefit for that person, for each individual. What is the individual benefit for that person using your product or service to achieve the goal? What is the individual benefit, the IB? And once you've documented that, you have that down, this is going to form the basis for how we shape communication later. It's a really important step. Now, once we go from there, we now want to move to the next phase. This is phase 2 in this framework, which is around stakeholder mapping. And you'll be familiar with this phrase, it's used in many different circles of, of reference for, for business. But here in the stakeholder mapping, we want to be really clear with moving and who we move into these 4 quadrants. Now, the first of this is the I in this axis, and this is all about influence and impact. At the bottom here, we have CW. CW is commitment and willingness to engage. Now, these are important reference points. Why? Because in any relationship that we have, these two things are always being weighed with each other. Now, you may want to speak with the CEO or the CFO. They may have high impact and influence, But do they have actually high commitment and willingness to engage with you? Well, maybe not because the product and service that you have, or maybe because the position that you've come into the business. So it's really important as you identify these different stakeholders, we're really honest with where people are in this quadrant. So let's explore what these actual 4 areas are. So the first here, A, are advocates. So I call them advocates, yeah. Here, clearly I'm going to have to create some more space. You're going to have to create some more space for yourself. But advocates here, these are the individuals that are perhaps the highest ranking in that particular business. This will be the CEOs, the CFOs, people if they had advocacy for— if you had advocacy from, it would actually make every other relationship easier to have, or access to those relationships easier to have. Having these kinds of advocates, these are the highest positions in that, you know, your customer's business that allow you greater access and leverage to do different things with that particular account. It moves the relationship faster along. These are really important. We'll talk about exactly what we do with these individuals in a second. At the bottom corner here, we have users. Now, users are those people who are essentially using your product or service. They're end customers. And your managers by themselves will be directing to and speaking and communicating with these users around the experience that they're having with their product or service that you have. They'll be engaged with your product or service. However, they'll have little impact and influence on other relationships per se, and they may have a lower commitment and willingness to engage. Why? Because they're in the role, they're trying to use your product or service. They're not designed in their role to give you consistent engagement and feedback. However, it's still important to hold them in mind. Over here we have supporters. Now, supporters are those individuals that you would have engaged with in the buying process pretty early. These people are the ones who have brought you in. They may have introduced you to maybe other areas inside the business that we'll come to in a second. But these people you will have day-to-day, week-to-week contact. They are the ones that are really concerned and making sure and ensuring that the business is getting the value from the purchase in which they've engaged you with. So these supporters are really important because holding this relationship means that you have greater leverage to move and navigate through these other parts. Up here we have champions. Now champions essentially are potential advocates that have now been brought into the process. These people have been assigned in the business to oversee what the supporters are actually doing. They own the result, but they haven't necessarily been the ones that have engaged you in the buying process. So they may have been introduced to you by supporters. So for example, if If you're a marketing digital agency and you've now gone and spoke with the head of marketing, now the chief marketing officer might be in this champion's corner because the result itself is tied to that person's outcome. It's tied to the way in which they are being assessed within the business. And so how we view champions is really important because their results are tied to what the supporters are doing. And to the overall activity engagement with the business. So now that we know this, we want to then move these people into these different areas and define what the activity will be. So in here, for users, we want to make sure that we're consistently engaging in some way. And I don't mean engaging in terms of picking up the phone and having conversations, but general communication. We want to make sure is out quarterly, monthly depending on the industry, at least half yearly with these individuals around how they're using your product or service, or even on a more consistent basis if you're in technology running a SaaS company. Over here we want to invest, we want to invest time into these areas, and here we'll be creating really specific kinds of collateral that informs the advocate and tells a great story about what we're doing with the business. Over here, we want to make sure that we're constantly involving these individuals, that they are constantly in communication with their champion to ensure that those particular expectations, those parameters that you've set, those actions that you've set are actually being delivered on and are being met. So we want to involve these individuals on a consistent basis. Over here, we want to be really strategic. So we know that the potential for champions to introduce us to advocates, to actually promote and tell our story, uh, is very, very high because they're in that sphere of influence and impact. And because we have higher commitment and willingness to engage, we have a greater opportunity for us to communicate with them, promote them, make them look really good, so the story they tell to advocates is much more compelling, and advocates move slowly over to becoming champions for us. So that's really important, this process here. Once we've identified the common thread thinking, the group and, and individual benefits, then we've identified where they might sit. Now we move towards this, which is the CPMIA framework. Essentially, it's moving all of the information that we've just collected into one central place. So let's explore this really briefly. So the C here is simply for the contact that we've identified, the position that they hold, meaning the position in the framework, whether they're a champion, an advocate, a user, or a supporter. Their motive. So what is their motive for wanting to engage with you? What is the implication for them not dealing with you? What is the implication for them not dealing with you? And what is the advantage they get from dealing with you? What is the advantage they actually get from the actual service and product, from engaging with you directly? Again, we've— some of that information will be tied to the work that we've done here already. So the contact, the position, the motive, the implication, and the advantage. Once we have this data, now we'll be able to move on to the second stage, which is really, really important, which we'll have in video 2, which is to verify. Now, I need you to do one thing for me. Download the workbook below because it's going to be your guide throughout the 4-part video, and I'll see you in the next part.